Saint Lawrence Enthroned with Saints and Donors

The Artist: For a biography of Fra Filippo Lippi, see the Catalogue Entry for Portrait of a Woman with a Man at a Casement (89.15.19)

The Picture: Saint Lawrence, a deacon under Pope Sixtus II in the third century, is shown enthroned, his feet resting on the grill on which he met his martyrdom. He is flanked by Cosmas and Damian, the third century patron saints of physicians who, in the fifteenth century, were especially associated with the Medici. All three hold martyr’s palms. Three diminutive figures—portraits of the patron of the altarpiece and two of his sons—kneel in devotion. They are dressed in costly red, their headgear (cappucci) hung over their shoulders. This much damaged panel (see Technical Notes) is the altered, center portion of an altarpiece to which the two further fragments belong (35.31.1b–c). One depicts Saint Anthony Abbot; the other, shown in a black habit over which he wears an alb and cope, has usually been identified as is Saint Benedict, the founder of the Benedictine order, but may instead be Saint John Gualbert, founder of the Vallombrosian Order (a branch of the Benedictines; see Cardarelli 2023); alternatively, but less likely, a seventeenth-century notice identified him as Saint Augustine (see below). The Benedictine habit is generally depicted as black; the Vallombrosian one is generally brownish gray or black; Gualbert is sometimes depicted wearing a cope. The black habit and cope would also be appropriate for Augustine, who however usually also wears a bishop’s mitre as the Bishop of Hippo. The donor portraits, in particular those of the two younger men—the better-preserved portions of the picture—testify to Lippi’s enormous gifts at characterization. Following Vasari (for which, see below), they can be identified as the prominent Florentine political figure and wool merchant Alessandro Alessandri (1391–1460) and two of his sons.

The Location and Appearance of the Altarpiece: The altarpiece is first recorded in 1493 (see Refs.) as ornamenting the main altar of the little church of Santa Maria at Vincigliata, near Florence. Subsequently, the altarpiece was described by Giorgio Vasari in both the 1550 and 1568 editions of his Lives, albeit with slight variations. The more complete 1568 edition reads: "Messer Allessandro degli Alessandri, allora cavaliere ed amico suo, gli fece fare, per la sua chiesa di villa a Vincigliata nel poggio di Fiesole in una tavola, un Santo Lorenzo, ed altri Santi; ritraendovi lui e dua suoi figliuoli." (Messer Alessandro Alessandri, who was then a knight and friend [of Filippo Lippi], commissioned for his villa church at Vincigliata on the hill of Fiesole an altarpiece [showing] Saint Lawrence and other saints [and] portraying him [i.e., Alessandri] and two sons). In the past, the term “villa church” has sometimes caused confusion, but the 1493 pastoral visit clearly indicates that the altarpiece was not for a private chapel in the Alessandri’s nearby villa but the principal ornament of the local church, which in 1672 designated Saint Lawrence as copatron with the Virgin Mary. Located in the hills above Florence, Vincigliata is dominated by a castle that was owned by the Alessandri family, who in the fifteenth century were also the principal patrons of the local church, providing five sixths of its income. They enlarged the building and furnished it with a bell tower that still bears their coat of arms and when, in 1790, the building was reoriented and much reconstructed, they removed the altarpiece to their palace in Florence. No longer serving an ecclesiastical function, the two lateral saints were separated from the central section, which was reframed as a tondo, as described in 1864 by Crowe and Cavalcaselle.

