The Artist: Although mentioned by sixteenth-century writers on art such as Giorgio Vasari and Gian Paolo Lomazzo, only in the past half century has Fra Carnevale emerged as a historical personality—the author of a small but notable body of works. His birthdate is unknown, as are the circumstances of his early training—possibly with the late Gothic Urbino painter Antonio Alberti, with whom an undated document associates Fra Carnevale. When, in the spring of 1445, he traveled to Florence and joined the workshop of Filippo Lippi, he was already an independent artist. He is documented with Lippi until September 1446 but probably stayed in Florence longer, acquainting himself with other artists, sculptors, and architects. By the end of 1449 he had returned to Urbino, where he took orders as a Dominican monk (whence the name Fra Carnevale). His name occurs among documents relating to the building of a new portal for the church of San Domenico, the first Renaissance monument in Urbino. Was Fra Carnevale involved in the design of this work, which involved the Florentine sculptor-bronze founder Maso di Bartolomeo and Luca della Robbia? A newly discovered document attests that in 1455 he designed the capitals for work on the cathedral, and his name occurs in a sixteenth-century list of architects and engineers involved with the building of the ducal palace. Certainly his paintings attest to a presiding interest in architecture. However, his only certain contribution to the palace is a painted alcove of advanced architectural design (Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino).
In Urbino he would have met Leon Battista Alberti, a frequent visitor in the 1460s, and as a friend of Federico da Montefeltro’s advisor-kinsman Ottaviano Ubaldini—an executor of his will—he would have had access to the ducal library, with its copy of Vitruvius’s treatise.

In 1456 Fra Carnevale was released from his contract to paint an altarpiece for the confraternity of Corpus Domini. The predella (1467–68) was eventually painted by Paolo Uccello while the task of painting the main panel, offered to Piero della Francesca in 1469, fell to the Netherlandish artist Justus of Ghent. Fra Carnevale’s most famous work was an altarpiece for the oratory of Santa Maria della Bella, Urbino, on which he was working in 1467. The key elements of this work can now, with a fair degree of confidence, be identified with the panel catalogued here and it companion in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

In the 1450s Fra Carnevale became a parish priest at San Cassiano di Castelcavallino, and from this point most documents relate to his work as a parish priest. In his will he provided funds for preaching at San Domenico, Urbino.

The main influences on Fra Carnevale’s activity as a painter are Filippo Lippi, Domenico Veneziano, and Piero della Francesca, though he must also have had prolonged contact with his Camerino colleagues, Giovanni Boccati and Giovanni Angelo d’Antonio. He would have met Piero at Urbino and was also familiar with his frescoes at Arezzo. His achievement as a painter was inevitably overshadowed by Piero, just as his architectural ideas were superseded by those of Luciano Laurana and Francesco di Giorgio, but he is a crucial figure in the history of Renaissance painting in the Marches.

Provenance: This exceptionally rich painting has a companion in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the subject of which is usually identified as the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple. The subjects, function, and authorship of the two panels have been much debated though recent scholarship makes it all but certain that they are the lateral panels of an altarpiece painted in 1467 for a lay confraternity of flagellants in the hospital church of Santa Maria della Bella in Urbino. The artist of that altarpiece was Fra Carnevale. Vasari (1568) attests that the altarpiece was studied by the young Bramante, who was later to become the architect of Saint Peter's in Rome, and later sources assure us that in the seventeenth century it was confiscated by Cardinal Antonio Barberini, who in 1631 was papal legate to the city. In an inventory of Cardinal Antonio Barberini's possessions in Palazzo Barberini, Rome, drawn up in 1644 (Lavin 1975) we find the following descriptions of the panels in New York and Boston under numbers 13 and 14: "Un quadro in tavola che rappresenta una prospettiva con alcune donne che s'incontrano, con cornice tinta di noce con un filetto d'oro, di mano di fra Carnovale per sopra finestra" (a painting on wood that shows a perspective with some women who greet each other . . . by Fra Carnevale) and "Un quadro simile che rappresenta una prospettiva con alcune donne che vanno in chiesa, con cornice tinta di noce con un filetto d'oro, di mano di fra Carnovale" (a similar painting that shows a perspective with some women on their way to church . . . by Fra Carnevale). From documents published by Carloni (2005) we know that in 1632 the bishop of Urbino wrote to Cardinal Barberini to announce that the "prospettivi" had been sent to Rome in two crates. These must refer to the two panels from Santa Maria della Bella, for three months later payment was made to Claudio Ridolfi for a painting than can only have been the replacement of Fra Carnevale's altarpiece. That work shows the Birth of the Virgin (288 x 185 cm; now in the parish church of Groppello d'Adda), which presumably reflected the dedication of the altar.

What do we know about the church of Santa Maria della Bella? In 1565 the hospital buildings—including the small church of Santa Maria della Bella—were assigned to the nuns of the Convertite del Gesù, and it is possible that works of art were shifted about within the new convent (see Franco Mazzini, Urbino, i mattoni e le pietre, Pesaro, 1999, pp. 421–22), confusing their original function. However, apart from Claudio Ridolfi's replacement altarpiece, the only other work certainly from the church (which had three altars) is a fresco of the Crucifixion painted by the late-Gothic Ferrarese artist Antonio Alberti in 1442 (Gallerie Nazionale, Urbino). What deserves consideration is the probability that the secular slant in the paintings is related to their setting in a confraternity oratory.

The Picture: Crucial to the identification of the subject of The Met's painting is the woman reclining in a bed and the child standing in a washbasin, both of whom have haloes. (The haloes, done in shell gold, were examined by conservators in 1994 and again in 2004 and there seems no reason to question their authenticity since: 1) where, in the case of the woman in bed, the halo has been partially cleaned off, it has left an impression due to its age; 2) in both cases the haloes are executed in small, hatched strokes, completely in keeping with the painting technique of the artist; and 3) had they been added at a later date, in an effort to clarify the subject, we would expect them to be larger and more conspicuous.) They are notably discreet, but so, for that matter, is the one in Piero della Francesca's Flagellation, which also has a provenance from Urbino. The second point is that the infant in the New York picture is evidently a girl. Admittedly, the matter is not absolutely certain: in the infant's groin there is a small damage with an adjacent brush stroke that at first glance might suggest a penis. However, in the reliefs that decorate the palace the artist is quite explicit about genitalia, and the child's is closer to that of the nereid on the back of a sea centaur. It may seem remarkably indecorous to show the naked baby Virgin standing in a basin frontally, but Bicci di Lorenzo does precisely this in a predella scene of the birth of the Virgin in an altarpiece in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

No less notable is that the mother of the child—remarkably young for Saint Anne—is shown lying in bed nude. Virtually every fifteenth-century scene of the birth of the Virgin shows Anne reclining in bed, decorously dressed to receive visitors. Fra Carnevale's departure from this convention would be inexplicable were it not that the three maids attending her—unlike the woman sitting by her—are clothed all'antica. In other words, the birth has been imagined as a past event refracted through the ceremonies of contemporary life. This was not an uncommon practice: it is also true of Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise, in which, in the story of Jacob and Esau, only the two youths are shown wearing contemporary clothes. The New York panel nonetheless remains unique for associating the haloed mother with a classical past rather than a fifteenth-century present. In sum, it would seem that The Met's painting does, indeed, show a religious scene involving the birth of a girl, with well-wishers ceremoniously greeting each other in the foreground and men in the portico and background chatting, riding, or bringing home game. It is perhaps an indication of the religious theme that two of the women in the foreground hold prayer beads.

If Fra Carnevale's approach to the subject of the New York panel may be described as oblique, in the Boston picture it is almost inscrutable. Despite the absence of any haloes, the picture is most often described as showing the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, which, according the Golden Legend, took place when Mary was three years old. A good deal of license can be found in representations of the scene in the fifteenth century, but they all include Joachim, the Virgin's father, who is nowhere in sight in Fra Carnevale's painting. Moreover, instead of the traditional Jewish priest shown officiating at this event, Fra Carnevale shows three figures gathered at the high altar—apparently a Franciscan, possibly a Dominican or a friar wearing priestly robes, and a hooded figure—while two pilgrims are shown against the right-hand entrance pier. (Is one of these supposed to be Joachim or Joseph?) The remaining figures in the church are exclusively young males who chat, rest, or walk about. Two wear festive wreaths in their hair (one composed of roses, the other of leaves), while the coif of the young girl in blue is adorned with roses and a stem of rose leaves or myrtle. Kanter (1994) reasonably suggested that the scene may show the marriage of the fourteen-year-old Virgin, imagined as an actual, fifteenth-century ceremony, with the prospective bride on her way to church, accompanied by her female relatives and two male guardians (once again, one of the women holds prayer beads). It is far easier to point out the anomalies in the depiction of this scene than it is to suggest an alternative subject. For this reason it is important to point out that the decorative reliefs on the church façade clearly depict events in the Virgin's life—the Annunciation and the Visitation—and that the three marble steps the young girl is about to climb are shown with fissures, as though to denote the passage from one age to another. Typically, this would be the transition from the era under the Law to that of Grace, but there is also the suggestion of the passage from a pagan past, symbolized by the dancing maenad and piping satyr on the bases of the columns and the classical urn with a branch protruding from its opening, to the Christian era, announced by the reliefs above the arches. There would thus seem to be no way around the religious content of both pictures, and the most probable identifications remain the Birth of the Virgin and the Presentation in the Temple or the Marriage of the Virgin.

