Madonna and Child Enthroned between Saints John the Baptist and Mary Magdalene (Dragonetti De Torres Triptych)

The Dragonetti De Torres Triptych returns to L’Aquila after an absence of almost a century, thanks to the purchase promoted by the Museo Nazionale d’Abruzzo, which has returned to the artistic heritage of Italy a work of art that is intimately linked to the territory of L’Aquila.

Probably created as an image for private devotion, or as an altarpiece intended to embellish a noble chapel in a church, the triptych depicts in the central panel the Madonna with Child, seated on a marble throne decorated with candelabras in antique style, with a portrait of a praying donor below.  The two side panels depict St. John the Baptist, covered in camel’s hair, holding in his left hand the staff surmounted by a cross and the scroll with the inscription “Ecce agnus Dei”, and Mary Magdalene, recognizable by the vase of ointments that she holds in her left hand. The painting consists of a set of three panels, which now appear deprived of their original wooden carpentry, certainly cut in ancient times to equalize the size of three panels. Traces of this manipulation can be found in the absence of the upper part of the Virgin’s throne in the central panel and in the loss of the lower part of the frieze below, where two now lost coats of arms were originally located, rediscovered thanks to an undated restoration.

Disclosed for the first time by Luigi Serra in 1912, as part of the L’Aquila collection of the Dragonetti marquises, the triptych was part of the art gallery located on the second floor of the Antonelli Dragonetti de Torres palace in Via Roio in L’Aquila, inherited by the family upon the death of the last descendant of the de Torres marquises in 1864. In this place, so-called ‘Dragonetti Museum’, the artwork was kept until the mid-1930s, when art historians Bernard Berenson and Raimond van Marle attributed it for the first time to the painter Antonio Aquili, known as Antoniazzo Romano (1435/40 – 1508).

Probably already sent to Rome, the painting was shown in 1938 by the will of the Marquis Alfonso Dragonetti De Torres at the exhibition dedicated to Melozzo da Forlì (1438 – 1494) in the homonymous city in Romagna, and was subsequently replaced to the family’s Roman residence. Well known to art historical studies, the Dragonetti De Torres Triptych escaped the dispersion of the collection started by the family’s descendants around the middle of the century and today, thanks to its entry into the collections of the National Museum of Abruzzo in L’Aquila, it finds its place in the city’s artistic heritage.