Andrea Previtali

Saint Augustine enthroned with Saint Anthony Abbot and another saint

Lot Closed

October 22, 02:36 PM GMT

Estimate

8,000 - 12,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Property of the Previtali Family Collection

Andrea Previtali

Berbenno near Bergamo circa 1480 - 1528 Bergamo

Saint Augustine enthroned with Saint Anthony Abbot and another saint

oil on canvas

canvas: 13 by 14¾ in.; 33 by 37.5 cm.

framed: 18⅝ by 20⅝ in.; 47.3 by 52.4 cm.

Christoforo Benigno Crespi, Milan;
His sale, Paris, Hotel Drouot, 6 June 1914, lot 24 (as Andrea Previtali);
Achillito Chiesa, Esq., Milan;
His sale, New York, American Art Association, 16-17 April 1926, lot 2 (as Andrea Previtali);
There acquired by Louis Berizzi, New York;
From whom most probably acquired by Dr. Giuseppe Previtali (1879-1969), Bergamo and New York, by the second quarter of the twentieth century;
Thence by descent in the Previtali family.

B. Berenson, Italian pictures of the Renaissance: a list of the principal artists and their works, with an index of places, Oxford 1932, p. 473;
B. Berenson, Pitture italiane del rinascimento, Milan 1936, p. 407 (as Andrea Previtali);
J. Meyer zur Capellen, Andrea Previtali, Wurzburg 1972, pp. 176-177, no. 69 (as Previtali);
W. Angelelli and A.G. De Marchi, Pittura dal Duecento al primo Cinquecento nelle fotografie di Girolamo Bombelli, Milan 1991, p. 242; (as "Previtali?").

A pupil of Giovanni Bellini in Venice, Andrea Previtali returned to his hometown of Bergamo by about 1511 and established himself as one of the city’s leading artists, joined a few years later by Lorenzo Lotto. This painting of an enthroned Saint Augustine flanked by an anonymous saint on the left and Saint Anthony Abbot on the right is a mature work by this Bergamese artist and dates to about 1520. The saint to the left of Saint Augustine bears a close resemblance to the figure of Saint Roch at the far left in Previtali's lunette of the Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine, datable to 1521 and in the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo,¹ while the frontal portrayal of Saint Augustine compares closely to his Salvator Mundi, signed and dated 1519 and today in the National Gallery, London.²

We are grateful to Mauro Lucco for endorsing the attribution to Andrea Previtali on the basis of digital photographs and for his assistance in the cataloguing of this lot.

1. Inv. no. 334 (112), see Fondazione Federico Zeri Archive, ref. no. 39643.

2. Inv. no. NG2501. https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/andrea-previtali-salvator-mundi