There is no basis for conjecturing that the pictures formed part of a larger series or cycle. Not only are the two panels the same size (neither has been cut down), but the scenes are constructed on a precisely mirror-image perspective grid, with the vanishing point located along the left edge of the New York panel and the right edge of the Boston panel, 62 centimeters from the bottom. In both, three stairs divide a foreground space from an interior one, viewed through a large, classical arch. The perspective must have been worked out on a separate piece of paper so that the results could be transferred to both panels by simply flipping the cartoon. The perspective grid was elaborated in greater detail in the New York panel—the incisions are clearly visible in the left background, where a mathematically determined diminution of the figures was wanted—but in both, pinpricks along the vertical edges indicating the transversals were carefully transposed (see fig. 2 above). This sort of mirror-image type of construction would have made no sense if extended to further narrative panels, and it really only leaves open the possibility of a missing center element with a centralized perspective scheme.

At the top of both panels are incisions marking off three arcs; in The Met's panel these arcs are cusped. The frame thus had a Gothic profile, with small arches supported on consoles. This type of frame is found in numerous Marchigian altarpieces. The difference here is that they are aligned horizontally, as in an altarpiece by Paolo da Viso (Pinacoteca Civica, Ascoli Piceno). The type of frame indicated could have extended over a center panel or a niche containing a sculpture.

As has long been acknowledged, architecture is the real protagonist of the compositions. In the New York panel the setting is a grand, secular palace bearing affinities with the Ducal Palace of Urbino. The character of the two ex-Barberini panels can, indeed, only be explained by the culture of the court of Urbino: of Federigo da Montefeltro, whose keen interest in architecture as well as in perspective is well known, and of his counselor-relative Ottaviano Ubaldini, who Giovanni Santi (Raphael's father) says painters and sculptors looked upon as a father. (Documents actually place Fra Carnevale in close touch with Ottaviano.) It is in this regard that the similarities of certain details in the panels with decorative elements in the palace become significant. The Montefeltro eagle that decorates the right hand spandrel of the palace in the New York panel is as though copied from the coat of arms above the fireplace of the Sala della Jole. The pseudo-antique reliefs bear a close, stylistic affinity with the bacchic frieze on that same fireplace, while the dolphin capitals of the column within the palace in the New York panel bear a striking similarity to those framing the main door into the Sala della Jole.

Fra Carnevale's name occurs in a sixteenth-century list of engineers who had been employed on the Ducal Palace, along with Luciano Laurana and Francesco di Giorgio, and it has been forcefully argued that prior to 1468 and the appointment of Laurana as chief architect, the Dominican painter had a hand in the planning of the Sala della Jole (see Strauss 1979, pp. 136–41; and Borsi 1997, pp. 60–62). That he did architectural designs has received confirmation from a document of 1455 in which he is mentioned as the author of designs for capitals for the cathedral of Urbino. The ex-Barberini paintings only make sense if we think of them as addressed not only to the confraternity members but to Federico and Ottaviano.

Some Additional Thoughts (adapted from Christiansen 2012): They gather, these eight, well-to-do women, none over thirty and only one accompanied by a child, in the paved piazza before an imposing palace, the ground floor of which is composed of a Roman-styled arcade embellished with rondels containing the Montefeltro eagle and the upper story of which is decorated with marble reliefs depicting, left to right, the drunken Dionysius, his infancy, and a Nereid embracing a Triton (on the classical sources for these reliefs, see Bartoli 2005, pp. 224–27). One woman—conspicuously dressed alla francese, her peaked hat (corna) lavishly ornamented with pearls and gems, her sleeve made of an expensive velluto chermisi broccato d'oro—recalls a celebrated portrait by Filippo Lippi (89.15.19), in whose bottega Fra Carnevale is documented in 1445 and 1446. For the rest, however, the artist has taken his cue from Piero della Francesca, in particular, his fresco of the Meeting of Solomon with the Queen of Sheba in San Francesco, Arezzo. Thus, the other women are more simply garbed, the heavy trains of their pink and blue woolen overgarments (pellande or mantelli) conferring a grave dignity on their bearing. Attention is focused on a group of three, the youngest of whom wears a white pellanda over her dress (or gamura) and has her braided hair held in place by a white scarf (benda) and adorned with flowers, indicating her status as a maiden or, possibly, a prospective bride. She extends a hand to a companion who, in turn, modestly gathers up the excess drapery of her pellanda. To judge from the sidelong glance of the third women in blue, her pink mantle covering her head, the occasion is an auspicious one.

Within the palace the mood changes as midwives busy themselves bathing a newborn child; a barefoot servant arrives through the door. In the backmost room the mother, her upper torso bare, rests nonchalantly on a bed, attended by a companion and three servants, two wearing only loose-fitting camicie. In this scene of female domesticity, the men are consigned to the margins. Beneath the sloping roof of a portico a hunter returns with a rabbit while his companion tends his falcon. Others take their ease and recreation in the distant landscape. As De Marchi (2005) observed, “In an idealized, implausible and theatrical scene, details of everyday life are suddenly isolated: affectionate and casual gestures, figures that seem taken by surprise, who come and go.” Or, in the words of Offner (1939) “the painter has planted the holy personages in the midst of the haphazard occurrences of everyday life . . . Here people go about their business in various ways as if here were nothing at any pass or in any part of existence to drive them into decisive action or a dramatic resolution.” As Offner’s characterization implies, despite all appearances to the contrary, the subject is religious: the Birth of the Virgin (remnants of shell gold haloes adorn the mother and infant).

So peculiar is its oblique approach to narrative that in 1632 the archbishop of Urbino omitted mentioning its subject when it and its companion were sent on to Cardinal Antonio Barberini in Rome, merely referring to them as “le prospettive” (Carloni 2005, pp. 309–11). Similarly, the compiler of the 1644 inventory of the collection of Cardinal Antonio Barberini was no less perplexed, describing the panel as "A painting on wood that represents a perspective with women who greet each other” (Un quadro in tavola che rappresenta una prospettiva con alcune donne che s'incontrano; see Aronberg-Lavin 1975, p. 158). In both cases, the dominant theme was seen to be the architectural setting—not the religious subject. It was surely the prominence given to the architecture combined with Fra Carnevale’s legacy as an architectural consultant at the Montefeltro court that led Vasari to mention the altarpiece in his Vita of Bramante. As noted above, we know that in 1455 Fra Carnevale provided designs to a stonemason for architectural details for the cathedral and it seems increasingly likely that one of the motives of the artist’s trip to Florence when he was nearing thirty years of age was to inform himself on architectural matters so that he might better advise the court.

Already in his Annunciation (National Gallery, Washington), dating perhaps from around 1450, Fra Carnevale had accorded architecture an unusually prominent place—one that transformed the canonical way of showing the Virgin either in her bedchamber or in an enclosed garden (the hortus conclusus) and instead imagined an encounter with the archangel Gabriel in a paved street lined with Renaissance porticoes. However remarkable an iconographic interpolation this may seem, the artist had initially been even more radical, because he had designed a hexagonal well behind the angel—a detail that would not have left any space for Gabriel and which suggests that the scene was initially conceived in terms of an architectural view more common to the practice of wood inlay (intarsia) than to painting. If we mentally eliminate the angel and substitute the well, as originally conceived, the Annunciation would appear as a first step leading to the great Ideal City in the Palazzo Ducale, Urbino. (see Christiansen 2005, p. 136). When we recall that Fra’ Carnevale’s last, unfinished work is a small panel of a heroic figure standing on a decahedron set in a piazza before a triumphal arch (Ceriana 2005, pp. 128, 253–57), it becomes evident that the artist was obsessed with urban schemes and an ideal vision of the city—albeit as a site of civilized activity rather than, as in the case of the Ideal City, an abstract projection deprived of everyday life.

