Word: sassetta
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...working its way up the list of the nation's top museums, added a treasure last week that even such giants as Manhattan's Metropolitan and Washington's National Gallery would be proud to own. The painter was Italy's Renaissance Master Stefano di Giovanni Sassetta (1392-1450). The work: a dramatic series of three small (the largest, 19¼ by 25 in.) panels from a 15th century altarpiece showing Christ's Agony in the Garden, The Betrayal of Christ and the Procession to Calvary. Together the three paintings make up the only Sassetta predella...
Detroit had bought the Procession to Calvary in 1925 when the present building was under construction, got The Betrayal from an English collector 21 years later. Both were magnificent pieces, devout scenes of Christ under the burden of the cross and accepting the fatal kiss from Judas. But Sassetta's Agony in the Garden, in brilliant gold leaf, soft roses and browns with a rosy-cheeked angel under a cobalt-blue sky, was the handsomest of the three-and the hardest to get. It belonged to an English noblewoman named Lady Mary Catherine Ashburnham, who guarded it jealously...
...samples included fragments of the brilliantly colored, elaborately detailed painting of Siena's prime: virgins with patterned golden haloes, battle scenes, street scenes. Among the anonymous panels on exhibit, experts thought they could distinguish the work of such important Sienese artists as Taddeo di Bartolo, Stefano di Giovanni Sassetta and Ambrozio Lorenzetti...