Enthroned Madonna and Christ Child with Angels, Saints Paula and Agatha
Enthroned Madonna and Christ Child with Angels, Saints Paula and Agatha is the title of a panel painting in the Samuel H. Kress Collection at the Birmingham Museum of Art. The tempera on wood panel, 55 3/4" x 43 1/8", was painted about 1500 by Michele Ciampanti. It was loaned to the museum by the Kress Foundation in 1952 and donated formally in 1961.
Ciampanti (active 1470-1510) is best known for decorating the vault of the chapel of San Regolo in Lucca and assisting in several other religious commissions in that city. He has recently been identified with the "Stratonice Master" postulated by B. Berenson as the author of a number of works of undocumented attribution, including a cassone front, now in the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, depicting the love story of Antiochus and his step-mother, Stratonice. The painter exhibits the influence of Francesco di Giorgio, Sandro Botticelli and Filippino Lippi. It is postulated that he trained first in Siena and spent time in Firenze before establishing himself in Lucca.
The subject of the painting is a "Holy Conversation" (sacra conversazione), a motif developed in the early 15th century in Firenze, Italy. It was most likely commissioned as a devotional painting for a private chapel, possibly by a female patron. The enthroned Mary holds the infant Jesus and is surrounded by youthful angels and two female saints gathered in a unified architectural space. The two saints, Agatha and Paula, kneel before the child, who holds a crown for the latter saint, while a quartet of angels look on from behind a low wall.
The identification of Agatha, on the right, is clear. In addition to a martyr's palm, she holds her amputated breast and the pincers which were used to remove it. The identity of the other female saint, wearing a black cloak and carrying a palm with a book lying at her feet, has been debated. Recent scholarship proposes that she is Paula, founder of the Bethlehem monastery where St Jerome translated the scriptures into the Latin Vulgate.
The angels hold flowers which symbolize the Virgin's purity and are crowned with floral wreaths. Mary's tall throne is bedecked with two putti holding a garland over her head and with two elaborate candlesticks on which coral necklaces hang, a token of protection for infants.