There can be little doubt that Fra’ Carnevale’s model for giving such prominence to the urban setting and reversing the normative relationship between the religious subject—set in the background—and secondary figures who dominate the foreground was Piero della Francesca’s Flagellation in Urbino. He may have lacked the compositional sophistication of Piero, and was far from possessing that artist’s profound understanding of the principles of classical architecture and fascination with optics—let alone Piero’s ability to give visual emphasis to the religious subject despite its placement—but he belonged to that inner circle of humanists and artists who gathered at Federico’s court and he must have participated in the erudite discussions that took place during the visits of Leon Battista Alberti, who we know was a guest in Urbino in 1464 and probably visited the court frequently during the 1460s. It is thus not surprising that the carefully calculated perspective of The Met’s panel, which was minutely scored into the gesso preparation, is constructed according to Alberti’s recommendations in his treatise on painting. Similarly, the plain (rather than veined marble) columns and upper story decorated with individually framed reliefs accords with Alberti’s recommendations in the ninth book of the De re aedificatoria, where the great theorist notably draws a distinction between churches/temples—“so designed that nothing further may be added to enhance their majesty”—and secular palaces, “so treated that it will not seem possible to remove anything, because everything has been put together with great dignity.” A similar distinction between secular and religious buildings is found in the Ideal City, in which the circular baptistery in the center of the piazza has walls inlaid with dark marble slabs and the capitals are elaborately carved. A further testimony to Fra’ Carnevale’s humanist-Albertian culture is found in the two cloud formations in the sky that have, inadvertently, assumed the form of a dolphin—images in nature made by chance, such as commented upon by Pliny, Lucretius, and Alberti (in the opening lines of his treatise De statua; see Christiansen 2005, p. 266). Yet beyond their display of the culture of architecture that was so famously promoted by Federico, Fra’ Carnevale’s two paintings for the confraternity at Santa Maria della Bella are especially notable for the ways the events of the Virgin’s life are reimagined in a way that we may, indeed, find “idealized, implausible, and theatrical” (De Marchi 2005, p. 68) but that must have struck a sympathetic cord with Federico. As with Vespasiano da Bisticci’s memorable biography of the duke, the panels seem to function as a sort of visual encomium of the Montefeltro state under its benevolent ruler—as embodying, under the guise of their religious subjects, the ideals and consequences of good governance.

[Keith Christiansen 2010; updated 2021]

church of Santa Maria della Bella, Urbino (until 1632; confiscated by Cardinal Antonio Barberini); Cardinal Antonio Barberini, Palazzo Barberini, Rome (1632–d. 1671; inv., 1644, no. 13, as by "fra Carnovale"; inv., 1671, no. 405; estate inv., 1672, no. 336); his nephew, Maffeo Barberini, principe di Palestrina, Palazzo Barberini, Rome (1672–d. 1685; inv., after 1672, no. 161); the Barberini family, Palazzo Barberini, Rome (1685–1934; cat., 1817, no. 29, as by Botticelli); by descent to Eleonora Corsini, marchesa Antinori, and Giuliana Corsini, baronessa Ricasoli, Florence (1934–35); [Robert Frank, London, 1935; sold for $22,000 to Knoedler]; [Knoedler, New York, 1935; sold to The Met]

London. Royal Academy of Arts. "Italian Art, 1200–1900," January 1–March 8, 1930, no. 114 (as Attributed to Fra Carnevale) [commemorative ed., 1931, no. 124].

New York. M. Knoedler & Co. "24 Masterpieces," November 4–23, 1946, no. 7 (as by Fra Carnevale).

Hartford, Conn. Wadsworth Atheneum. "Fifty Painters of Architecture," October 30–December 7, 1947, no. 10 (as Attributed to Fra Carnevale).

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Art Treasures of the Metropolitan," November 7, 1952–September 7, 1953, no. 80 (as by Fra Carnevale(?)).

New York. Wildenstein. "The Italian Heritage," May 17–August 29, 1967, no. 5a (as by the Master of the Barberini Panels).

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. "Masterpieces of Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," September 16–November 1, 1970, unnumbered cat. (p. 17, as by the Master of the Barberini Panels).

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Masterpieces of Fifty Centuries," November 14, 1970–June 1, 1971, no. 186 (as by the Master of the Barberini Panels).

Washington. National Gallery of Art. "Italian Renaissance Architecture: Brunelleschi, Sangallo, Michelangelo—The Cathedrals of Florence and Pavia, and St. Peter's, Rome," December 18, 1994–March 19, 1995, no. 3.

Milan. Pinacoteca di Brera. "Fra Carnevale: Un artista rinascimentale da Filippo Lippi a Piero della Francesca," October 13, 2004–January 9, 2005, no. 45a.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "From Filippo Lippi to Piero della Francesca: Fra Carnevale and the Making of a Renaissance Master," February 1–May 1, 2005, no. 45A.

Urbino. Galleria Nazionale delle Marche. "La città ideale: l'utopia del rinascimento a Urbino tra Piero della Francesca e Raffaello," April 6–July 8, 2012, no. 3.4.

LOAN OF THIS WORK IS RESTRICTED.

Giorgio Vasari. Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori. Ed. Gaetano Milanesi. 1906 ed. Florence, 1568, vol. 4, pp. 147–48, mentions a "tavola" by Fra Carnevale in the church of Santa Maria della Bella in Urbino.

Inventory of Cardinal Antonio Barberini. April 1644, p. 2, no. 13 [published in Lavin 1975, p. 158; Getty no. I-3722], as "un quadro in tavola che rappresenta una prospettiva con alcune donne che s'incontrano con cornice tinta di noce con un filetto d'oro di mano di fra Carnovale p sopra finestra".

Inventory of Cardinal Antonio Barberini. August 9, 1671, p. 506, no. 405 [Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Vatican City; published in Lavin 1975, p. 312; Getty no. I-3728], as by Fra Carnevale.

Inventory of Bequests of Cardinal Antonio Barberini. 1672, p. 15, no. 336 [Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Vatican City; published in Lavin 1975, p. 349; Getty no. I-3729], as by Fra Carnevale.

Inventory of Maffeo Barberini, principe di Palestrina. after 1672, Sec. E, p. 1, no. 161 (with Boston picture) [Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Vatican City; published in Lavin 1975, p. 369; Getty no. I-3731], without attribution.

Pope Clement XI. Diary entry. 1703 [published in Ref. Ottino della Chiesa 1969, p. 87], writes that the high altar of the church of Santa Maria della Bella in Urbino formerly had a painting by Fra Carnevale which was taken to Rome by Cardinal Antonio Barberini and replaced with one by Claudio Veronese [Ridolfi].

Andrea Lazzari. Delle chiese di Urbino e delle pitture in esse esistenti. Urbino, 1801, pp. 73–74, describes Fra Carnevale's commission for the altarpiece of the church of Santa Maria della Bella, Urbino, in 1467; states that the work was removed by Antonio Barberini and replaced with a copy by Ridolfi (now in the church at Gropello d'Adda).

V. Camuccini. Oggetti di pittura dell'eccellentissima casa Barberini. 1817, no. 29 [published in Filippo Mariotti, "La legislazione delle belle arti," 1892, p. 128; see Ref. Zeri and Gardner 1980], as by Sandro Botticelli.

James Dennistoun. Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino. London, 1851, vol. 2, pp. 198–200, notes that after the devolution of the duchy of Urbino to the Holy See both this picture and the one in Boston passed to Pope Urban VIII and then to his successor Prince Barberini, and that they are now located in the prince's home in Rome; adds that the subjects are unknown and that the two pictures are misattributed to Mantegna; gives them to Piero della Francesca.

J[oseph]. A[rcher]. Crowe and G[iovanni]. B[attista]. Cavalcaselle. A History of Painting in North Italy: Venice, Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Ferrara, Milan, Friuli, Brescia, from the Fourteenth to the Sixteenth Century. London, 1871, vol. 1, p. 350 n. 4 (from p. 349), observe that although the two panels are labelled Botticelli in the Barberini collection, they are more like the work of Zoppo.

August Schmarsow. Melozzo da Forli. Berlin, 1886, p. 107, attributes the MMA and Boston panels to Luciano Laurana.

Adolfo Venturi. "Nelle pinacoteche minori d'Italia." Archivio storico dell'arte 6, no. 6 (1893), pp. 416–17, pl. VII, identifies the subject of the MMA picture as the Birth of the Virgin and that of the Boston picture as the Presentation of the Virgin, and attributes both works to Fra Carnevale, associating them with Lazzari's [see Ref. 1801] description of the altarpiece executed by Fra Carnevale in 1467 for Santa Maria della Bella.

"Le gallerie fidecommissarie romane." Gallerie nazionali italiane 1 (1894), p. 85, attributes the two panels to Fra Carnevale.

G[ustavo]. F[rizzoni]. "Miscellanea: Notizie concernenti oggetti d'arte." Archivio storico dell'arte, 2nd ser., 1, no. 5 (1895), pp. 396, 400, rejects Venturi's [see Ref. 1893] identification of the MMA and Boston panels with Fra Carnevale's altarpiece for Santa Maria della Bella, noting that the presumed copy at Gropello d'Adda is much larger and different in composition from the MMA work.

G[iovanni]. B[attista]. Cavalcaselle and J[oseph]. A[rcher]. Crowe. Storia della pittura in Italia. Vol. 8, Florence, 1898, pp. 268–70, attribute it to a follower of Piero della Francesca influenced by Boccati and Matteo da Gualdo.

Cornelio Budinich. Il Palazzo ducale d'Urbino. Trieste, 1904, p. 107, notes the attribution to Fra Carnevale but considers the architectural details too rude for an artist who took an important part, as did Carnevale, in the constructions at Urbino.

Jacob Burckhardt. Der Cicerone: Eine Anleitung zum Genuss der Kunstwerke Italiens. part 3, Vol. 2, 9th ed. Leipzig, 1904, p. 678, believes that there is insufficient evidence for the attribution to Fra Carnevale; ascribes it to an artist of the school of Padua, influenced by Piero della Francesca.

C[ornelio]. v[on]. F[abriczy]. "Ein Bild von Luciano da Laurana." Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft 27 (1904), p. 190, rejects the attribution to Laurana.

G[ustavo]. Frizzoni. "Review of Lafenestre and Richtenberger 1905." L'arte 8, no. 50 (1905), p. 393, believes there is insufficient evidence for the attribution to Fra Carnevale.

Georges Lafenestre and Eugène Richtenberger. Rome: les musées, les collections particulières, les palais. Paris, 1905, p. 155, attribute it to Fra Carnevale.

Edward Hutton, ed. Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino.. By James Dennistoun. new ed. [first ed., 1851]. London, 1909, vol. 2, p. 210 n. 1, rejects Dennistoun's attribution to Piero [see Ref. 1851].

Art. Jahn Rusconi. "Nuovi quadri nella Galleria Barberini." Vita d'arte 4 (September 1909), pp. 402–3, ill., attributes it to Fra Carnevale, calling it the Birth of the Virgin in the text and the Visitation in the caption to the illustration.

Tancred Borenius, ed. A History of Painting in North Italy: Venice, Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Ferrara, Milan, Friuli, Brescia, from the Fourteenth to the Sixteenth Century.. By J[oseph]. A[rcher]. Crowe and G[iovanni]. B[attista]. Cavalcaselle. 2nd ed. [1st ed. 1871]. London, 1912, vol. 2, p. 53 n. 5 (from p. 52), identifies the subjects of the MMA and Boston pictures and states that they are now labeled Fra Carnevale.

August Schmarsow. Joos van Gent und Melozzo da Forli in Rom und Urbino. Leipzig, 1912, pp. 207–10, agrees with Venturi [see Ref. 1893] in identifying it with the altarpiece for Santa Maria della Bella, and notes the influence of Boccati.

Walter Bombe in Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler. Ed. Ulrich Thieme. Vol. 6, Leipzig, 1912, p. 20, rejects the identification with the altarpiece of Santa Maria della Bella, and calls it Ferrarese, suggesting that it may have been part of the wall decoration of the ducal palace in Urbino.

Walter Bombe. "Die Kunst am Hofe Federigos von Urbino." Monatshefte für Kunstwissenschaft 5, no. 11 (1912), p. 471.

J[oseph]. A[rcher]. Crowe and G[iovanni]. B[attista]. Cavalcaselle. A History of Painting in North Italy: Venice, Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Ferrara, Milan, Friuli, Brescia, from the Fourteenth to the Sixteenth Century. Ed. Tancred Borenius. 2nd ed. [1st ed 1871]. London, 1912, vol. 2, p. 53 n. 5 (from p. 52).

Conrad de Mandach. "L'importance de Jacopo Bellini dans le développement de la peinture italienne." Archives de l'art français, n.s., 7 (1913), pp. 52–70, ill., attributes it to a painter of Urbino, dates it about 1475, and suggests that the subject may be the birth of Saint Nicholas of Bari; relates it to drawings by Jacopo Bellini.

A[dolfo]. Venturi. "La pittura del quattrocento." Storia dell'arte italiana. Vol. 7, part 2, Milan, 1913, pp. 108–12, fig. 87, withdraws his former opinion [see Ref. 1893] and ascribes the panel to a painter from Urbino influenced by Piero della Francesca, perhaps through the mediation of Fra Carnevale.

Paul Zucker. Raumdarstellung und Bildarchitekturen im Florentiner Quattrocento. Leipzig, 1913, p. 146.

Tancred Borenius, ed. A History of Painting in Italy: Umbria, Florence, and Siena from the Second to the Sixteenth Century.. By J[oseph]. A[rcher]. Crowe and G[iovanni]. B[attista]. Cavalcaselle. Vol. 5, Umbrian and Sienese Masters of the Fifteenth Century. London, 1914, p. 29 n. 1, observes that the composition of this picture is quite different from the presumed copy of Carnevale's painting at Gropello d'Adda, and considers a provenance from the ducal palace probable.

F[elix]. Witting. "Luciano da Lauranna als Maler." Jahrbuch der königlich preuszischen Kunstsammlungen 36 (1915), pp. 209, 212–14, pl. 3, rejects the attribution to Carnevale and associates the MMA and Boston pictures with Bernardino Baldi's description of paintings executed by Luciano Laurana [in "Memorie concernenti la città di Urbino," Rome, 1724, pp. 44–45].

Fiske Kimball. "Luciano Laurana and the 'High Renaissance'." Art Bulletin 10 (December 1927), p. 131 n. 22, rejects the attribution to Laurana and implies that he rejects the attribution to Fra Carnevale.

Raimond van Marle. The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting. Vol. 11, The Hague, 1929, pp. 106–10, fig. 70, attributes it to the school of Piero, identifies the subject as the Visitation, and dates it about 1470 or shortly after.

Charles Holmes. "The Italian Exhibition." Burlington Magazine 56 (February 1930), p. 56, pl. IIIB, calls it the Visitation, and connects it with Carlo Crivelli.

Fernanda Wittgens. "The Contributions of Italian Private Collections to the Exhibition at Burlington House." Apollo 11 (February 1930), p. 78, fig. V, attributes it to an anonymous painter of Urbino only somewhat influenced by Piero.

Exhibition of Italian Art, 1200–1900. Exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts. London, 1930, pp. 84–85, no. 114 [commemorative ed., 1931, vol. 1, p. 43, no. 124; vol. 2, pl. XLVIII], as Attributed to Fra Carnevale.

Bernhard Berenson. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Oxford, 1932, p. 342, lists it as by the Master of the Carrand Triptych (Giovanni di Francesco), dates it about 1465, and calls it the Visitation.

Arduino Colasanti. Die Malerei des XV. Jahrhunderts in den italienischen Marken. Florence, 1932, pp. 79–82, 125 n. 37, pl. 69, attributes it to a fifteenth-century painter working in Urbino and identifies the subject as scenes from the life of the Virgin.

Luigi Serra. L'arte nelle Marche. Vol. 2, Il periodo del rinascimento. Rome, 1934, p. 331, remarks on the influence of Piero della Francesca.

Gazzetta ufficiale del Regno d'Italia 75 (May 5, 1934), p. ?, no. 28 under Allegato B, in the announcement of the breaking of the entailment of the Barberini collection, lists this picture as the Birth of the Virgin by Fra Carnevale and values it at 150,000 lire.

Bernhard Berenson. Pitture italiane del rinascimento. Milan, 1936, p. 279, doubtfully lists it as a work of the Master of the Carrand Triptych.

Harry B. Wehle. "A Painting Attributed to Fra Carnevale." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 31 (March 1936), pp. 59–66, figs. 2, 3 (detail), attributes it to an artist who probably studied in Florence and was active in Urbino in the 1460s, who was influenced by Piero della Francesca, and who may also have been an architect—perhaps Carnevale.

Charles C. Cunningham. "An Italian Masterpiece for Boston." Art News 35 (June 5, 1937), pp. 9, 20, 23, believes that "the painter of the two panels was probably an Umbrian who was familiar with the artistic production of Florence, Perugia, Rimini, and possibly of Ferrara and Padua" and that it cannot be determined if this artist was Fra Carnevale.

C. C. Cunningham. "A Great Renaissance Panel." Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 35 (August 1937), pp. 46–50, fig. 2, finds it impossible to say with certainty whether the MMA and Boston pictures were painted by Fra Carnevale or by another painter; mentions the name of Lorenzo da Viterbo in connection with them.

F. Mason Perkins. Letter. March 24, 1938, rejects the attribution to Fra Carnevale, and calls it possibly if not probably the work of a Ferrarese painter strongly influenced by Piero della Francesca.