Because the altarpiece has been so drastically cut up and its individual panels altered, it is extremely difficult to reconstruct its original appearance. For this reason, some additional seventeenth-century descriptions are worth citing.[1] The first is an inventory of the church’s effects in 1647: “Una tavola, dentro un S. Lorenzo con quattro altre figure di pittor famoso, con sua cornice dorata all'antica, accomodata con cornice nuova dipinta modernamente.” (An altarpiece, in which [is] a Saint Lawrence with four other figures [such as of saints] by a famous painter, with its gold frame in the old style adapted to a new frame recently painted). 1678: “Una tavola quadra grande e intestata al coro, tocca d'oro, antica, con più Santi, quale si dice che ella sia di Fra Filippo Lippi di S. Marco, la quale è descritta nel libro delle vite dei pittori.” (A large rectangular altarpiece affixed in the choir, gilded, old, with many saints, which is said to be by Fra Filippo Lippi of San Marco, the which is described in [Vasari’s] Lives of the Painters). 1682: “Una tavola di legno, posta dreto l'altar maggiore in alto nella muraglia e confitta, di mano del Lippi , come ne parla Giorgio Vasari, dipintovi nel mezzo S. Lorenzo, alla destra di cui vi è un S. Cosimo e nella sinistra un S. Damiano; accanto a questi poi sulla destra pure vi è un S. Agostino e alla sinistra un S. Antonio abate. Di più ai piedi di S. Lorenzo vedesi dipinto ginocchioni il cavaliere degli Alessandri con duoi figliuoli, che è quel cavaliere che gli fece fare la pittura, essendo amico del Lippo.” (An altarpiece, on wood, positioned behind the main altar, affixed high on the wall, by the hand of Lippi, as described by Giorgio Vasari. In which is painted, in the middle, Saint Lawrence, to the right of whom is Saint Cosmas and to the left Saint Damian; then, beside these there is on the right a Saint Augustine and on the left a Saint Anthony Abbot. Moreover, at the feet of Saint Lawrence is seen painted, kneeling, the cavaliere Alessandri with two sons, who is the cavaliere who had the picture made, being a friend of Lippi).

Following its removal from the church and dismemberment by the Alessandri, the three pieces of the altarpiece were sold in 1911. Since that time there have been a number of framing solutions for the three fragments (see figs. 1–2 above). As the above cited notices indicate, even before its removal in 1790, the altarpiece had been subjected to alterations. The 1647 inventory is important for indicating that the altarpiece had a gilded frame “all'antica”, which in the seventeenth century implied Gothic rather than classical, as it would have in the Renaissance, and that it had been adapted in some fashion by being supplied with a modern, painted frame. This was a far from unusual way of giving a modern aspect to Gothic altarpieces and it explains why, three decades later, the work is referred to as rectangular (tavola quadra).

Lippi was among the most innovative artists when it came to altarpiece formats and right through the 1450s he painted both open-field, rectangular altarpieces with Renaissance-style frames and triptychs, sometimes employing elaborately shaped panels encased in Gothic frames. Sadly, none of these frames survive, though a preparatory drawing by Lippi in the Florentine Archivio di Stato for a triptych commissioned by Giovanni di Cosimo de’ Medici for Alfonso of Aragon gives an idea of how some of these frames may have appeared. It is also worth noting that a number of Florentine altarpieces survive that combine shaped panels set within a rectangular frame. Further, it was common practice in the fifteenth century to update earlier, multipanel, Gothic altarpieces by inserting them into an updated, Renaissance-style frame (see The Met’s altarpiece by Taddeo Gaddi, 10.97). The gold background of the Alessandri altarpiece has seemed to some scholars yet another anachronistic survival of an earlier practice, so it is well to remember that the panel Lippi painted in the 1450s for the Ospedale del Ceppo in Prato is similarly gilded (the gilding on The Met’s panels is mostly modern) and reflects his ability to adapt both the format and style of his work to suit the needs and tastes of his patrons. This distinctive sign of the fertility of his imagination and his constant search for novel solutions makes it extremely difficult to suggest the original appearance of the Alessandri altarpiece.

However, Cadarelli’s (2023) proposal that the altarpiece was a classic, open-field tavola quadrata cannot be correct. Most important are the indications that the two monastic saints were placed considerably lower in the picture field, which, had the altarpiece been rectangular, would have left an inordinate amount of undifferentiated gold background above them. Saint Anthony is shown with his right leg lifted and his foot placed on a marble platform that was the extension of the floor in the center panel. His relative position vis-à-vis the saints in the central portion can be estimated by aligning his staff with the remnant visible in the main panel. The same is true for the crosier held by his companion saint. The two outermost saints were thus shown emerging from a stepped space. This is not without parallels in Lippi’s work: a complex, stepped space is found as well in his great altarpiece of the Coronation of the Virgin for the church of Sant’Ambrogio (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence), which was commissioned in 1439 but completed eight years later. Although its specific appearance cannot be imagined, the Alessandri Altarpiece was thus tripartite.

Patron, Style, and Date: Prior to Bernard Berenson’s 1932 article reconsidering the chronology of Filippo Lippi’s paintings (see Refs.), the Alessandri Altarpiece was dated to the 1430s. Since then, a consensus has emerged that it is, rather, a work of the mid- to late 1440s—or even of the very early 1450s. Unquestionably, the decade of the 1440s was a period of profound transformation in Lippi’s art: a turn from the more saturated colors and naturalistic description found in his works of the previous decade to a paler, more refined palette, an emphasis on elegance, and an innovative use of gold—not only for the backgrounds, but in the garments, where small dots of gold indicate highlights and clusters of tooled dots in the haloes would have caught the candlelight. The degree to which these traits mark a conscious emulation of the work of Fra Angelico—a favored artist of the Medici—and a turn away from the naturalistic impulse of Lippi’s earlier art has been much discussed, but the resultant courtly/Gothic character of some of the paintings of this period cannot be denied, making these works particularly important for an understanding of the social and cultural ambitions of the men who commissioned them as well as of Lippi’s extraordinary ability to manipulate style towards different ends.

The Patron: In the 1440s Alessandro Alessandri was at the height of his political career.[2] He had been among the supporters of Cosimo de’ Medici when he later was exiled from Florence in 1434, and in the 1440s his political career was at its peak. In 1441 and 1448 he served as Gonfaloniere di Giustizia, holding other important political offices as well, being Captain of Livorno, Pistoia, and Pisa in 1442, 1445, and 1447, respectively. He was part of the Florentine delegation for the accession of Pope Nicholas V in 1447, he was knighted by Frederick III in 1451, and in 1453 he married his daughter Ginevra to Cosimo de’ Medici’s son Giovanni. The marriage, it has been suggested, may have occasioned the commission of The Met's altarpiece. The family alliance with the Medici is the obvious explanation for the prominence given to Saints Cosmas and Damian, the patron saints of Cosimo de’ Medici. Most recently, Cardarelli (2023) has underscored the importance of Alessandro’s activity in the wool trade (though it accounted for only a small fraction of his wealth). He belonged to the influential wool, cloth, and silk guilds, serving as consul of the Arte della Lana in 1438 and 1441. She has noted that as the "saint-protectors" of wool finishers, Cosmas and Damian were linked to wool production and the guild and would have been appropriate presences in the altarpiece. Be that as it may, the prominence given to the two saints was surely political in motivation and was intended to convey the Alessandri’s alliance with the Medici. It could even be argued that the neo-Gothic features of the altarpiece reflect the courtly taste promoted by Piero de’ Medici, for whom Lippi was a favored artist, producing paintings with a distinctly nostalgic flavor (such as the Gothic triptych for Alfonso of Aragon, noted above). In style, the picture is most closely related to the Annunciation Lippi painted for the convent of the Murate in Florence (Alte Pinakothek, Munich), for which a payment was made in April 1445. Megan Holmes has noted that in the early 1440s Lippi made payments to Alessandro—for what purpose we do not know—and this may suggest a date earlier rather than later in the decade.[3] By 1453, Lippi was engaged in a major fresco cycle in Prato and it therefore seems unlikely that the altarpiece can date much after 1450.

