L'enigma di Arundel Castle

Scholars have long been intrigued by an altarpiece formerly in Arundel Castle, and by two other paintings, their author persistently eluding the onslaughts of the most determined and authoritative connoisseurs. A structured and attentive formal reading now makes it possible to resolve the enigma and reveal an unexpected early work by one of the most famous painters in fifteenth-century Florence, Cosimo di Lorenzo Rosselli. Two panels with four saints on gold backgrounds, recently on the French art market, are also attributed to him, and probably originally formed part of a tabernacle or reliquary cupboard, accompanied by a third panel now in the National Gallery, Warsaw. The presence in these panels of predominantly Franciscan saints, together with Saint Ursula, suggests they were located in the Florentine nunnery dedicated to that holy martyr, and were likely painted during the first half of the 1470s.