This message, written by the directors of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, is taken from the exhibition catalogue From Filippo Lippi to Piero della Francesca: Fra Carnevale and the Making of a Renaissance Master (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2005).

Seventy years have passed since, by royal decree (n. 705) on April 26, 1934, the entail (or fidecommesso) on the Barberini Collection was canceled and the possibility of foreign sale granted to the heirs, thereby effectively assuring the dispersal of what had been one of the greatest private collections in Rome, largely formed under the pontificate of Urban VIII Barberini (r. 1623–44). In addition to the masterpieces by Dürer, Caravaggio, Guido Reni, Guercino, and Poussin that would eventually be sold, there were two intriguing fifteenth-century panels of uncertain attribution. They seemed to depict scenes from the life of the Virgin, but in such a peculiarly secular fashion and with such a profusion of architectural detail that their subjects were not obvious. They had begun to attract scholarly attention when, in 1893, Adolfo Venturi had identified their author with the quasi-mythical Urbino painter Bartolomeo di Giovanni Corradini, known as Fra Carnevale, whose works had, according to Vasari, influenced the young Bramante. Venturi later retracted his hypothesis for lack of firm documentation—now brilliantly supplied in this catalogue by the archival discoveries of Andrea Di Lorenzo, Matteo Mazzalupi, and Livia Carloni—but the wheels had been set in motion, and over the course of the next century an astonishing bibliography was to accumulate around these works.

The two panels captured the public's imagination when they were lent by Prince Barberini to the magnificent "Exhibition of Italian Art," held in the galleries of the Royal Academy in London in 1930. There is nothing like a mystery to add allure to an object, and the fact that it was not possible to establish with certainty either the author or the subjects added to the enigma of these marvelous paintings. So it is not surprising that immediately after passage of the 1934 decree a number of agents and dealers set about either to obtain the exclusive rights to sell the two paintings—the centerpiece of the present exhibition—or offered to negotiate with the Barberini heirs. It is perhaps enough to note that no fewer than seven dealers approached The Metropolitan Museum of Art over the next year, sometimes working at cross-purposes and creating a flurry of misinformation. The Metropolitan Museum was not their only prospect. Among the rumored clients were the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the National Gallery, London; Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza; and the New York collector Maitland F. Griggs, whose Early Italian paintings later enriched the collections of the Metropolitan Museum and the Yale University Art Gallery. At the center of this contest of competing factions were the heirs: the Corsini family in Florence. Long before the estate had been divided among the various members of the family, dealers were knocking on doors purporting to have an offer in hand, and long before any member of the Corsini family had even decided to sell, the same dealers were contacting prospective buyers with what they declared was the latest asking price. Reading through the missives sent by these competing dealers—on file in the archives of the Metropolitan Museum—one is reminded of those chaotic scenes of Buoso Donati's scheming relatives in Puccini's comic opera Gianni Schicchi.

In July 1935 Umberto Gnoli (employed by the Metropolitan Museum as a European representative following his resignation as director of the Perugia art gallery) wrote to the president of the museum, George Blumenthal, who was staying at the Ritz in Paris, to inform him of the madness of the scene: "There [in Florence] I learned that already a crowd of people—authorized or not—had presented themselves to the owners in the name of the Metropolitan Museum. . . . Naturally, being pressed by everyone has gone to the owners' heads . . . and they will demand an exaggerated price." So confused did the matter become that it proved necessary for the director of the Metropolitan, Herbert Winlock, to draw up a chronology of the offers made. Even then, he was not sure that the latest information he had received was correct.

The first to announce their intention to sell were Marchesa Eleanora Corsini Antinori and Baronessa Giuliana Corsini Ricasoli, to whom the Birth of the Virgin had at last been assigned. They wisely refused the modest offers made on behalf of the Metropolitan, which, ironically, ultimately acquired the painting from M. Knoedler & Co. for somewhat less than what, initially, it had been rumored the two paintings would fetch together! Prince Tomaso Corsini inherited the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple(?), and after resisting initial advances he sold the painting to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

If nothing else, the transport of these fascinating paintings across the Atlantic further stoked interest in them and in 1939 Richard Offner wrote the first and in some ways the most brilliant of the many articles that have attempted to solve the mystery of their authorship, subject, and function. The article was a work of impeccable connoisseurship, and although Offner preferred to leave the question of authorship and function open, most of his conclusions have stood the test of time. Following the publication in 1961 of a spellbinding book by Federico Zeri, it was widely believed that the name of the artist—the otherwise obscure Giovanni Angelo d'Antonio (about whom we now know a fair amount)—had been uncovered. That Zeri's conclusions have turned out to be wrong hardly detracts from the brilliance of his many deductions.

In that remarkable study Zeri introduced several new pictures—all but one of which are in this exhibition. Among these was one showing Saint Peter (Pinacoteca di Brera) and another, Saint Francis (Pinacoteca Ambrosiana). Zeri recognized that these panels belonged to the same polyptych as a Crucifixion, then in the Cini Collection in Venice and now in the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino. Only in the last few years has it been established that the Crucifixion was the pinnacle of the altarpiece, placed over the (still-missing) center panel. The dismemberment of what is Fra Carnevale's sole surviving altarpiece is indicative of the fate of his paintings in general and, by extension, of his posthumous fame. That we are able to bring together in this exhibition all four panels known to have belonged to the polyptych (the fourth is a cut-down figure of Saint John the Baptist, in Loreto) is emblematic of the act of rehabilitation to which a century of scholarship has been dedicated.