The Portraits: In 1445, Alessandro would have been fifty-four, which does not seem too distant from the balding man in the altarpiece. The relative age of the two sons is harder to judge. One would appear possibly to be in his late teens or very early twenties, and the older one in his mid-twenties and probably no more than thirty. Alessandro had five sons. Three rose to some prominence: Giovanni (1415–1439), Jacopo (1422–1494), and Antonio (1424–after 1480). The other two were Filippo and Bernardo, whose birthdates are not published.[4] The presence of Saint Anthony may be taken as an indication that one of the two is Antonio, who followed in his fathers footsteps. In 1445 he was twenty-three. If the companion saint is John Gualbert and is present as the patron saint of one of the young men, then the second son should be Giovanni, who, however, died in 1439 at the age of twenty-four. Given that the style of the altarpiece indicates its execution (but not necessarily its commission) in the 1440s, the portrait would have to be posthumous. Alternatively, the saint may well be Benedict—as has been largely postulated—and his presence is an indication of the Alessandri’s association with the Benedictine order. For example, their polyptych in San Pier Maggiore, for which Benozzo Gozzoli painted a predella, included a figure of Benedict holding a crosier. Thus, the portrait may be a younger son, such as Jacopo, though he was only a year younger than Antonio and the difference of age between the two sons seems greater than that. At present, the identity of one of the two sons must therefore remain conjectural.

Keith Christiansen 2023

[1] Baroni 1871, pp. 51–52
[2] See Bruckner 2002, pp. 58–59
[3] Holmes 1999, p. 272 n. 172
[4] See Pompeo Litta, Famiglie celebre di Italia. Albizzi di Firenze; Alessandro già Albizzi di Firenze, Milan, 1819–[1883], vol. 17, pl. 25

CONDITION:
The painting came to the Museum from the Morgan Library in 1935. Two side figures (Saint Benedict and Saint Anthony Abbott) must have originally been joined to the central panel, in light of the fact that the ends of their staffs can be seen in the lower left and lower right corners of the painting.

The panel has been extended approximately three inches on all sides. It has been heavily cradled and waxed on the reverse, but it appears to be structurally stable. The painting was cleaned and restored in 1935, and again in 1955. Unfortunately, the extensive nature of the existing damages and the relatively unsuccessful nature of the restorations confined the picture to storage. Yet because of the overwhelming quality of what remains of the original (notably the portrait heads) removal of the previous retouching proved to be worthwhile.

The picture has suffered from extensive overall abrasion of the paint film. The flesh tones in particular have been thinned to an extreme degree. Much of the gilding is modern, although the haloes do appear to be original. Numerous small damages are scattered throughout the painting, but these are overshadowed by an enormous loss in the central section of the panel. Most of the green drapery (in the robe of St. Lawrence) is completely missing, although traces of it do remain around the edges of the loss. The profile of the head of Alessandri has also been damaged, but fortunately the portrait heads of his two sons remain virtually intact. The beauty of these portraits, as well as the fact that the central damage is confined to an area of drapery, more than justifies the time and effort required to properly retouch the picture.

TREATMENT:
The 1955 restorations were removed. Both the retouching and the varnishing had been done with poly(vinyl acetate), and these layers were quite literally peeled off the surface. Residues were removed with toluene.

Losses were filled where necessary, and old putties were corrected. The painting was brush varnished wtih Ketone N (with Irganox 565 added as an antioxidant). Losses were toned, and underpainted with egg tempera. This allowed for the most convincing imitation of the opacity, purity, and clarity of the original technique. Retouching of the small damages was completed with both egg tempera and watercolors, and the retouches were locally varnished. The smaller losses were completed before attempting reconstruction of the drapery in order to allow the strength of the original to dominate. Retouching of the central damage was completed with oil colors (extracted on a blotter) mixed with dammar. This was used as a means of re-creating the discolored copper resinate glazes which can be seen in the remnants of the original drapery. A final spray coating of Ketone N was applied.

The painting was re-framed with the blank, false edges concealed. This was essential in order to allow the sense of space and scale within the composition to have the proper effect.

