Workshop of Andrea di Nerio

Andrea di Nerio was the leading painter in Arezzo in the middle decades of the 14^th Century. As an artistic personality, he only became clearly defined with the discovery of a signature on a painting of the Annunciation in the Museo Diocesano, Arezzo in the mid-20^th Century; before that, he was known by documentary evidence and attributions to him were tentative. 

These three panels depicting scenes from the life of the Virgin were originally the uppermost elements of a paliotto of which six other parts are known: Christ washing the feet of the Apostles (formerly Gustav Rau, offered 5 December, 2013, lot 67); the Last Supper (inv. 33, Museo Civico, Turin); the Agony in the Garden (formerly Florentine private collection); and the Road to Calvary, Crucifixion and Deposition, (all formerly Neumann collection, Wuppertal, 1954). Pier Paolo Donati was the first to connect this group, at the suggestion of Luciano Bellosi, attributing them to an anonymous Aretine hand, circa 1390. Soon after, Boskovits posited an early dating for the whole complex, of circa 1365/75, giving them to an artist he christened the “Master of the Vescovado” and noting the affinities of the works to the young Spinello Aretino (almost certainly a pupil of Andrea di Nerio’s). The discovery of the signature on the Annunciation in Arezzo allowed A.M. Maetzke to firmly give a number of the Vescovado Master’s paintings directly to Andrea.¹ More recently, Isabella Droandi has noted that the participation of the young Spinello might be possible.

1. See Arte nell Aretino. Recuperi e restauri dal 1968 al 1974, Florence 1974, pp. 53-58.