There is little question that Fra Carnevale painted few works, although those that survive give ample evidence of his passion for painting and his meticulous attention to detail. Unfortunately, as noted, his posthumous fame was not sufficient to assure the survival of his paintings. In fact, only one work is preserved in the place for which it was created: Federigo da Montefeltro's painted alcove in the Palazzo Ducale in Urbino. The rest of his refined, subtly eccentric paintings found their way onto the art market and were dispersed. The panel of Saint Peter was donated to the Brera by Casimiro Sipriot in 1904; the Ambrosiana panel passed through two collections before being acquired from the Brivio collection. When published by Offner, the Crucifixion now in Urbino belonged to the Roman dealer Simonetti; only in 1987 was it acquired by the Italian state.

That the Pinacoteca di Brera and The Metropolitan Museum of Art should have undertaken this exhibition devoted to the reconstruction of Fra Carnevale's oeuvre and his career, as well as to defining his place in the Renaissance is, in the true sense, a symbolic act. Had the Brera not, in 1811, received Piero della Francesca's Montefeltro Altarpiece as the work of Fra Carnevale and, in 1904, accepted the Saint Peter with an attribution to Masaccio?

With this exhibition Fra Carnevale makes his definitive entrance onto the stage of Renaissance painting—not as a name passed down by generations of local chroniclers but as a figure with a historical profile. In order to better understand his achievement, the exhibition has been divided into two parts: The first examines Florence in the 1440s, when Fra Carnevale joined the workshop of Fra Filippo Lippi and established contacts with a wide range of artists. Filippo Lippi, Domenico Veneziano, Pesellino, Luca della Robbia, Maso di Bartolomeo, and a number of fascinating, if anonymous, masters are among our distinguished cast of characters in this incomparable Florentine tableau. In the second half of the exhibition we follow Fra Carnevale from Florence to Urbino, that magical city of the Renaissance, whose ducal palace Baldassare Castiglione, the friend of Raphael and author of The Book of the Courtier, did not hesitate to call the most beautiful in Italy. (The Courtier is set within its rooms.) This section travels far less familiar terrain and enlists artists who, for many, will be completely unknown: Giovanni Boccati, Giovanni Angelo d'Antonio (Zeri's candidate for the painter of the Barberini Panels), Benedetto Bonfigli, and Antonio da Fabriano. Like Fra Carnevale, each of these painters had contacts with Florentine art, but they transformed what they learned into a distinctly regional dialect, one lacking the recondite Latinity of Tuscan but possessing some of the most appealing aspects of a highly expressive, local patois. Then there is the magisterial figure of Piero della Francesca, who, hailing from the town of Sansepolcro where Tuscany borders Umbria and the Marches, preceded Fra Carnevale to Florence by six years and eventually displaced him in Urbino, working for the great soldier and patron Federigo da Montefeltro. As in the case of Filippo Lippi in the first half of the exhibition, Piero is the dominant figure in the second half.

Although this exhibition may initially seem recondite, it tackles one of the crucial issues of Renaissance painting: the means by which artists in fifteenth-century Italy created an artistic identity and the ways in which Renaissance style became a symbol of cultural attainment. The works are of a very high order—both aesthetically and historically—and few visitors will come away without having enlarged their understanding of Renaissance art. A deep debt of gratitude is owed the lenders listed in these pages for making it possible to bring together these exceptional works. The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, deserves special mention for lending its great altarpiece by Piero della Francesca, as does the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, for agreeing to allow its panel by Fra Carnevale to travel to Milan so that these two remarkable paintings could be reunited in Italy for the first time since 1935. Equally worthy of mention is the loan by the Accademia Albertina in Turin of two panels, which has enabled the reconstruction of a major altarpiece by Filippo Lippi, as well as the loan of panels from the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche in Urbino, the Museo del Palazzo Apostolico in Loreto, and the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana and Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan that belong to Fra Carnevale's only known polyptych. These are only some of the pleasures in store for visitors.

This has been a truly collaborative enterprise between the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Soprintendenza per i Beni Artistici in Milan—one that we trust will inaugurate future exchanges. That it has happened is due in no small measure to the persistent encouragement received from Federica Olivares, whose interest in the project from the time it was first described to her has been nothing short of extraordinary. She put us in touch with Diana Bracco, who has been exceptionally generous in her support of the exhibition, and she guided the Italian edition of the catalogue through publication.

The Pinacoteca di Brera could not have mounted this exhibition without the help of the Amici di Brera. Their support was not unexpected, but it was no less appreciated. Unicredit Broker, Unicredit Private Banking, Xelion, the Fondazione Corriere della Sera, Arteria, Civita Associazione, ATM e Regione Lombardia gave their enthusiastic support to the project. To all of them we owe a debt of gratitude.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is extremely grateful to Bracco for its generous support of the exhibition, as well as for its extraordinary commitment to this project. We are also deeply indebted to the William Randolph Hearst Foundation and the Gail and Parker Gilbert Fund for their vital assistance toward the realization of this exhibition. We likewise thank Bracco, the Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation Inc., and the Oceanic Heritage Foundation for their invaluable support of the exhibition catalogue.

In conclusion, we would like to express our hope that this intense and remarkably productive collaboration between The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Soprintendenza per il Patrimonio Storico Artistico e Etnoantropologico, Milano, will be the first of future joint ventures.

Philippe de Montebello Director The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Maria Teresa Fiorio Soprintendente per I Beni Artistici Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan