One is immediately struck in the Faenza panel by the bright red ground, much favoured by Catarino and which he adopted in a number of other panels. Under a curved, polylobate frame, the painting depicts the Madonna of Humility, in other words the Virgin Mary seated on the ground holding the Baby Jesus in her arms, an iconography that effectively emphasises Mary’s modest temperament and her affinity with the observer, unlike the image of the Maestà or Majesty in which she is enthroned, thus exalting her status. The fashion for this iconographical ploy was launched in Venice by Lorenzo Veneziano and repeated by Catarino in a considerable number of panels, for instance the panel in the Perkins Collection which was probably the first he painted with this iconography (Zeri La Collezione Federico Mason Perkins, Torino 1988, pp. 84-85), or panels in a private collection in Mantua (De Marchi, Il Vero Donato Veneziano in “Arte in Friuli-Arte a Trieste”, 2003, 21-22, pp.63-72), in the church of San Francesco della Vigna, in the Worcester Art Museum (inv. 1923.213), in the Museo di Palazzo Venezia in Rome (Berenson Pitture Italiane del Rinascimento. La Scuola Veneta, vol. I, Firenze 1958, p. 63) and in even in a polyptych in the Walters Art Museum (inv. 37.635) where it occupies the altarpiece’s central panel.
The painting entered the Pinacoteca as part of the Michele Bosi bequest in 1936 (Tambini, 1982, 2007) or 1931 (Casadei, 1991), but it was only cleaned and displayed in 1959. It was first published by Ennio Golfieri (1964) who attributed it to an anonymus painter from Romagna heavily influenced by Bolognese art of the late 14th century. The attribution to Catarino was first proposed by Francesca Flores D’Arcais in 1965.
Unfortunately, the panel’s provenance remains unknown. We know of no document referring to Catarino outside Dalmatia or the Veneto despite the presence of several works attributed to him in other regions such as, for example, the San Leo panel (Marchi 2000), which may have come from the Franciscan convent of Pietracuta (the signature on the painting is now incomplete: “[—]rinus”). We do know, however, that there was a steady trade in Venetian panel paintings, starting with Paolo Veneziano’s workshop, up and down the Adriatic coast (De Marchi, Per un riesame della pittura tardogotica a Venezia in ”Bollettino d’Arte”, 44-45, 1987, pp.25-66).
Anna Tambini (1982) questions the attribution of the Faenza panel to Catarino, highlighting the difference in style and stressing “the unsure hand in the Christ Child’s arm and the foreshortening of his feet, not to mention the scant decoration”.
It is true that if we compare this panel with other worked signed by the painter, we instantly note the absence of rich ornamentation on the Virgin’s mantle, the decoration being restricted in our case to the hem and the central band of her tunic. We can also detect traces of the original decoration on the Christ Child’s tunic, along with a greater stiffness in the outlines of the drawing and a more pronounced chiaroscuro.
The difference is particularly striking if we compare the panel with two pictures attributed to Catarino and now in San Francesco della Vigna, Venice and in the Museo di Palazzo Venezia, Rome, (Berenson, Pitture Italiane del Rinascimento. La Scuola Veneta, vol. I, Firenze 1958, p. 63 ) both with polylobate arches depicting the Madonna of Humility, again on a red ground. While there is a strong similarity in the composition and the iconography, we can detect a different sensitivity in the handling of the drapery in the Faenza panel where the folds of the Virgin’s mantle are not clearly defined, thus producing a flatter effect. And the same can be said of the volume of the figures’ bodies, achieved using very lumpy lead white by contrast with the more delicate and transparent brush strokes in Catarino’s other two autograph Madonnas. In view of all this, the Faenza panel may well be by a follower of Catarino intent on imitating the master’s style, as suggested by Anna Tambini.
