Saint Denis Altarpiece

When this altarpiece came up for sale in Paris in December 1849, the catalogue gave it to Simone Memmi, the old name for the Sienese painter Simone Martini. It had been made for the Charterhouse of Champmol, the burial church of the dukes of Burgundy, and it was already gone from there by 1791, in the upheaval of the Revolution. Before the sale it belonged to a collector in Dijon named Bartholomey. The Italian label is easy to understand, since gold grounds, tooled haloes and slender figures were things collectors of the time linked with Siena. Three years later the paint was lifted off its wooden panel and laid onto canvas, the support it still has. Saint Denis, at his last communion and again under the axe, wears blue scattered with gold fleurs-de-lis, the lilies of the French crown.