[1983; on file in departmental archives]

church of Santa Maria a Vincigliata, near Florence (until about 1790); Alessandri family, Palazzo Alessandri, Florence (from about 1790); conte Cosimo degli Alessandri, Palazzo Alessandri (until at least 1911); ?[Luigi Grassi, Florence, until 1912]; [Sulley and Co., London, until 1912; sold for £20,000 to Duveen]; [Duveen, New York, 1912; sold for $215,000 to Morgan]; J. Pierpont Morgan, New York (1912–d. 1913; his estate, 1913–17); his son, J. P. Morgan, New York (1917–35; sold through Knoedler to The Met)

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Collection of Paintings lent by J. Pierpont Morgan," 1913, unnumbered cat.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Loan Exhibition of the J. Pierpont Morgan Collection," February 17, 1914–May 28, 1916, unnumbered cat. (p. 50).

New York. Duveen. "Early Italian Paintings," April 17–May 3, 1924, nos. 5–6 (lent by J. Pierpont Morgan, New York).

Richmond. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. "Treasures in America," January 13–March 5, 1961, unnumbered cat. (p. 53; central panel only).

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Florentine Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum," June 15–August 15, 1971, no catalogue.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Saints and Their Legends," March 1–September 3, 1974, exh. brochure.

Pastoral visit of Bishop Roberto Folchi. May 1, 1493, unpaginated [Archivio di Stato, Florence, Notarile ante-cosimiano 3264; published in Brucker 2007], records it above the high altar of the church of Santa Maria di Vincigliata.

Giorgio Vasari. Le vite de piu eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani. Florence, 1550, vol. 1, part 2, p. 400, states that Lippi painted for Alessandro Alessandri "per la sua chiesa a Vincigliata nel poggio di Fiesole una tavola con un Santo Lorenzo, & altri santi, nella quale ritrasse lui & due suoi figliuoli".

Giorgio Vasari. Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori. Ed. Gaetano Milanesi. 1906 ed. Florence, 1568, vol. 2, pp. 626–27, states that Lippi painted it for Alessandri's "chiesa di villa a Vincigliata".

Inventory. 1678 [published in (Giovanni Baroni), Il castello di Vincigliata e i suoi contorni, Florence, 1871, p. 51], records it as a single rectangular panel in the church of Santa Maria di Vincigliata.

Inventory. 1682 [published in (Giovanni Baroni), Il castello di Vincigliata e i suoi contorni, Florence, 1871, pp. 51–52], records it as a single panel in the church of Santa Maria di Vincigliata, attached to the back wall, high up; identifies the saints as Lawrence (center), flanked by Cosmas and Damian, with Augustine and Anthony Abbot on the outer edges.

J. A. Crowe and G. B. Cavalcaselle. A History of Painting in Italy from the Second to the Fourteenth Century. Vol. 2, London, 1864, p. 348, as in the Casa Alessandri, Florence; note that the central panel was originally square but cut into a round form and detached from the wings.

Gaetano Milanesi, ed. Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori.. By Giorgio Vasari. Vol. 2, 1906 ed. Florence, 1878, p. 627 n. 1, observes that the altarpiece has been cut apart, with the center made into a tondo and the lateral saints—tentatively identified as Anthony and Benedict—joined as a single work.

Bernhard Berenson. The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance. New York, 1896, p. 118, lists the central panel as by Filippo Lippi, in the Palazzo Alessandri, Florence.

Edward C. Strutt. Fra Filippo Lippi. London, 1901, pp. 83, 197, assigns the central panel to Lippi's "second Florentine Period," 1441–52, and calls it a tondo that may have originally been rectangular; identifies the two lateral saints as Anthony and Benedict and states that they are in the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

I. B. Supino. Fra Filippo Lippi. Florence, 1902, p. 71, ill. (central panel), dates it soon after 1440 and identifies the Alessandri sons on the left as Jacopo and Antonio; states that the lateral saints are still in the Alessandri palazzo; illustrates the central panel framed as a tondo.

Jacob Burckhardt. Der Cicerone: Eine Anleitung zum Genuss der Kunstwerke Italiens. part 2, Vol. 3, Leipzig, 1904, p. 651, dates it soon after 1440.

Henriette Mendelsohn. Fra Filippo Lippi. Berlin, 1909, pp. 74–76, 258, ill. (central panel), dates it 1435–40; calls the two lateral saints possibly Anthony and Benedict.

