Nobody knows how a 15th-century painting of the Virgin Mary and infant Jesus wound up at St. James Cathedral in Seattle.
"We know where it was 500 years ago," said church administrator Larry Brouse. "Between now and then? No."
Checks with Interpol and the Art-Loss Registry turned up no reports that it had been stolen or lost, he said.
The big painting — a devotional work awash with gold leaf that depicts the Virgin Mary and infant Jesus flanked by six saints — dates from the mid-1400s, when it was produced in Florence by Neri diBicci, a popular artist of the day.
The painting is on four horizontal poplar planks more than an inch thick, glued together and possibly secured by small dowels.
A third-generation painter, diBicci wrote an art history that helped confirm its origins.
It was probably a gift to the church in the 1930s or '40s, Brouse said. It was first displayed here after a 1950s renovation of the 1907 cathedral designed — in the Renaissance style — by the New York firm of Heins and LaFarge.
After a 1992 arson fire, the painting was removed for cleaning and research that determined its surprising origins.
Now it's undergoing a full-blown restoration by the Seattle Art Museum's chief painting conservator, Nick Dorman — a major undertaking and one of the first to be tackled by SAM's brand-new conservation studio.
In exchange, St. James will lend it to SAM for display next spring with a collection of smaller religious works from the Renaissance.
Works this old "all have the tracks of history on them," Dorman said. The diBicci "actually has some candle burns from when it was in Italy and they had the confessional candles right in front of the altarpiece."
It's in remarkably good shape, he said, but the past 5 1/2 centuries have taken their toll.
Woodworm damage can be seen around the unpainted edges where the original frame was attached and has undermined small areas in the body of the work, leaving little for the paint to cling to.
At some point, the top plank broke off — a break that runs through the faces of the saints.
After the outing at SAM, the diBicci will be returned to the church in time for St. James' centennial.
The church also is contributing to an infrared camera — used to see through paintings to the underlying pencil drawings — for SAM's conservation studio, a more lasting alternative to "somebody just writing a check," Brouse said.
So far, Brouse said he has recovered paint underneath all the varnish and overpainting that's pretty much in perfect condition. "It's a much more subtle and brilliant painting than we first thought," he said.