Richard Offner. "The Barberini Panels and their Painter." Medieval Studies in Memory of A. Kingsley Porter. Ed. Wilhelm R. W. Koehler. Vol. 1, Cambridge, Mass., 1939, pp. 205–53, ill. (overall and details), considers the MMA and Boston panels to have been parts of a larger series, which was probably set into the walls of a room; attributes them to the same hand as the Annunciation in the National Gallery of Art, Washington (about 1450; no. K 407) and a Crucifixion belonging to an art dealer in Rome (now Cini collection, Venice), calling the author the Master of the Barberini Panels.

Harry B. Wehle. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: A Catalogue of Italian, Spanish, and Byzantine Paintings. New York, 1940, pp. 105–7, ill., attributes it to "Fra Carnevale (?)"; believes that the identification of the painting at Gropello d'Adda as Ridolfi's copy of the Santa Maria della Bella altarpiece is probably erroneous.

Georg Swarzenski. "The Master of the Barberini Panels: Bramante." Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 38 (December 1940), pp. 90–97, fig. 16a (detail), attributes the two panels to Bramante, comparing them to an engraving after a design by that artist (British Museum, London; and private collection, Milan).

George Martin Richter. "Rehabilitation of Fra Carnevale." Art Quarterly 3 (Fall 1940), pp. 311–24, fig. 1, attributes the two panels to Fra Carnevale, to whom he also attributes the Washington Annunciation, a Madonna and Child (Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Mass.), and a Crucifixion (ex-Gualino collection and Italian Embassy, London; now Galleria Sabauda, Turin); dates the MMA picture about 1470–74 and the Boston picture about 1474–78.

George Martin Richter. "Architectural Phantasies by Bramante." Gazette des beaux-arts, 6th ser., 23 (January 1943), pp. 5–6, confirms the attribution to Fra Carnevale.

H[arry]. B. W[ehle]. "Notes on the Cover." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 3 (May 1945), inside cover, ill., and ill. on cover (detail, color).

Roberto Papini. Francesco di Giorgio Architetto. Florence, 1946, vol. 1, p. 150, mentions the two panels, noting their relationship to the views of ideal cities in Berlin, Urbino, and Baltimore, and to the stories of San Bernardino in Perugia.

Roberto Longhi. Piero della Francesca. 2nd ed. Milan, [1946], pp. 137–38, 158, suggests attributing the two panels to Bartolomeo Caporali.

Federico Zeri. "A proposito di Ludovico Urbani." Proporzioni 2 (1948), p. 170 n. 4, doubts Offner's [see Ref. 1939] grouping of the Master of the Barberini Panels.

Millia Davenport. The Book of Costume. New York, 1948, vol. 1, p. 272, no. 743, ill. (cropped) and frontispiece (color detail).

Pasquale Rotondi. "Contributi urbinati al Bramante pittore." Emporium 113 (March 1951), pp. 120, 122, 129 nn. 14, 17, hesitantly attributes it to Bramante and dates it about 1468.

Art Treasures of the Metropolitan: A Selection from the European and Asiatic Collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1952, p. 224, no. 80, colorpl. 80.

Roberto Longhi. "Il 'Maestro di Pratovecchio'." Paragone 3 (November 1952), p. 19, attributes the two panels to Bartolomeo Caporali.

William Suida. Bramante pittore e il Bramantino. Milan, 1953, p. 24, rejects the attribution to Bramante, calling Fra Carnevale a possible though unproven author.

Federico Zeri. "Il Maestro dell'Annunciazione Gardner." Bollettino d'arte 38 (April–June 1953), pp. 130–31, accepts Offner's [see Ref. 1939] grouping, adding to it an Annunciation in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, a Saint John the Baptist in the Palazzo Apostolico, Loreto, and other works.

Josephine L. Allen and Elizabeth E. Gardner. A Concise Catalogue of the European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1954, p. 16.

Theodore Rousseau Jr. "A Guide to the Picture Galleries." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 12, part 2 (January 1954), ill. p. 14.

Stefano Bottari. Storia dell'arte italiana. Vol. 2, Il rinascimento (Parte I): l'arte del Quattrocento. Milan, 1956, p. 339, fig. 460, as by the Master of the Barberini Panels.

Millard Meiss. "Contributions to Two Elusive Masters." Burlington Magazine 103 (February 1961), pp. 61–62, accepts the attributions of Offner and Zeri, adding to the group a portrait of Emperor Frederick III in the Uffizi, Florence.

Federico Zeri. Due dipinti, la filologia e un nome: il Maestro delle Tavole Barberini. Turin, 1961, pp. 11ff., ill. (overall and details) and frontispiece (color detail), discusses the Master of the Barberini Panels, suggesting that he should be identified with the painter Giovanni Angelo di Antonio da Camerino.

Alessandro Parronchi. "Leon Battista Alberti as a Painter." Burlington Magazine 104 (July 1962), pp. 280–87, figs. 2, 4, 13 (details), A (drawing with perspective layout), identifies the author of the Barberini panels as Alberti, suggesting that these are the paintings mentioned by Vasari as the small stories with some perspectives in a predella in the chapel of Santa Maria delle Grazie al Ponte alla Carraia in Florence; dates the panels 1438–43; rejects the heraldic eagles as connected with the Montefeltro family, and interprets the eye of a dolphin in the clouds as the personal emblem of Alberti.

Bernard Berenson. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Florentine School. London, 1963, vol. 1, p. 141; vol. 2, pls. 698, 699 (detail), lists this work, the panel in Boston, and the Washington Annunciation as by the Master of the Barberini Panels; dates it about 1465–70.

Roberto Longhi. Piero della Francesca, 1927: con aggiunte fino al 1962. [3rd ed.]. Florence, 1963, pp. 131, 199, 204, rejects both Zeri's [see Ref. 1961] and Parronchi's [see Ref. 1962] identifications of the artist and attributes the panels to Bartolomeo Caporali.

Alessandro Parronchi. Studi su la dolce prospettiva. Milan, 1964, pp. 437–67, pls. 150 (overall), 152a, 158, 159b, 163b (details), 156a (drawing with perspective layout).

Fred Licht. "For Florence, from Florence." Art News 66 (May 1967), pp. 44, 47, ill. (overall and color detail), suggests a relationship between this picture and the lost fresco of San Egidio by Veneziano, Piero della Francesca, and Castagno; dates it about 1475; suggests that it and the Boston panel formed part of a larger series of the life of the Virgin.

Eugenio Battisti. Letter. April 25, 1968, attributes it to Fra Carnevale.

Angela Ottino della Chiesa. Dipinti della Pinacoteca di Brera in deposito nelle chiese della Lombardia. Vol. 1, [Milan], 1969, p. 89, calls the altarpiece by Claudio Ridolfi currently on deposit at the church of Groppello d'Adda a free interpretation of this work.

Arnaldo Bruschi. Bramante architetto. Bari, 1969, pp. 72–73 n. 43, lays out the history of attribution of the Barberini panels; doubts an attribution to Bramante but believes a definite conclusion to be impossible.

Pietro Zampetti. La pittura marchigiana da Gentile a Raffaello. [Milan], [1970?], pp. 87–88, 90, figs. 74, 75 (detail), accepts the attributions advanced by Zeri and his identification of the artist with Giovanni Angelo di Antonio da Camerino [see Ref. 1961].

Pietro Zampetti. Giovanni Boccati. [Venice], 1971, pp. 12, 19, 194, under no. 12, fig. 141.

Eugenio Battisti. Piero della Francesca. Milan, 1971, vol. 1, pp. 314–15, 501–2 n. 360; vol. 2, pp. 53–54, 56, 100, fig. 166, reprints the document of 1467 in which Bartolomeo Corradini (Fra Carnevale) is mentioned as the author of the high altarpiece of Santa Maria della Bella; associates the MMA and Boston panels with that altarpiece—as a diptych—and calls them documented works of Fra Carnevale; postulates their influence on the work of Piero della Francesca.

Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972, pp. 125, 300, 607, as by the Master of the Barberini Panels.

Cecil Grayson, ed. Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting and On Sculpture: The Latin Texts of 'De Pictura' and 'De Statua'. London, 1972, pp. 153–54, pl. IV, questions Parronchi's attribution to Alberti [see Ref. 1962] and the association with the altarpiece in the chapel on the Ponte alla Carraia, considering the attribution to Giovanni Angelo di Antonio [see Ref. Zeri 1961] more probable.

Marilyn Aronberg Lavin. Seventeenth-Century Barberini Documents and Inventories of Art. New York, 1975, pp. 158, 312, 349, 369, 474, 716, publishes inventories of the Barberini family.

