Master Paintings
Master Paintings
Property from a Distinguished Private Collection
The Mezzana Master
The Madonna and Child enthroned between Saints Louis of Toulouse and Francis (central panel); Crucifixion below the Angel of the Annunciation (left shutter); Madonna della Misericordia below the Virgin Annunciate (right shutter): a triptych
Auction Closed
May 20, 03:42 PM GMT
Estimate
100,000 - 150,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
Property from a Distinguished Private Collection
The Mezzana Master
Active in Prato circa 1320-40
The Madonna and Child enthroned between Saints Louis of Toulouse and Francis (central panel); Crucifixion below the Angel of the Annunciation (left shutter); Madonna della Misericordia below the Virgin Annunciate (right shutter): a triptych
oil on gold ground panel, a triptych, in an integral frame
overall when open: 15 ⅜ by 19 ¼ in.; 39.1 by 48.9 cm.
Carlo de Carlo (d. 1999), Florence;
His estate sale, Florence, Finarte Semenzato, 11 June 2003, lot 18 (as Bettino di Corsino da Prato);
Private collection;
Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 7 December 2006, lot 41;
There acquired by the present collector.
M. Boskovits, The Painters of the Miniaturist Tendency. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, sec. III, vol. IX, Florence 1984, pp. 25-6;
G. Raggionieri, in L. Bellosi, A. Angelini and G. Raggionieri, Le art figurative, ed. G. Cerubini, Florence, 1991, p. 952, note 1;
A. Tartuferi in The Alana Collection: Italian Paintings from the 14th to 16th Century, vol. III, ed. S. Chiodo and S. Padovani, Rome 2014, pp. 175-78, cat. no. 24, reproduced.
Richard Offner was the first to identify a corpus of paintings, including the present triptych, as by the "Mezzana Master" in his 1956 corpus on Florentine painting (see Literature). Miklós Boskovits later proposed an identification of the anonymous master to Bettino di Corsino, the documented Pratese painter active between 1288 and 1313, though he subsequently retracted that connection given later findings.1 When the present work was offered in 2006, Boskovits again confirmed that the triptych was painted by a Pratese artist and dated it to between 1320 and 1340. As Saint Louis of Toulouse was canonized in 1317, his inclusion in the central panel marks that year as the earliest possible date for triptych. Stylistically, the spatial devices and perspective elements seen here echo those not seen until the 1330s, a more probably dating for the work.
1. See Offner, 1984, op. cit. for Boskovits's initial argument; his later retraction is detailed in C. Cerretelli, 'Le Piazza e il Palazzo del Commune', Prato, Storia e arti, XXXI, 1990, pp. 32-5.