Born in Lucca into a family of painters, Membrini was trained by his brother Davide and in his early work absorbed the influences of Ghirlandaio, Filippino Lippi, and German and Flemish artists. After a few trips to Rome, where he studied local and Bolognese artists, Membrini emerged as the leading painter in Lucca around 1500. Before 1985, when his civic identity was rediscovered, Membrini was known by the pseudonym “Master of the Lathrop Tondo,” after the greatest work of the artist’s early period, formerly in the collects ion of Francis Lathrop, New York, and now in the J. Paul Getty Museum (fig. 1). The present devotional painting dates to the artist’s mature period, circa 1505-08, and is a rare example of a small-format Lucchese painting with its original frame intact.
Against a landscape with a view of Lucca in the far background, Mary sits crowned at center holding the infant Jesus, who tugs on her veil. Surrounding them in a naturalistic arrangement are St. Clare of Assisi in the habit of the Poor Clares, holding a cross and book, St. John the Evangelist, gazing at Jesus, a gaunt St. John the Baptist, in a hair shirt and looking away, and St. Francis of Assisi, adoring Jesus and displaying a cross and his stigmata. The original frame includes six portrait busts of male family members in profile against an aquamarine ground, wearing fifteenth-century dress, the elder along the top and the younger toward the bottom. The coat of arms at the bottom center of the frame can be identified as the arms of the Arnolfini on the right, and either the Galganetti or Da Chiatri families on the left. Though no documentation of intermarriage survives, Membrini was commissioned by the Arnolfini on another occasion, and this private devotional image likely commemorated the union of the Arnolfini with one of the other families.1 The elaborate frame, as significant in interpretation of the work as the painting itself, was likely decorated by another hand in the workshop, though Membrini was also a skilled decorator and may have had a part in its design.
1. See R. Massagli 2011, cat. no. 28.