Alessandro Conti in "Un Libro Antico della Sagrestia di Sant'Ambrogio." Annali della Scuole Normale Superiore di Pisa 6 (1976), pp. 105–9, publishes payments received by Bartolomeo Corradini (Fra Carnevale) in 1445 as a pupil of Filippo Lippi; attributes the head of an angel in Lippi's Coronation of the Virgin (Uffizi, Florence) to Carnevale, and on the basis of this identifies him as the Master of the Barberini Panels but rejects the notion that the two panels formed an altarpiece.

Dante Bernini in Palazzo ducale di Urbino: storia di un museo. Exh. cat., Palazzo Ducale. Urbino, 1977, p. 89, doubts Zeri's hypothesis [see Ref. 1961] that the panels formed part of the interior decoration of the alcove in the ducal palace at Urbino, but considers the question unresolved.

Keith Christiansen. "For Fra Carnevale." Apollo 109 (March 1979), pp. 198–201, identifies the MMA and Boston pictures as the lateral wings of Fra Carnevale's Santa Maria della Bella altarpiece, whose central element may have been either a painting or a sculpture; attributes to the same master an angel in Filippo Lippi's altarpiece of the Coronation of the Virgin (Pinacoteca Vaticana).

Monica Strauss. "The Master of the Barberini Panels: Fra Carnevale." PhD diss., Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 1979, pp. 1ff., figs. 9–17 (overall and details).

Federico Zeri with the assistance of Elizabeth E. Gardner. Italian Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sienese and Central Italian Schools. New York, 1980, pp. 36–40, pls. 74, 75 (overall and detail), catalogue the painting as by the Master of the Barberini Panels and suggest that it and the Boston companion piece are not likely to date much after 1480.

Howard Hibbard. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1980, pp. 229, 233, fig. 407.

Troy M. Thomas. "Classical Reliefs and Statues in Later Quattrocento Religious Paintings." PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1980, pp. 69–73, 91 n. 39, p. 302, no. 193, figs. 36, 37, 39 (details), attributes the two panels to the Master of the Barberini Panels and dates them about 1460; identifies the subject of the MMA picture as the Visitation and the Birth of the Virgin; discusses the three reliefs at the top of the work.

Franco Mazzini. I mattoni e le pietre di Urbino. Urbino, 1982, p. 521.

Maria Grazia Ciardi Duprè Dal Poggetto in Urbino e le Marche prima e dopo Raffaello. Exh. cat., Palazzo Ducale, Urbino. Florence, 1983, pp. 43–49, no. 5b, ill., follows Zeri in identifying the artist with Giovanni Angelo da Camerino; believes that the two panels came from the Appartamento della Jole, and based on the architectural detail dates them about 1455–65; interprets the settings as ideal representations of the palace and cathedral of Urbino.

Keith Christiansen. "Early Renaissance Narrative Painting in Italy." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 41 (Fall 1983), pp. 21, 24, 26, 29–30, fig. 19 (color), ill. pp. 24–25, 27, 28, back cover (color details) and p. 29 (detail).

Paolo Dal Poggetto in Urbino e le Marche prima e dopo Raffaello. Exh. cat., Palazzo Ducale, Urbino. Florence, 1983, pp. 50, 53.

Dieter Jansen. "Fra Filippo Lippis Doppelbildnis im New Yorker Metropolitan Museum." Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 48/49 (1987–88), p. 106, fig. 11, erroneously as in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Rodolfo Battistini in La pittura in Italia: il Quattrocento. Ed. Federico Zeri. revised and expanded ed. [Milan], 1987, vol. 2, pp. 681–82.

Pietro Zampetti. Pittura nelle Marche. Vol. 1, Dalle origini al primo Rinascimento. Florence, 1988, pp. 394–96, 399, colorpl. 187 and frontispiece (color detail), attributes the two panels to Giovanni Angelo di Antonio.

Fert Sangiorgi. "Fra Carnevale e la tavola di Santa Maria della Bella di Urbino." Notizie da Palazzo Albani no. 2 (1989), pp. 15–21, figs. 2, 4, accepts the identification of the MMA and Boston panels with Fra Carnevale's altarpiece for Santa Maria della Bella, noting that the church was part of a hospital, which may partly explain the secular slant given the religious subjects treated.

Paul Joannides. "A Portrait by Fra Carnevale." Source: Notes in the History of Art 8 (Spring 1989), pp. 7, 10 nn. 4, 5, attributes the MMA and Boston panels to Fra Carnevale and states that both compositions derive from Donatello.

Andrea De Marchi in Pittura di luce: Giovanni di Francesco e l'arte fiorentina di metà Quattrocento. Ed. Luciano Bellosi. Exh. cat., Casa Buonarroti, Florence. Milan, 1990, p. 205, attributes the two panels to Fra Carnevale and tentatively identifies them with the Santa Maria della Bella altarpiece.

Paolo Dal Poggetto in Piero e Urbino, Piero e le Corti rinascimentali. Exh. cat., Palazzo Ducale, Urbino. Venice, 1992, pp. 301–5, 307–10, 315, ill. (color), rejects the association of the panels with the Santa Maria della Bella altarpiece together with the identity of the artist with Fra Carnevale; believes the pictures were painted for the ducal palace and that their author is likely to have been Giovanni Angelo da Camerino.

Creighton Gilbert. "The Function of the Barberini Panels." Studi per Pietro Zampetti. Ed. Ranieri Varese. Ancona, 1993, pp. 146–52, accepts the attribution to Fra Carnevale, but disassociates the panels from the Santa Maria della Bella altarpiece and denies that they show the Birth of the Virgin and the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, suggesting instead that they were made as illustrations of the charitable progam of the hospital to which Santa Maria della Bella was attached.

Keith Christiansen. "A Drawing for Fra Carnevale." Master Drawings 31, no. 4 (1993), pp. 365, 367 n. 10, fig. 3 (detail).

Benedetta Montevecchi in Claudio Ridolfi: Un pittore veneto nelle Marche del '600. Exh. cat., Complesso Conventuale, Corinaldo. Ancona, 1994, p. 152, rejects the idea that the altarpiece replaced by Claudio Ridolfi's painting can be identified with the Barberini panels.

Claudio Strinati in Rinascimento da Brunelleschi a Michelangelo: la rappresentazione dell'architettura. Ed. Henry Millon and Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani. Exh. cat., Palazzo Grassi, Venice. Milan, 1994, p. 503, under no. 121 [English ed., "The Renaissance from Brunelleschi to Michelangelo: The Representation of Architecture"], relates it to an engraving of a temple interior by Bernardo Prevedari after a drawing by Bramante.

Laurence B. Kanter. Italian Paintings in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Vol. 1, 13th–15th Century. Boston, 1994, p. 213, fig. 45, under no. 66.

Robert Echols in The Renaissance from Brunelleschi to Michelangelo: The Representation of Architecture (Supplement). Exh. cat., National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1994, unpaginated, no. 423, ill.

Maurizio Calvesi. "La 'Città ideale' di Baltimora: le piazze del paradiso." Art e dossier no. 104 (September 1995), p. 29.

Stefano Valeri. "Le 'Tavole Barberini' e Fra Carnevale: un maestro in prospettiva." Art e dossier no. 104 (September 1995), pp. 30–33, ill. (color, overall and detail), relates the woman at foreground left to the Virgin in Lippi's "Coronation of the Virgin" in the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 120, ill. p. 121.

Daniele Benati. "Il 'Maestro delle tavole Barberini': un ritratto." Nuovi studi 1 (1996), pp. 25–28 n. 8, fig. 45 (detail), accepts the attribution to Fra Carnevale and Christiansen's reconstruction of the altarpiece [see Ref. 1979].

Keith Christiansen in The Dictionary of Art. Ed. Jane Turner. Vol. 20, New York, 1996, p. 623, in the entry for the Master of the Barberini Panels, expresses support for identifying the MMA and Boston panels with Carnevale's Santa Maria della Bella altarpiece, rejecting the identification of the Master as Giovanni Angelo di Antonio da Camerino.

Keith Christiansen in The Dictionary of Art. Ed. Jane Turner. Vol. 5, New York, 1996, p. 782, in the entry for Fra Carnevale, states that the MMA and Boston panels have been identified with the Santa Maria della Bella altarpiece.

Arnaldo Bruschi. "Urbino: architettura, pittura e il problema di Piero 'architetto'." Città e corte nell'Italia di Piero della Francesca. Ed. Claudia Cieri Via. Venice, 1996, pp. 275–80 nn. 23–24, pp. 283–85, 287, 299–300, fig. 9, reproduces (fig. 15) an interpretation of the floor plan of the architectural space of the picture; discusses the two Barberini panels in the context of contemporary architectural currents in Urbino.

