ABSTRACT
The altarpiece Raphael painted for the Baronci Chapel in Sant’Agostino at Città di Castello is his first documented work. despite the fact that only four fragments of the original panel have survived, the entire composition can be reconstructed convincingly on the basis of a compositional study and a partial copy executed by Ermenegildo Costantini in 1791 (fig. 62).1 The development of Raphael’s ideas for this painting is also documented by several preparatory drawings for individual figures and details.2 Although documents indicate that the panel painting was commissioned by Andrea di Tommaso Baronci on 10 december 1500 from the young Raphael, together with the painter Evangelista da Pian di Meleto (c. 1460-1549),3 and delivered on 13 September 1501, the contract does not provide information about the painting’s subject matter, which apparently was to be selected by the patron Baronci; nor does it suggest that the local Augustinian friars were involved in the definition of its iconography.4 In a conventional way the contract states: ‘...dicti magistri Rafael et Evangelista deberent
1 I would like to express my gratitude to Louise Bourdua and Anne dunlop for reading a draft of this essay and for their generous advices and to Joanna Cannon, Caroline Elam and Christa gardner von Teuffel for their constructive observations. For the reconstruction of the painting see S. Béguin, ‘un nouveau Raphaèl: un ange du retable de Saint Nicolas de Tolentino’, La revue du Louvre et des Musées de France 31 (1982), pp. 99-115; further discussion in S. Béguin, ‘The Saint Nicholas of Tolentino Altarpiece’, in Raphael Before Rome, ed. J. Beck, Studies in the History of Art 17, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts Symposium Series V (Washington, 1986), pp. 15-28. Costantini’s painting is reproduced in Béguin, ‘un nouveau Raphaèl...’ p. 102, fig. 7.
