Siracusa internazionale: aggiunte al catalogo del Maestro di San Martino e del Maestro di Santa Maria

The discovery of a photographic reproduction in the Photo Library of Miklós Boskovits allows new considerations on Syracusan late-gothic painting. The photograph shows a painting, now in a private Florentine collection, stylistically traceable to the Master of San Martino di Siracusa, an anonymous artist of Valencian upbringing. The confirmation of the autograph is also found in the iconography of the so-called Stone of Unction, depicted in the Iberian variant of the Santo Entierro. Thanks to this attribution, a new relation can be established between the anonymous master and another wood panel - now located in the sacristy of the Cathedral of Bordeaux - that the canonical Albert Marcadé purchased in the late 19th century from the antiques market in Paris for his own collection. The two paintings represent the initial activity of the anonymous artist, which can be placed around the first decade of the 15th century. In a perfect chronological parallel, a second protagonist appears in the late Gothic context of Syracuse: the Master of Santa Maria di Siracusa. Unlike the Master of San Martino, the activity of this painter reveals a stronger bond with Gherardo Starnina, at the height of his Valencian revelation, showing himself stylistically updated, in the works of the 1420s, with what happened in Naples around Andrea de Aste. Two unpublished works, probably placed on the right side of a dismembered polyptych, can be linked to the late phase of the artist's activity.