Bonita Cleri. "Fra' Carnevale e la cultura prospettica urbinate." Città e corte nell'Italia di Piero della Francesco. Ed. Claudia Cieri Via. Venice, 1996, pp. 354–59, figs. 4, 6 (overall and details).

Stefano Borsi. "Il maestro di Bramante: fra Carnevale." Bramante e Urbino: il problema della formazione. Rome, 1997, pp. 11–72, ill. (overall, details, diagrams of perspectival scheme), attributes the MMA and Boston panels to Fra Carnevale.

Giacomo Berra. "Immagini casuali, figure nascoste, e natura antropomorfa nell'immaginario artistico rinascimentale." Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 43, no. 2–3 (1999), p. 375, fig. 11 (detail), attributes it to Fra Carnevale and dates it about 1475.

Claudia Cieri Via. "Ornamento e varietà: riflessi delle teorie albertiane nella produzione artistico-figurativa fra '400 e '500." Leon Battista Alberti: architettura e cultura. Florence, 1999, pp. 236–37, fig. 2, attributes the MMA and Boston pictures to the Master of the Barberini Panels.

Alessandro Parronchi. "Ancora sull'Alberti pittore." Leon Battista Alberti: architettura e cultura. Florence, 1999, pp. 251–64.

Maria Cristina Bandera. Benvenuto di Giovanni. Milan, 1999, pp. 92–93, mentions the Barberini panels in connection with a triptych by Benvenuto di Giovanni dated 1475 (Vescovado di Murlo, San Fortunato).

Stefano Valeri. "Le Tavole Barberini." Ars 4 (March 2000), pp. 136, 138–42, ill. (color, overall and details), discusses the theme of Charity.

Miklós Boskovits in Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century. Washington, 2003, pp. 181, 184–85 n. 17.

Paolo Dal Poggetto. "Il punto sul 'Maestro delle Tavole Barberini'." I da Varano e le arti. Ed. Andrea De Marchi and Pier Luigi Falaschi. Camerino, 2003, vol. 2, pp. 747–57, fig. 1.

Franco Negroni. "Documenti negli archivi urbinati riguardanti Bartolomeo Corradini." Bartolomeo Corradini (Fra' Carnevale) nella cultura urbinate del XV secolo. Ed. Bonita Cleri. Urbino, 2004, pp. 17, 21, corrects the date of a document published in Ref. Sangiorgi 1989 from December 31, 1467, to December 31, 1466, indicating that the altarpiece destined for the high altar of the church of Santa Maria della Bella was almost completed by that date.

Claudia Cieri Via. "Disegno architettonico, decorazione e narrazione nella pittura urbinate del Quattrocento." Bartolomeo Corradini (Fra' Carnevale) nella cultura urbinate del XV secolo. Ed. Bonita Cleri. Urbino, 2004, pp. 127–31, 134, fig. 1.

Stefano Valeri. "Il tema della Concordia nelle 'Tavole Barberini'." Bartolomeo Corradini (Fra' Carnevale) nella cultura urbinate del XV secolo. Ed. Bonita Cleri. Urbino, 2004, pp. 271–79, 281–82, 284–86, figs. 1, 8 (overall and detail).

Anna Tambini. "Due polittici a confronto: un contributo per Fra Carnevale." Bartolomeo Corradini (Fra' Carnevale) nella cultura urbinate del XV secolo. Ed. Bonita Cleri. Urbino, 2004, pp. 297–98, 301–3, 310, 312–16, fig. 18 (proposed reconstruction), in an appendix to her essay, proposes a reconstruction of the Santa Maria della Bella altarpiece with the MMA picture on top and the Boston picture at bottom left next to a third work possibily depicting the Dormition of the Virgin.

Giovanna Perini. "Presentazione." Bartolomeo Corradini (Fra' Carnevale) nella cultura urbinate del XV secolo. Ed. Bonita Cleri. Urbino, 2004, pp. 4–5.

Bonita Cleri. "Per Bartolomeo Corradini." Bartolomeo Corradini (Fra' Carnevale) nella cultura urbinate del XV secolo. Ed. Bonita Cleri. Urbino, 2004, pp. 7–14.

Rodolfo Battistini. "Pittura del Quattrocento nelle Marche tra Tardo Gotico e Rinascimento." Bartolomeo Corradini (Fra' Carnevale) nella cultura urbinate del XV secolo. Ed. Bonita Cleri. Urbino, 2004, p. 96, relates the Barberini Panels to a fresco cycle by Giovanni Angelo d'Antonio in the ducal palace, Camerino.

Maria Grazia Ciardi Dupré Dal Poggetto. "Spunti e riflessioni su fra' Bartolomeo Corradini soprannominato fra' Carnevale." Bartolomeo Corradini (Fra' Carnevale) nella cultura urbinate del XV secolo. Ed. Bonita Cleri. Urbino, 2004, pp. 101–16, 118–20, figs. 1, 9 (overall and detail), calls it Birth of the Virgin and other stories; believes that the Barberini Panels were made for an entrance hall or reception room, not as an altarpiece.

Jeffrey Ruda. "Un 'maestro' ed alcuni suoi 'discepoli': la pratica ed il significato di imitazione artistica nella metà del Quattrocento." Bartolomeo Corradini (Fra' Carnevale) nella cultura urbinate del XV secolo. Ed. Bonita Cleri. Urbino, 2004, pp. 149–50, 155–56, 160–61.

Giordana Benazzi. "Le 'Storie della Vergine' di fra' Filippo nel Duomo di Spoleto e un possibile lippismo tra Umbria e Marche." Bartolomeo Corradini (Fra' Carnevale) nella cultura urbinate del XV secolo. Ed. Bonita Cleri. Urbino, 2004, pp. 179–80, 184–85, 188–89, figs. 6, 9 (details), relates the windows at top to those in the Palazzo del Capitano del Popolo, Perugia, the woman at foreground left to the Virgin in Lippi's "Coronation of the Virgin" in the Uffizi [see Ref. Valeri 2000], and the woman at foreground right to Lippi's "Portrait of a Woman" (Staatliche Museen, Berlin).

Maurizio Calvesi. "Le tavole Barberini di Fra' Carnevale." Bartolomeo Corradini (Fra' Carnevale) nella cultura urbinate del XV secolo. Ed. Bonita Cleri. Urbino, 2004, pp. 206–12, fig. 4 (detail).

Roberta Bartoli. "Le fonti della scultura 'ficta' nelle Tavole Barberini." Bartolomeo Corradini (Fra' Carnevale) nella cultura urbinate del XV secolo. Ed. Bonita Cleri. Urbino, 2004, pp. 215–16, 219, 221–28, figs. 18, 21–22, 26 (details).

Arnaldo Bruschi. "Le architetture nelle Tavole Barberini e la formazione di Bramante." Bartolomeo Corradini (Fra' Carnevale) nella cultura urbinate del XV secolo. Ed. Bonita Cleri. Urbino, 2004, pp. 237, 239–46, 248–50, 252.

Marisa Baldelli. "La 'Natività della Vergine' di Claudio Ridolfi per Santa Maria della Bella." Bartolomeo Corradini (Fra' Carnevale) nella cultura urbinate del XV secolo. Ed. Bonita Cleri. Urbino, 2004, pp. 253–63.

Laura Teza. "Influssi adriatici nel ciclo perugino dei 'Miracoli di S. Bernardino'." Bartolomeo Corradini (Fra' Carnevale) nella cultura urbinate del XV secolo. Ed. Bonita Cleri. Urbino, 2004, pp. 327–28, 334–36, 350 n. 46, p. 351, fig. 3, relates it to "The Healing of a Sterile Woman" (Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria, Perugia), attributed by her to Sante di Apollonio.

Anna Maria Ambrosini Massari. "L'ambiguo destino del falso Piero: panoramica delle fonti per Bartolomeo Corradini." Bartolomeo Corradini (Fra' Carnevale) nella cultura urbinate del XV secolo. Ed. Bonita Cleri. Urbino, 2004, pp. 363–64 n. 4, pp. 366–71, 374–76 n. 39, pp. 377–78.

Mauro Minardi. "Intorno a Fra Carnevale: novità e interrogativi di una mostra milanese." Arte Cristiana 93 (September–October 2005), pp. 325–26, 328, 331–36, 338 nn. 27, 29, p. 339 n. 40, p. 340 nn. 48, 58, figs. 3, 11, 12, 14 (details).

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. 39, 45, 50, 61–62, 164, 176, 240, 248, 258, 263–64, 266, 280, 282, no. 45A, ill. p. 260 (color), ill. on cover, pp. 10, 262 (color details), figs. 1 (detail, raking light), 2 (x-radiograph), 3 (detail) [Ital. ed., "Fra Carnevale . . . ," Milan, 2004].

