19 04 ‘ 2019   museomag 
painting. Three different punch-mark designs were re- 
peated in the saints’ haloes, but often with slight er- 
rors that suggest that their makers either suffered from 
a certain amount of inexperience with that particular 
craft or were working hurriedly under a tight deadline. 
Pigment analysis indicates that the long, flowing blue 
robes worn by St. Paul at the center of the front row 
were – surprisingly – made with ultramarine (Lapis La- 
zuli), an extremely expensive paint normally used only 
sparingly and traditionally reserved for the garments of 
characters of special importance: the blue mantel worn 
by the Virgin Mary, for example, might be painted with 
ultramarine, but rarely were the robes worn by other 
figures in an altarpiece adorned with such extensive 
amounts of this pigment. 
At some point the pinnacle of the panel was sliced 
away in a clean horizontal cut just above the top row 
of figures, suggesting either that the portion that ori- 
ginally appeared above the saints in the Luxembourg 
painting was damaged beyond salvation (and thus ex- 
cised) or was deemed valuable enough at a later date 
– presumably at the turn of the nineteenth century – to 
be sawn off from the panel for independent sale (and 
thus vandalized). 
The painter responsible for the Male Saints in the 
MNHA followed traditional procedures that had been 
standardized in Florence by the middle of the fourteen- 
th century. The museum’s painting stands as an impor- 
tant example of the way objects were produced and 
the way they appeared to viewers at the dawn of the 
Italian Renaissance. 
Erich Uffelman (Professor of Chemistry) 
and George Bent (Professor of Art History) 
Washington and Lee University 
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© 
tom lucas