Florentine School, circa 1490

Possibly in the collection of Robin Benson (1850–1929) (according to Van Marle 1931);

Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 18 December 1931, lot 33, for 58 guineas, to Smithson;

With Trafalgar Galleries, London, by 1968;

Acquired by the father of the present owner over 40 years ago;

Thence by descent. 

R. Van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, The Hague 1931, vol. XIII, pp. 244 and 246, reproduced fig. 167;

R. Van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, New York 1970, vol. XIII, pp. 244 and 246, fig. 167, reproduced fig. 167.

Painted in circa 1490, this impressive and brightly coloured Renaissance tondo was executed in Florence by an artist working in the tradition of Domenico Ghirlandaio (1448–1494). A prolific painter and draftsman, Ghirlandaio ran a large and productive workshop transmitting his compositions and style onto a new generation of artists, who inevitably share close stylistic similarities. It is no wonder that when it was first published in 1931, this picture was attributed by Raimond van Marle to the Florentine painter Bartolomeo di Giovanni (active c. 1475–c. 1500), first identified in 1903 by Bernard Berenson who called him 'alunno di Domenico' ('pupil of Domenico').¹ Everett Fahy subsequently rejected this attribution, associating the work with the Master of the Holden Tondo, an anonymous artist active in the late 1490s in Florence and Bologna, whose name piece is in the Cleveland Museum of Art.² Since then, both these attributions have been superseded, as the figure types and design proclivities differ from those that characterise this work, which was classified by Federico Zeri as by an anonymous Florentine painter.³

¹ B. Berenson, 'Alunno di Domenico', in The Burlington Magazine, 1, March 1903, p. 6.

² Inv. no. 1916.791; oil on panel; 86 x 83.5 cm.; https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1916.791

³ http://catalogo.fondazionezeri.unibo.it/scheda/opera/16502/Anonimo%20fiorentino%20sec.%20XV%2C%20Madonna%20con%20Bambino%2C%20san%20Giovannino%20e%20un%20angelo