Catalogue Roberti Fine Art, TEFAF Maastricht 2026 (1) compressed - Flipbook - Page 33
Set within a luscious and inviting landscape, the saint lives up to her legendary beauty and is
almost certainly a stylised portrait, perhaps of the patron’s lover or daughter. She is framed by
Barbara’s traditional attribute, the three-windowed tower, an allusion to her captivity in the tower
and a clear reference to the Christian Trinity. Mosso points out that the shape of the tower recalls
the Torre degli Asinelli, one half of Bologna’s celebrated two towers, which have become symbols
of the city. Less common is the presence of the arrow, which is not one of Barbara’s traditional
symbols, but does recur in the artist’s figure of Saint Barbara in the Virgin and Child with Saints
Dominic and Barbara, now in the Morgan Library & Museum, New York (fig. 1). Mosso reasonably
reminds us that arrows are often allusions to love, making explicit the link between the sitter and
the patron, and now us, the viewer.
According to legend, Barbara was the beautiful daughter of a pagan nobleman named Dioscurus.
To protect her from her numerous suitors, Dioscurus constructed a great tower with only two
windows and locked her inside it. Separated from society, the young woman converted to
Christianity and was able to receive the rite of baptism by a priest who entered the tower disguised
as a doctor. One day, while her father was away, Barbara convinced workmen to add a third
window to the tower. Upon Dioscurus’ return, she explained to him that the three apertures
represented the Holy Trinity. Enraged by his daughter’s conversion, he had her tortured and
decapitated.
Negro and Roio (see Literature) date the present work to around 1500 based on stylistic similarities
to Francia's fresco of the Madonna del terremoto of 1505 in the Sala d’Ercole in Bologna’s Palazzo
Comunale (fig. 2).
Fig. 1. Francesco Francia, The Virgin and Child with Saint Dominic and
Saint Barbara. oil on panel, 81.5 x 67.5 cm. The Morgan Library &
Museum, New York.
Fig. 2. Francesco Francia, Madonna del Terremoto, 1505.
Fresco. Sala d’Ercole, Palazzo d’Accursio, Bologna.
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