San Bartolome -, Venice, late 14th century

San Bartolomeo
Circle of Pierpaolo and Jacobello Dalle Masegne (Venice, late 14th century)
?High relief ‘en applique’ in white marble?
52 × 30 × 14 cm

Provenance:
Private collection, South of France, since the 1970s
Likely from the Estense collection (formerly Obizzi Collection), 18th century

Literature :
- expertise and Attribution by Professor Guido Tigler.

This compelling high-relief sculpture in white marble depicts Saint Bartholomew, portrayed as a robust, bearded figure holding a gospel book in his left hand. The gesture of his right hand—missing the tip of the index finger—suggests he once grasped a long, narrow object, likely a knife, the traditional symbol of his martyrdom by flaying. The anatomical orientation of the hand rules out attributes associated with other saints, such as Saint Paul’s sword or Saint John's pen.
The stylistic and iconographic details strongly link the piece to the circle of Pierpaolo and Jacobello Dalle Masegne, the foremost Venetian sculptors of the Gothic period. Notably, this figure bears a striking resemblance to San Bartolomeo in the marble polyptych of San Francesco, Bologna (1388–92), where the saint is similarly shown holding a book and a knife in mirrored gestures. A further point of comparison lies in the iconostasis of San Marco, Venice (1394), which features a full-figure apostle with the same attributes.
This sculpture shares its three-quarter-length cut—ending just above the knees—with these canonical works. This format, relatively rare in Gothic sculpture, was popularized by Giovanni Pisano, Pietro Lorenzetti, and Tino di Camaino in Tuscany, and later adopted in Veneto. Within the Dalle Masegne oeuvre, this compositional choice is seen again in figures adorning tombs such as Pileo da Prata’s (Padua, 1399) and Jacopo Cavalli’s (Venice, 1394), where saints and virtues appear in similarly truncated form and are set within quatrefoils.
The sculpture was designed as a high relief 'en applique', intended to be mounted on a background, likely part of a monumental sarcophagus. Its smoothed reverse, mounting hook, and lime traces confirm this function. This technique, while common in metalwork and woodcarving, was relatively novel in marble and found favor among Venetian funerary sculptors of the late Trecento. Its closest sculptural relatives include apostles from the Estense collection, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Two of these—Saint John the Evangelist (50 cm) and Saint Mark (52 cm)—exhibit identical scale, format, and treatment, suggesting they formed a unified ensemble with the present piece. The facial type, drapery treatment, and frontal solemnity align it closely. These works, assembled by Marquis Tommaso Obizzi before 1803, originated from major funerary monuments dismantled during the iconoclastic upheavals of the Napoleonic era.
Further parallels can be drawn with reliefs attributed to the Dalle Masegne brothers depicting Saints Peter and Paul, and other apostles and prophets from the now-dispersed church of Sant’Andrea della Certosa. These works, like the current figure, combine elegant stylization with a distinctly Venetian austerity. One particularly close comparator is the stern Saint Dominic on the portal of San Domenico in Pesaro (1395), also attributed to the Dalle Masegne workshop. Wolfgang Wolters has likened this figure to the Saint Dominic in the funerary monument of Doge Antonio Venier (1403), likely executed by Jacobello Dalle Masegne himself.
While the compositional rigidity and solemn realism suggest an early training under Andriolo de’ Santi, the sculpture’s refined craftsmanship and typological clarity situate it convincingly within the late 14th-century Venetian Gothic tradition. The Dalle Masegne workshop, with its synthesis of Tuscan elegance and Venetian monumentality, stands as the most probable origin of this piece.
The likely Napoleonic spoliation of its original context, during the 1797 dissolution of the Venetian Republic, aligns with the fate of numerous similar fragments. Many such works, stripped from damaged monuments, were preserved by Enlightenment collectors like Marquis Tommaso Obizzi, whose acquisitions now form the Estense holdings in Vienna. The physical and stylistic kinship between this sculpture and others from that collection strongly supports the hypothesis that it too belonged to a prestigious, lost Venetian monument—a sarcophagus of considerable scale and importance.