Adolfo Venturi. Storia dell'arte italiana. Vol. 7, part 1, La pittura del quattrocento. Milan, 1911, pp. 368, 370, calls the central panel an early work and compares it to the "Madonna del Ceppo" by Lippi in the Galleria Comunale di Palazzo Pretorio, Prato.

Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle. A History of Painting in Italy: Umbria, Florence and Siena from the Second to the Sixteenth Century. Ed. Langton Douglas. Vol. 4, Florentine Masters of the Fifteenth Century. London, 1911, p. 173.

Bernard Berenson. Letter to J. Pierpont Morgan. 1912, attributes it to Lippi, dates it about 1440, and identifies the Alessandri sons on the left as Jacopo and Antonio.

B[ryson]. B[urroughs]. "Additions to the Loan Exhibition of Paintings." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 8 (February 1913), p. 34, ill. p. 33, dates it about 1440–45; tentatively identifes the left lateral saint as Benedict.

Collection of Mediaeval and Renaissance Paintings. Cambridge, Mass., 1919, p. 57.

Richard Offner. "A Remarkable Exhibition of Italian Paintings." Arts 5 (May 1924), p. 257, considers it an early work, dating it a few years before 1437.

W. R. Valentiner. A Catalogue of Early Italian Paintings Exhibited at the Duveen Galleries New York: April to May, 1924. New York, 1926, unpaginated, nos. 5–6, ill., identifies the left lateral saint as Benedict.

Raimond van Marle. The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting. Vol. 10, The Renaissance Painters of Florence in the 15th Century. The Hague, 1928, pp. 406–8, fig. 247 (central panel), identifies the lateral saints as Benedict and Anthony; notes the influence of Fra Angelico and a connection in style with two panels in the National Gallery, London (nos. 666, 667).

[Georg] Gronau in Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler. Ed. Hans Vollmer. Vol. 23, Leipzig, 1929, p. 272, dates it about 1433–35; identifies the lateral saints as Anthony and Benedict.

Lionello Venturi. Pitture italiane in America. Milan, 1931, unpaginated, pls. CLXXVI–II, dates it to Lippi's early period, before 1437; identifies the lateral saints as Benedict and Anthony and erroneously states that they must originally have been arched.

Bernhard Berenson. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Oxford, 1932, p. 288, lists it as in great part the work of Lippi; identifies the lateral saints as Anthony Abbot and a bishop saint.

Bernardo Berenson. "Fra Angelico, Fra Filippo, e la cronologia." Bollettino d'arte 26 (July 1932), pp. 12, 14, 16, fig. 6, groups it with pictures showing the influence of Fra Angelico and dates it not before 1442; does not identify the left lateral saint.

Bernard Berenson. Letter to Belle Greene. March 8, 1932, rejects the 1932 listing [see Ref. "Italian Pictures of the Renaissance"] as a clerical error, and attributes it to Lippi.

Lionello Venturi. Italian Paintings in America. Vol. 2, Fifteenth Century Renaissance. New York, 1933, unpaginated, pls. 206–7, dates it about 1435.

Lionello Venturi. "Lo sviluppo artistico di Filippo Lippi." L'arte 36 (January 1933), pp. 43–44, ill. p. 41 (details), dates it about 1435 and identifies the Alessandri sons on the left as Giovanni and Jacopo.

Harry B. Wehle. "The Saint Lawrence Altarpiece by Fra Filippo Lippi." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 30 (December 1935), pp. 239–45, figs. 1–4 (overall and details), remarks that portions of the central panel were once concealed by a circular frame, though not cut down; accepts Venturi's [see Ref. (L'arte) 1933] dating and identification of the Alessandri sons; calls the left lateral figure "probably Saint Benedict as abbot of Monte Cassino".

Bernhard Berenson. Pitture italiane del rinascimento. Milan, 1936, p. 247.

Georg Pudelko. "Per la datazione delle opere di Fra Filippo Lippi." Rivista d'arte 18 (1936), p. 46, accepts the dating suggested by Berenson [see Ref. (Bollettino d'arte) 1932].

