Lot 10: * ALTOBELLO MELONE CREMONA CIRCA 1490 - BEFORE MAY 1543

THE JOURNEY OF SAINT HELEN TO JERUSALEM IN SEARCH OF THE TRUE CROSS

10 by 18 1/2 in.; 25.5 by 46.9 cm.

tempera on panel

M. Gregori, "Altobello e Giovanni Francesco Bembo," Paragone, 93 (1957) pp. 32-33, illustrated, fig. 22 (as by Melone);
M. Davies, National Gallery Catalogues: Earlier Italian Schools, 1961, pp. 346-347 (as by Melone);
B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance, Central Italian and North Italian Schools, vol. III, London 1968, p. 86 (as Melone);
C. Lloyd, A Catalogue of the Earlier Italian Paintings in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford 1977, pp. 112-115 (as Melone);
F. Frangi, "Altobello Melone," in I Campi, Milan 1985, p. 96, under cats. no. 1.7.11 and 1.7.12 (as by Melone);
The Samuel H. Kress Study Collection at the University of Missouri, N. Land ed., 1999.

The present panel has been in the past associated with the Picenardi altarpiece by Melone, which most likely was painted for the church of Sant'Elena, Cremona (supressed). Gregori (see Literature below) was the first to associate it with this altarpiece, the central panel of which is a Madonna and Child (University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri), with lateral panels representing Tobias and the Angel and Saint Helen (both Ashmolean Museum, Oxford). Federico Zeri identified one of the predella panels for the altarpiece Musée des Beaux-Arts, Algiers representing the Finding of the Three Crosses (see F. Zeri, "Altobello Melone: Quattro tavole,' Paragone, 39 (1953) p. 43, illustrated. fig. 22). Gregori's hypothesis that the present panel was part of the altarpiece was generally accepted until 1985, when Frangi (see Literature below) published a pair of paintings in a private collection as the more likely candidates. These two pictures measure approximately the same size as the present painting and that in Algiers, and depict Saint Helen interrogating the Hebrew and The Test of the True Cross. However, Frangi notes that these two other paintings compositionally make more sense with the Algiers panel, and that the depiction of the saint, dressed in monastic habit, is uniform in all three.