Master of Memphis (Niccolò Cartoni?)

The single panel has a slight convex bow and is supported by a recent wood baton insert. The corresponding split in the wood runs vertically down the paint surface, 23.5 cm. from the left hand margin. The second major split runs down the left hand margin, 1 cm. from the frame edge. Smaller splits are a 10 cm. vertical line between the child's feet and a 5 cm. horizontal split in the lower right corner. The paint surface is covered by a yellowed varnish. There is some wear in the gold work and pigments of the Virgin's veil and halo. There are small discoloured dot retouchings in the child's torso. There is a small repaired damage to the paint surface upper left, measuring 1 by 4 cm., visible in the catalogue illustration. Otherwise, inspection under ultraviolet light shows scattered retouchings, the largest of which is on the back of the Virgin's right left hand. This lot is offered in a tabernacle frame, aged, but structurally sound.
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It was Everett Fahy who first grouped a body of works for this Florentine master, tentatively proposing that he should be identified as Niccolò Cartoni, an artist active in the workshop of Filippino Lippi.¹ Also known as the Master of Tavernelle, the artist takes his name from his Saint Francis in Glory in the Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis.² Filippino and the Master are thought to have collaborated several times, with the latter often completing works started by Filippino, for example the Moses striking the rock and the Adoration of the Golden Calf in the National Gallery, London (inv. no. 4904 and 4905).³

The composition repeats the central section of one of Filippino's most celebrated works, his Madonna and Child with saints and two donors also known as the Pala Nerli, from the church of Santo Spirito in Florence.⁴ The artist quite possibly made use of the same cartoon as Filippino since the design of the Mother and Child is faithful to the original in most details, though the hands of the Baptist clasped in prayer are an independent contribution by the present artist. The background to the left of the figures is faithful to the prototype, while the expansive river landscape to the right is again the Master of Memphis' own invention.

We are grateful to Dottoressa Nicoletta Pons for endorsing the attribution on the basis of an image.

1. See E. Fahy, Some Followers of Domenico Ghirlandajo, Harvard 1968, pp. 200-02.
2. See P. Zambrano and J. Katz Nelson, Filippino Lippi, Milan 2004, p. 610, cat. no. R32, reproduced p. 466, fig. 396. For a fuller discussion of the artist, see Zambrano and Katz Nelson, op. cit., pp. 385-6, and pp. 608-11 for some additions to the list proposed by Fahy.
3. See Zambrano and Katz Nelson, pp. 602-03, cat. nos. 61A and B.
4. Ibid., pp. 590-91, cat. no. 45, reproduced in colour p. 455, fig. 385.