Harry B. Wehle. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: A Catalogue of Italian, Spanish, and Byzantine Paintings. New York, 1940, pp. 26–28, ill., believes it originally included at least two more parts now missing, probably a kneeling saint on the left and a standing one on the right.

Duveen Pictures in Public Collections of America. New York, 1941, unpaginated, no. 45, ill. (central panel), dates it about 1435; calls the lateral saints Lawrence and Benedict.

Robert Oertel. Fra Filippo Lippi. Vienna, 1942, p. 69, no. 68, fig. 68 (central panel), considers it close to the "Madonna del Ceppo" in Prato and dates it not before 1445; observes that Alessandri dedicated the central panel to the patron saints of the Medici, and that it is a prototype for related compositions by Neri di Bicci, who had contact with Lippi in 1454; tentatively identifies the left lateral saint as Benedict.

Richard Offner. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. Vol. 5, section 3, New York, 1947, p. 198 n. 2, p. 286, groups it with altarpieces in which the central panel shows an enthroned saint instead of the Madonna and Child.

Mary Pittaluga. Filippo Lippi. Florence, 1949, pp. 74, 210, figs. 47–48, accepts the dating suggested by Berenson [see Ref. (Bollettino d'arte) 1932].

George Kaftal. Iconography of the Saints in Tuscan Painting. Florence, 1952, cols. 289, 613, fig. 333 (central panel).

Josephine L. Allen and Elizabeth E. Gardner. A Concise Catalogue of the European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1954, p. 60.

Bernard Berenson. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Florentine School. London, 1963, vol. 1, p. 113, calls the left lateral saint Benedict.

John Pope-Hennessy. The Portrait in the Renaissance. Princeton, 1966, p. 258, notes the greatly reduced scale of the donor portraits.

Bernard Berenson. Homeless Paintings of the Renaissance. Ed. Hanna Kiel. Bloomington, 1970, pp. 208–10, 212, 228–29, 253, pl. 375 [similar text as Ref. Berenson (Bollettino d'arte) 1932].

Calvin Tomkins. Merchants and Masterpieces: The Story of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1970, p. 224 [rev., enl. ed., 1989].

Federico Zeri with the assistance of Elizabeth E. Gardner. Italian Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Florentine School. New York, 1971, pp. 88–91, ill., date it mid-1440s and identify the Alessandri sons as Jacopo and Antonio; call the left lateral saint Benedict.

Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972, pp. 106, 372, 378, 389, 422, 538, 607, question the identification of the left lateral saint as Benedict.

Giuseppe Marchini. Filippo Lippi. Milan, 1975, pp. 26, 98, 163, 168, 206, no. 28, figs. 50–52.

Jeffrey Ruda. Filippo Lippi Studies: Naturalism, Style and Iconography in Early Renaissance Art. PhD diss., Harvard University. New York, 1982, p. 127 n. 8.

Eliot Wooldridge Rowlands. "Filippo Lippi's Stay in Padua and its Impact on his Art." PhD diss., Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J., 1983, pp. x, 41, 161 n. 152, fig. 28, dates it mid-1440s and compares it to the Madonna and Child by Lippi in the MMA (49.7.9).

Jeffrey Ruda. Fra Filippo Lippi: Life and Work, with a Complete Catalogue. London, 1993, pp. 169, 316, 386, 416, 429–32, 442, 485, no. 39, colorpls. 96, 102 (central panel and detail), pls. 268–70, dates it mid-1440s to early 1450s; compares it to Lippi's "Madonna del Ceppo" in Prato and comments on the conservative aspects of the composition, including the hierarchic scaling and extensive use of gold; tentatively agrees with the identification of the lateral saints as Benedict and Anthony Abbot.

Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, pp. 18–19, ill.

Jean Strouse. Morgan: American Financier. New York, 1999, p. 7, reports that in December 1912, Morgan was in the process of buying it for $200,000.

Megan Holmes. Fra Filippo Lippi: The Carmelite Painter. New Haven, 1999, pp. 116–17, 126, 135, 268 nn. 74–75, 77, 80, figs. 97a, 97b (color), 97c, 119 (color detail), dates it to the early 1450s.

