Jacopo Landini, called Jacopo del Casentino

(?) Madame Ingres (according to an old inscription on the reverse);
Kammerherr Fritz von Goldammer (1866-1927), Frankfurt-am-Main;
His widow Else von Goldammer (1878-1950), Frankfurt and Berlin;
Thence by inheritance to the great-great-nephew of the above;
With Albrecht Neuhaus, Würzburg;
Acquired from the above by the father of the present owner in August 1986.

R. Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, section III, vol. I, New York 1931, p. 1n;
R. Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. The Fourteenth Century, Section III, vol. VII, New York 1958, p. 136 (as Casentino and studio);
E.S. Skaug, Punch marks from Giotto to Fra Angelico..., Oslo 1994, vol. I, p. 122.

The following condition report is provided by Sarah Walden who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's. This Triptych is made up of three strong poplar panels. The rather thicker central panel has remained perfectly stable and flat, with the original stained back and very little past worm damage. The side panels are slightly thinner and have a minimal curve. There are one or two flakes at the outer upper edge of the frame and on the outside of the wings, including one or two by the mouth of the saint in the roundel on the left, and slight wear compared to the inner paintings of the triptych, as always with outer panels often kept closed. The central panel is finely preserved overall with much remarkably intact unworn paint. Where there are little lost flakes it tends to be around the edges of the figures, or for instance in the pinnacles of the throne, where the underlying gold leaf has not held the paint as firmly as the tempera paint within the figures. Thus the edge of the face of one of the angels on the left has been lost, as has the chin of an angel on the right and other minute outlines in places. Some of the delicate shell gold detail such as the embroidered borders of the drapery or the decoration of the throne, or the finest detail in the brocading of the Madonna's under drapery are also sometimes thin in places. The rose madder of this drapery has discoloured slightly, but her blue robe has retained its colour well. The Madonna's cheek has a slight damage, with one also near the mouth of the Child, and there is a little old retouching by the hand of the saint on the right. The marbling under the throne is beautifully intact, and essentially this central panel, with all the inner panels of this triptych, has much unusually finely preserved paint. The Crucifixion. The fine brushwork in the central figure on this wing is beautifully unworn. It has lost occasional little flakes from the outer edge of the figure and loin cloth, just overlapping the gold leaf. The Madonna's robe has darkened and was presumably azurite rather than lapis in the main panel, and her rose madder drapery has faded with some lost shell gold decoration. The Magdalen's face has been rubbed, as has the face of the Annunciation Madonna in the scene above, with some little flakes lost in her arm. The Nativity. Here also much of the scene is finely intact. Some details have been rubbed in places, such as in the sheep in the foreground with a little old retouching on the face of the shepherd. Flakes by the mouth of the Madonna and in the Child have fallen from underlying gold, as has the chin of the Annunciation angel above. The figure of God the Father at the centre above has also lost detail, with flakes especially in the head. This triptych has however been spared all but such minor effects of age over centuries, and apparently minimal intervention. The wings seem also to have protected much of its vividness of touch and colour. This report was not done under laboratory conditions.
"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."

Very little is known of the life and career of Jacopo del Casentino, but his reputation amongst his peers is reflected by the fact that he was elected as the first consigliere of the newly founded Painters' Guild, the Compagnia di San Luca, in 1339. The only evidence as to his origins is his name, de Casentino, which appears on his one and only signed work, the Cagnola triptych, a portable tabernacle similar to the present work and which is today in the Uffizi in Florence. This is signed and inscribed: JACOBUS. DE. CASENTINO. ME .FECIT and probably dates to the 1320s.¹  Vasari devoted a chapter of his Lives  to him, and mistakenly claimed that he was a pupil of Taddeo Gaddi, and it was not until 1923 that Richard Offner first published a basis for his oeuvre.²  Jacopo is traditionally said to have run a large and prolific workshop, but the relatively limited number of extant works by his hand does not support this assertion. Any chronology for his work must remain uncertain, for only two of his surviving works are dated: these are a Presentation in the Temple in the Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, which is dated to 1330 on its frame, and a damaged Madonna and Child of 1342 in the church of Santa Maria in Crespino sul Lamone. 

This well preserved triptych is a very early example of the type of portable tabernacle intended for private devotion that was produced in Florence in the 1330s. It is one of a small number of similar small-scale works which Jacopo produced which clearly reflect the prevailing so-called 'miniaturist tendency' among Florentine painters moving away from the monumentality of the style of Giotto. Although in these Jacopo perhaps sought to follow the lead established by Bernardo Daddi and his shop, his large-scale works suggest that he was perhaps equally if not more comfortable on a grander scale. The lack of any chronology for Jacopo's career makes any date very speculative but the present panel most probably dates from the end of the 1330s. The punchmarks appear to be those which, in Skaug's analysis, were used by Jacopo and his shop in the period from around 1339-1342, and their relationship to those used in the Daddi workshop suggest that Jacopo had a close relationship with Daddi and may even have worked in his shop. Similar triptychs which also incorporate the Nativity and The Crucifixion in the wings include that in the Palazzo Barberini in Rome and those formerly in the Guggenheim and Goldschmidt collections.³ The uneven quality evident in these pictures suggests that they were, as Offner suggests, painted with at least partial assistance from the Casentino workshop.

For the collecting activities of Fritz von Goldammer (1866-1927) please see the note to lot 2 in this catalogue.

 

1. Inv. no. P815. For which see L. Bellosi, in Gli Uffizi. Catalogo Generale, Florence 1979, p. 319, and B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Florentine School, London 1963, vol. I, fig. 102.
2. 'Jacopo del Casentino, integrazione della sua opera', in Bolletino d'Arte, III, 1923-4, pp. 264-282.
3. Sold New York, Christie's, 11 January 1995, lot 119 ($426,000). See, for example, R. Offner, A Citical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. The Fourteenth Century, III/II ed. M. Boskovits, Florence 1987, pp. 502-3.