Bernardo Daddi

Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, January 29, 1954, lot 133;
Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, February 22, 1956, lot 81 (as 'Daddi'), for £440 to Buttery;
With Horace Buttery, from whom purchased by a private collector and his wife;
By whom offered anonymously ('The Property of a Lady and a Gentleman'), London, Christie's, April 15, 1992, lot 42.

R. Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. The Fourteenth Century, Section II, Vol. VIII, New York 1958, pp. 148-49, reproduced plate XXXIX.

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com , an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. The reverse of this panel is un-reinforced. The gilding to the frame and the panel itself is quite fresh looking but it is not immediately apparent whether any of this gilding is of a later date and one must assume that in the frame particularly, that there has been some re-gilding. The figures themselves show few if any retouches but it is likely that some slight strengthening in the features and a few of the details may have occurred, in the cross for instance, but the condition looks very good.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

The overall composition repeats that of a larger panel, dated 1343, formerly from the Convent of Santa Maria del Carmine and now in the Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence.¹  The positioning of the principal figures is exactly the same in each panel, though here the artist has omitted the angels collecting Christ's blood from His wounds. The painting in the Accademia was probably the central panel of a polyptych of tabernacle and the same is likely for this panel which, being on a smaller scale, might have been the central panel of a portable tabernacle. 

Both Offner and Dr. Klara Steinweg (whose opinion is quoted by Offner) regarded this panel as the work of the "Assistant of Daddi."  The paintings grouped under this name have since been recognised by Prof. Miklòs Boskovits as late productions by Daddi himself. On the basis of photographs Prof. Boskovits endorsed the attribution to Daddi at the time of the painting's last appearance on the market in 1992 and he proposed a date of execution of circa 1345-48.

1. Inv. 8570; 125 by 58 cm.; see R. Offner, The Fourteenth Century. Bernardo Daddi and his Circle, Section III, vol. V, ed. M. Boskovits, Florence 2001, pp. 193-98, reproduced plate XV.