Simone Martini's altarpiece was commissioned for the church of Sant'Agostino in San Gimignano; its panels, representing the Virgin and Child with Saints Geminianus, Michael, Augustine and Catherine, are presently dispersed and housed in various museums (respectively in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, and the Frescobaldi Collection in Florence).
This article aims to retrace the circumstances which led the Augustinians to request this precious pentaptych. New evidence shows that, due to a well-documented conflict that took place in 1315-1317 between the two Augustinian convents in San Gimignano and in Racciano (a small village in the countryside nearby), the town friars might have felt the need to underline the existing bond between the mendicant order and San Gimignano.
The iconographical analysis presented here therefore attempts to explain the juxtaposition of Saints Augustine and Geminianus in the light of this documentation. As a consequence, the study goes on to disprove the theory advanced by Gert Kreytenberg according to which the altarpiece was an ornament designed for Beato Bartolo's first sepulchre in the same church, whose only remains consist of five marble bas-reliefs representing 'Bishops' (four of them still in the church of Sant'Agostino and the fifth in the Salini Collection). As it is made clear in the article, the bas-reliefs, correctly attributed to Tino di Camaino, are connected neither with Simone's altarpiece nor with Bartolo's first tomb, which was, as documents confirm, “in medio ecclesiae”, whereas these marbles were part of a funerary monument built against a wall.
In conclusion, a digital reconstruction is proposed of the pentaptych's architectural elements, most of which are now lost. The aim is to reassemble visually all the philologically correct elements that made up this sophisticated altarpiece crafted by Simone and his “chompagni”.