Lot 1001 Dα

Andrea di Bartolo is first documented as an artist in 1389, when he apparently assisted his father and Luca di Tommé with paintings in Siena Cathedral. He worked independently on the decor of the Cathedral from 1405 to 1410, among other things painting the figure of San Crescenzio in the Cappella di San Vittorio in 1409. His only signed works consist of four panels with saints painted for the Basilica dell´Osservanza in Siena in 1413. The art historian Gaudenz Freuler dates the present previously unknown work depicting an elegant figure of Saint Catherine to 1415. To support his attribution to the Sienese master, he compares the panel to a similar depiction of the same saint in the polyptych of Brera in Milan, as well as a further depiction of Saint Catherine accompanied by a female saint on a panel of the slightly earlier triptych in the National Gallery in Prague. However, Freuler sees the closest stylistic parallels in Bartolo's great altarpiece for San Francesco in Tuscania, dated 1415.