Jean Strouse. "J. Pierpont Morgan, Financier and Collector." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 57 (Winter 2000), pp. 52–55, fig. 64 (color, cental panel), dates it about 1440 in the text and probably late 1440s in the caption; discusses Morgan's acquisition of the altarpiece.

Miklós Boskovits in Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century. Washington, 2003, p. 29 n. 45.

Meryle Secrest. Duveen: A Life in Art. New York, 2004, p. 457.

Daniele Sanguineti in Filippo Lippi: un trittico ricongiunto. Ed. Carlo Giuliano and Daniele Sanguineti. Exh. cat., Pinacoteca dell'Accademia Albertina. Turin, 2004, p. 37, fig. 13 (Saint Anthony Abbot).

Keith Christiansen in From Filippo Lippi to Piero della Francesca: Fra Carnevale and the Making of a Renaissance Master. Ed. Keith Christiansen. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2005, pp. 54, 150, 156, 292–93 n. 47, fig. 15 (central panel) [Italian ed., "Fra Carnevale: un artista rinascimentale da Filippo Lippi a Piero della Francesca," Milan, 2004, pp. 54, 150, 156, 292, 294 n. 47, fig. 15], dates it about 1450 and notes its Gothicizing elements.

Linda Wolk-Simon. "Raphael at the Metropolitan: The Colonna Altarpiece." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 63 (Spring 2006), pp. 55, 62 n. 99.

Gene Brucker. "I Tatti and its Neighbors, 1427–1530." I Tatti Studies 11 (2007), pp. 62–64 n. 29, argues that the altarpiece was made for the church of Santa Maria a Vincigliata rather than for a chapel within the Alessandri villa, noting that the first edition of Vasari's "Vite" refers to Alessandri's "chiesa a Vincigliata" instead of the "chiesa di villa" mentioned in the 1568 edition, that Santa Maria a Vincigliata still has a chapel of Saint Lawrence and that this saint was added to the overall dedication of the church in the seventeenth century, and that the church's orientation was reversed in 1790, the period when the altarpiece was removed to the Alessandri family's palazzo in Florence; calls the identification of the second son (Jacopo?) and the saint on the left (Benedict?) uncertain; states that although the altarpiece is usually dated to the 1440s, the presence of the Medici saints may indicate a connection with the Alessandri-Medici marriage alliance of 1453 [see Ref. Oertel 1942].

Jennifer Tonkovich. "Discovering the Renaissance: Pierpont Morgan's Shift to Collecting Italian Old Masters." A Market for Merchant Princes: Collecting Italian Renaissance Paintings in America. Ed. Inge Reist. University Park, Pa., 2015, pp. 45–46, fig. 23 (photograph of it hanging in Pierpont Morgan's study).

Annette Hojer in Florentiner Malerei, Alte Pinakothek: Die Gemälde des 14. bis 16. Jahrhunderts. Ed. Andreas Schumacher, Annette Kranz, and Annette Hojer. Berlin, 2017, p. 276 n. 76, under no. 14.

Sandra Cardarelli. "New Insights into Filippo Lippi's Alessandri Altarpiece." Metropolitan Museum Journal vol. 57 (2022), pp. 120–132, figs. 2–5 (color, overall and details), demonstrates that the saint in the left panel fragment is probably not Benedict but Saint John Gualbert (San Giovanni Gualberto), who was likely the onomastic/patron saint of Alessandro Alessandri's eldest son Giovanni; argues that the sons depicted in the image are Giovanni and Antonio Alessandri; notes Alessandro's involvement with the wool trade and guild, whose connections to Cosmas and Damian (they were also the saint-protectors of wool finishers) may further explain their inclusion in the altarpiece; observes formal and decorative elements (including the format and use of pseudo-Kufic) that help place the altarpiece in the 1440s and connect it to Lippi's experiments in that decade; suggests that both the painting's style and Giovanni's death in 1439 may put its commission around 1439–40.