Emanuela Daffra 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. 23–36 nn. 20, 22, 28, 30, 39, p. 37 nn. 58, 67–68, 70, pp. 246, 268, figs. 6, 14 (overall and detail) [Italian ed., "Fra Carnevale: un artista rinascimentale da Filippo Lippi a Piero della Francesca," Milan, 2004].

Andrea Di Lorenzo 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, p. 223 [Italian ed., "Fra Carnevale: un artista rinascimentale da Filippo Lippi a Piero della Francesca," Milan, 2004].

Andrea De Marchi 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. 67–68, 72–74, 81–82, 86–87, 89–90, 182, 211, figs. 7, 17, 24, 39 (details) [Italian ed., "Fra Carnevale: un artista rinascimentale da Filippo Lippi a Piero della Francesca," Milan, 2004].

Philippe de Montebello and Maria Teresa Fiorio 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. 11–13 [Italian ed., "Fra Carnevale: un artista rinascimentale da Filippo Lippi a Piero della Francesca," Milan, 2004].

Matteo Ceriana 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. 99, 101, 104, 111, 119–20, 122–25, 127, 135 nn. 155, 189, figs. 6, 53, 63–66 (overall and details), p. 250, fig. 3 (detail) [Italian ed., "Fra Carnevale: un artista rinascimentale da Filippo Lippi a Piero della Francesca," Milan, 2004], refers to "the dolphin-shaped clouds" in this picture [see Ref. Parronchi 1962]; suggests that the woman standing in profile at lower right is "an idealized representation" of Battista Sforza, relating the figure to a portrait relief in the Museo Civico, Pesaro.

Matteo Mazzalupi 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. 301–2, under doc. 20 [Italian ed., "Fra Carnevale: un artista rinascimentale da Filippo Lippi a Piero della Francesca," Milan, 2004].

Livia Carloni 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. 306–8, ill. (detail) [Italian ed., "Fra Carnevale: un artista rinascimentale da Filippo Lippi a Piero della Francesca," Milan, 2004], discusses the confiscation of the Barberini Panels by Cardinal Antonio Barberini in 1632, publishing a letter of July 30, 1532 from Emilio Santorio, Archbishop of Urbino, to the Cardinal, detailing the shipment of the "prospettive" packed in two chests; tentatively suggests that, rather than forming the altarpiece of the church of Santa Maria della Bella, the two panels were part of a reliquary cupboard located to the left of the high altar mentioned in two reports of pastoral visits of 1608 and 1622.

Roberto Bellucci and Cecilia Frosinini 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. 315–16, 322–29 n. 27, p. 330 nn. 72, 86, figs. 1, 25 (details, raking light), 17 (detail), colorpls. 3, 4 (with Boston picture, perspective diagrams), 5–8 (details, raking light), pl. 14 (x-radiograph) [Ital. ed., "Fra Carnevale . . . ," Milan, 2004].

Ciro Castelli and George Bisacca 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. 354–61 nn. 1, 13, 17, 20, figs. 1 (raking light), 15 (reverse), 16, 18, 19 (details, raking light), 17 (detail, reverse), 20, 22 (details, x-rays), 21 (with Boston picture, graphic view) [Italian ed., "Fra Carnevale . . . ," Milan, 2004].

Luke Syson. "Fra Carnevale." Burlington Magazine 147 (February 2005), pp. 136–38, agrees with Carloni [see Ref. 2005] that the Barberini Panels were probably executed by Fra Carnevale for a reliquary cupboard in Santa Maria della Bella at about the same time that he painted the altarpiece, which is now lost.

Alessandro Marchi and Maria Rosaria Valazzi in Il Rinascimento a Urbino: Fra' Carnevale e gli artisti del Palazzo di Federico. Ed. Alessandro Marchi and Maria Rosaria Valazzi. Exh. cat., Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino. Milan, 2005, pp. 15–16, ill. p. 14 (detail).

Alessandro Marchi in Il Rinascimento a Urbino: Fra' Carnevale e gli artisti del Palazzo di Federico. Ed. Alessandro Marchi and Maria Rosaria Valazzi. Exh. cat., Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino. Milan, 2005, p. 31.

Maria Rosaria Valazzi in Il Rinascimento a Urbino: Fra' Carnevale e gli artisti del Palazzo di Federico. Ed. Alessandro Marchi and Maria Rosaria Valazzi. Exh. cat., Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino. Milan, 2005, pp. 38–39, fig. 2 (detail).

Keith Christiansen in Il Rinascimento a Urbino: Fra' Carnevale e gli artisti del Palazzo di Federico. Ed. Alessandro Marchi and Maria Rosaria Valazzi. Exh. cat., Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino. Milan, 2005, pp. 136, 139, under no. 29.

Emanuela Daffra in Il Rinascimento a Urbino: Fra' Carnevale e gli artisti del Palazzo di Federico. Ed. Alessandro Marchi and Maria Rosaria Valazzi. Exh. cat., Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino. Milan, 2005, pp. 167–68, 170, under no. 44, pp. 211–13.

Matteo Ceriana in Il Rinascimento a Urbino: Fra' Carnevale e gli artisti del Palazzo di Federico. Ed. Alessandro Marchi and Maria Rosaria Valazzi. Exh. cat., Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino. Milan, 2005, pp. 171, 173, 175, under no. 45.

Roberta Bartoli in Il Rinascimento a Urbino: Fra' Carnevale e gli artisti del Palazzo di Federico. Ed. Alessandro Marchi and Maria Rosaria Valazzi. Exh. cat., Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino. Milan, 2005, pp. 215, 217–20, 224, 226–29 nn. 16, 30, 35, figs. 10a, 10b, 20, 23, 25, 29 (details).

Mauro Minardi in Le Marche disperse: repertorio di opere d'arte dalle Marche al mondo. Ed. Costanza Costanzi. Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2005, p. 236, no. 380, ill.

Pierre Rosenberg. Only in America: One Hundred Paintings in American Museums Unmatched in European Collections. Milan, 2006, p. 38, ill.

Emanuele Lugli. "Connoisseurship as a System: Reflections on Federico Zeri's 'Due dipinti, la filologia e un nome'." Word & Image 24 (April–June 2008), pp. 162–75, fig. 1.

Christian K. Kleinbub. "Bramante's 'Ruined Temple' and the Dialectics of the Image." Renaissance Quarterly 63 (Summer 2010), pp. 430, 432, 434, fig. 5.

Silvia Blasio in La città ideale: l'utopia del rinascimento a Urbino tra Piero della Francesca e Raffaello. Ed. Alessandro Marchi and Maria Rosaria Valazzi. Exh. cat., Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino. Milan, 2012, p. 148.

Keith Christiansen in La città ideale: l'utopia del rinascimento a Urbino tra Piero della Francesca e Raffaello. Ed. Alessandro Marchi and Maria Rosaria Valazzi. Exh. cat., Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino. Milan, 2012, pp. 162–65, no. 3.4, ill. (color, overall and detail).

Kathryn Calley Galitz. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Masterpiece Paintings. New York, 2016, p. 267, no. 142, ill. pp. 149, 267 (color).

Sara Menato. Per la giovinezza di Carpaccio. Padua, 2016, p. 65 n. 33.

Marco Grassi. "The American View of the 'Forgotten Century' of Italian Painting: Reminiscences of a Conservator and Art Dealer." Buying Baroque: Italian Seventeenth-Century Paintings Come to America. Ed. Edgar Peters Bowron. University Park, Pa., 2017, p. 46.

Mauro Minardi. Paolo Uccello. Milan, 2017, pp. 324, 348 n. 95.

Moreno Gentili. Bracco is Culture. n.p., 2017, p. 152, ill. in color pp. 150 (overall), 152 (detail, cover of 2004/5 exh. cat.), 155 (overall and detail from 2004/5 exh. cat.), 156 (installation photo, Milan exh. 2004/5).

Paola Nicita in L'immagine sovrana: Urbano VIII e i Barberini. Ed. Maurizia Cicconi et al. Exh. cat., Gallerie Nazionali Barberini Corsini. Rome, 2023, pp. 219, 225 n. 4, fig. 1 (color).

The frame is from Milan and dates to about 1600 (see figs. 3–6 above). This provincial cassetta frame is made of poplar. It retains its original pale burnished water gilding. The astragal half-round sight edge molding rises before the decorated frieze. Raised gesso pastiglia formed in alternating anthemion (honeysuckle flowers) and lilies stands out against a punchwork background. Square cut nails are visible securing the gilded quarter round top edge molding. The frame was originally oriented in a landscape format but has been rotated to frame this vertical painting.

Timothy Newbery with Cynthia Moyer 2016; further information on this frame can be found in the Department of European Paintings files

Loan of this work is restricted.