Christ and the Virgin are seated on a wooden throne, placed on a concave plinth on the forehead. He is encircling her head with the crown, while the Mother, depicted with her face in three-quarter view and her hands joined in prayer, directs her intense gaze towards the observer. On either side of the throne are four figures of angels; three others protrude from the top of the podium, playing their musical instruments - a tambourine, an accordion and a viola. The composition takes on a precious and fairytale-like character, where the extensive use of gold transports the characters into a dreamlike dimension, detached from reality, and openly recalling the formal models of the Oriental tradition.

The painting, formerly part of the Lingenauber collection in Munich, is traditionally assigned to the catalogue of works by the painter Catarino di Marco da Venezia, one of the most important artists in the lagoon context in the second half of the 14th century.

Probably born in the early 1440s, and therefore of the same generation as the great painter Lorenzo, he stands out as one of the highest quality interpreters at the time of the transition in Venice from the Giottesque manner of the Paduan school to the linear modules of the late Gothic period[i]. The son of an artist - perhaps the father, as Alessandro Marchi[ii] suggests, is to be identified in that Marco di Martino who signed the altarpiece with the "Virgin and Child between Saints Giacomo Maggiore and Antonio Abate worshipped by the members of a Confraternity of Battuti", painted for one of the seats of the Scuola Grande della Carità in Venice[iii] - and collaborated in his youth with the older master Donato, from his earliest days, Catarino was marked by a style stubbornly linked to the neo-Byzantine tradition of Paolo Veneziano, to the point that a family lineage to the great protagonist of early 14th century Adriatic painting has often been postulated. What we do know is that in 1372, Catarino and Donato signed the altarpiece of the "Coronation of the Virgin", today at the Pinacoteca Querini Stampalia in Venice[iv]: a work that is proudly out of date, in which the painters took up Paolo's models and nourished them with linear elements that go back even further, towards the lesson of the mosaicists of Constantinopolitan influence active in the lagoon in the 12th and 13th centuries.

Very different, as Pallucchini[v] has already noted, are the two "Coronations of the Virgin", this time by Catarino alone, now in the Accademia in Venice: the central panel of the Triptych (but perhaps originally the compartments were more numerous) with Saints Lucy and Nicholas of Tolentino bears only the master's signature and not the date, but its execution can be likened to the year 1375, engraved instead at the base of the larger figures in the erratic panel also in the Accademia. The much more standoffish character of the Virgin's portrait in these works - in which she directly addresses the observer and points to her Son - has led modern commentators to recognise the influence of Lorenzo's manner, and the expressive notations brought to lagoon art by the arrival of Giovanni da Bologna at the beginning of the eighth decade of the century[vi]. 

With the "Coronation" we are examining here, we are probably still a few years ahead: we know from documents that Catarino continued to work with the elder Donato until 1386, the year in which their names are mentioned, together with that of the younger Pietro di Niccolò, in the contract for the allocation of a "Crucifix" made for the convent of San Domenico in Zara[vii]. It was perhaps the repeated frequentation of a traditional master - as well as the exchange of impressions with artists of the same temperament such as the younger Guglielmo and Stefano di Sant'Agnese - that led Catarino to a real welding between the Byzantine memories of his youth and the new linear imprint of Venetian art, which matured especially from 1380 onwards. In the elegant digressions of the drapery, as well as in the refinement of the gold decorations - note above all the precious phytomorphic designs on the garments of the figures -, Catarino takes to the extreme formal solutions already inaugurated in important works such as the Polyptych formerly in the Orsi collection in Ancona and now in the Walters Museum in Baltimore[viii] or the !Madonna of Humility! in the Worcester Art Museum[ix]. 

All in all, the acquisition of this admirable and unpublished panel - also gratified by its intact state of preservation - allows us to study with greater clarity the final outcomes of the formal trajectory of a great master, a witness to one of the most prestigious seasons of Venetian painting.

[i] On Catarino Veneziano, the bibliography is rather conspicuous: among the numerous studies, one should at least recall: L. Venturi, Le origini della pittura veneziana 1300-1500, Venice 1907, pp. 32-34; V. Lazarev, Maestro Paolo e la pittura veneziana del suo tempo, in ‘Arte veneta’, VIII, 1954, pp. 77-89; R. Pallucchini, La pittura veneziana del Trecento, Venice-Rome 1964, pp. 195-200; V. Scassellati Riccardi, Una ‘Madonna’ di Caterino, in ‘Arte Antica e Moderna’, 27, 1964, pp. 295-296; M. Dazzi, L' “Incoronazione della Vergine” di Donato e Caterino, in “Atti dell'Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere e arti”, 1964-1965, pp. 515-525; F. D'Arcais, Per il catalogo di Caterino, in “Arte veneta”, XIX, 1965, pp. 142-144; I. Petricioli, Jedno Caterinovo djelo u Zadru, in ‘Peristil’ 8-9, 1965-1966, pp. 57-62; F. Zeri, Italian Paintings in the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore 1976, I, pp. 55-58, n. 34; F. D'Arcais, voce Caterino, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, XXII, 1979, pp. 385-387; M. Lucco, Caterino di Marco da Venezia, in La pittura in Italia. Il Duecento e il Trecento, Milan 1986, II, pp. 561-562; Id., Caterino di Marco da Venezia o Caterino Veneziano, in La pittura nel Veneto.Il Trecento, Milan 1992, II pp. 522-523; C. Guarnieri, Per un corpus della pittura veneziana del Trecento al tempo di Lorenzo, in ‘Saggi e memorie di storia dell'arte’, 30, 2006, pp. 1-131 (pp. 27-29).

[ii] A. Marchi, Trecento veneziano nelle terre adriatiche marchigiane, in Pittura veneta nelle Marche, edited by V. Curzi, Cinisello Balsamo 2000, pp. 29-51 (p. 40).

[iii] A. M. Cavanna, La pala di Marco di Martino nella Scuola Grande della Carità e la pittura a Venezia nella seconda metà del Trecento, San Giuliano Terme 2006.

[iv] M. Muraro, in Venezia e Bisanzio, edited by S. Bettini, exhibition catalogue (Venice, Palazzo Ducale, 8 June - 30 September 1974), Milan 1974, no. 108.

[v] R. Pallucchini, La pittura veneziana del Trecento, Venice-Rome 1964, pp. 197-198.

[vi] C. Guarnieri, Per un corpus della pittura veneziana del Trecento al tempo di Lorenzo, in ‘Saggi e memorie di storia dell'arte’, 30, 2006, pp. 1-131 (p. 27).

[vii] K. Prjiatelj, Un documento zaratino su Caterino e Donato, in ‘Arte veneta’, XVI, 1962, p. 145.

[viii] F. Zeri, Italian Paintings in the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore 1976, I, pp. 56-58, no. 34. The work is mentioned in Count Orsi's collection by Giovan Battista Cavalcaselle: G. B. Cavalcaselle, J. A. Crowe, Storia della pittura in Italia, IV, Florence 1900, p. 321.

[ix] Inv. 1923.213. The panel is signed. European Paintings in the Collection of the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester 1974, I, pp. 334-336.