Jacopo di Cione and workshop, 'Blessed Paola', about 1365-70

For many years, the Littleton Pilaster Saints hung in Saint Mary Magdalene Church in Littleton, Middlesex. In 1979, workers took them down during church repairs. They were stored and wrapped in newspapers until 1995, when students from the Courtauld Institute of Art cleaned them.

We do not know how exactly they ended up in Littleton. They once belonged to William Young Ottley. He bought many paintings while travelling in Italy from 1791 to 1799. These included Botticelli’s Mystic Nativity, Raphael’s Dream of a Knight, and Parmigianino’s Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine and Portrait of a Collector. He likely bought the Littleton Saints then, too.

The Littleton Saints were once part of a large altarpiece made of multiple panels. We call this type of religious painting a polyptych. The saints probably formed the pilasters. These structures are like columns and stand on the outer sides of altarpieces. Three of the Littleton Saints are monks and nuns from the Camaldolese Order, founded by Saint Romuald near Arezzo in 1012. It is clear the altarpiece was originally in a Camaldolese church, probably Santa Maria degli Angeli in Florence.

This church was the second the Camaldolese built. Ottley also bought illuminations cut from a choir book from this church. It is possible that it also acquired the Littleton Saints on the same occasion. If the saints are from the same church, they were probably part of the altarpiece for the chapel of Ognissanti (All Saints).

The painting style resembles the work of the brothers Nardo, Jacopo and Andrea di Cione. They ran busy art workshops and often worked together. Nardo might have started the altarpiece in 1365. When he died in 1366, Jacopo probably took over. We can attribute to him and his assistants the Littleton Pilaster Saints, Noli me Tangere, the Six Angels (The Robert Lehman Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and the central panel of the Virgin and Child (Szépművészeti Múzeum, Budapest). Andrea might have painted The Crucifixion and The Man of Sorrows (Denver Art Museum, Colorado) before he died in 1368.

In the same year, the Blessed Paola also died. She was a key figure in Santa Maria degli Angeli. The artist might have changed one of the saints to look like her before finishing the work around 1370.