Master Paintings and Sculpture Part II
Master Paintings and Sculpture Part II
Property from the Martello Collection
Master of the Bargello
Triptych: Madonna and Child with Saints Andrew and Anthony Abbott; Angel Gabriel, above Saints Catherine of Alexandria (?) and Lucy; Madonna Annunciate, above the Crucifixion with the Madonna and Saints Mary Magdalene and John the Evangelist a triptych
Auction Closed
January 27, 09:38 PM GMT
Estimate
60,000 - 80,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
Property from the Martello Collection
Master of the Bargello
Florence 1320 - 1410
Triptych: Madonna and Child with Saints Andrew and Anthony Abbott; Angel Gabriel, above Saints Catherine of Alexandria (?) and Lucy; Madonna Annunciate, above the Crucifixion with the Madonna and Saints Mary Magdalene and John the Evangelist a triptych, tempera on panel, gold ground, shaped top
a triptych, tempera on panel, gold ground, shaped top
painted surface, central panel: 15¾ by 7¾ in.; 40.0 by 19.7 cm.
painted surface, left panel: 17½ by 4⅜ in.; 44.5 by 11.1 cm.
painted surface, right panel: 17¾ by 4⅝ in.; 45.1 by 11.7 cm.
central panel, in engaged frame: 23⅝ by 9 in.; 60.0 by 22.9 cm.
left panel: 17½ by 4⅜ in.; 44.5 by 11.1 cm.
right panel: 17¾ by 4⅝ in.; 45.1 by 11.7 cm.
central panel, framed: 19½ by 9 in.; 49.3 by 22.9 cm.
overall triptych with wings open: 23⅝ by 18 in.; 60.0 by 45.7 cm.
unpainted engaged base: 3½ by 9 in.; 8.9 by 22.9 cm.
Furstenheim collection, Munich;
New York, Sotheby Parke Bernet, 20 January 1983, lot 87;
Where acquired by the Martello Collection.
B. Berenson, Homeless Paintings of the Renaissance, London 1969, p. 111, reproduced, fig. 170 (as follower of the Orcagna);
M. Boskovits, Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento, Florence 1975, p. 355 (as Master of the Bargello);
M. Boskovits, in The Martello Collection: Paintings, Drawings and Miniatures from the XIVth to the XVIIIth Centuries, M. Boskovits (ed.), Florence 1985, p. 78, cat. no. 22, reproduced in color (as Master of the Bargello).
Although the present portable triptych had been attributed to Bernardo Daddi by Wilhelm Bode when the painting was in a German collection, the ensemble is in fact a key work in the corpus of the Master of the Bargello, an artist first isolated by Miklòs Boskovits in 1975 and christened after a fresco of the Madonna and Child with Saints and Angels in the Sala delle Armi in the Bargello, Florence.1 That painting had already been tentatively connected with the present triptych by Bernard Berenson in 1931, who considered it to be by an anonymous follower of Orcagna. Boskovits built upon this nucleus and added about a dozen other paintings. Most were small works for private devotion, such as the present lot, but with “figures that leap off the gold ground with well-formed shapes.”2 The Master was also fond of pattern and a strong palette, and so many of his works have a rich visual quality. Boskovits noted that the present triptych is closest to a fresco of the Deposition at the Badia a Settimo, near Florence, and a Virgin and Child Enthroned with Four Saints and Angels at the Smith College Museum of Art, (inv. no. SC 1921.9.1). These he dated to the 1360s, a moment when the Master was beginning to reflect the influence of a courtly, late Gothic style in addition to that of Orcagna.
1 Boskovits 1975, p. 355.
2 “figure che spiccano dal fondo con forme ben tornite,” Boskovits 1975, p. 55.