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Lot Essay
We are grateful to Professor Mauro Natale for his assistance in cataloguing this lot; on the basis of photographs, Professor Natale dates the work to circa 1510-5.
The Pseudo-Boltraffio was so named for the first time by William Suida (Leonardo und sein Kreis, Munich, 1929, pp. 288-9) to identify the anonymous artist responsible for a distinct and heteregenous group of over twenty pictures painted in Milan in the early sixteenth century. Those paintings had previously been regarded by some writers as representing the early oeuvre of Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, before he entered the workshop of Leonardo da Vinci in circa 1491, and displaying the hypothetical influence of Vincenzo Foppa and Bernardo Zenale. Suida instead proposed that they were by a separate hand, strongly influenced by Boltraffio himself, a view that remains accepted today. Other works by the artist include a Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist recorded by Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Central and Northern Italian Schools, London, 1968, I, p. 57, as Boltraffio, and subsequently sold, Sotheby's, London, 20 April 1988, lot 270, as Milanese School, 16th Century (£8,580), and two small panels of Saints and donors formerly regarded as by Boltraffio, in the Castello Sforzesco, Milan. Most recently, the latter two panels were reattributed to Boltraffio himself, and dated to later in his career in circa 1505 (see M.T. Fiorio, Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, Milan, 2000, pp. 71-4 and 117-9), although that opinion has not been universally accepted.
Stylistically the present panel is a characteristically Lombard work, however the composition is very unusual for that region, and derives from the artistic tradition of the Veneto, as found for example in the oeuvres of Mantegna (e.g. the Adoration of the Magi in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles) and Giovanni Bellini. This artistic idiosyncracy is of particular interest, suggesting as it does a further development in the artist's as yet largely unknown career: that, after his initial exposure to the Leonardesque influence of artists such as Boltraffio in Milan, he was subsequently in touch with the culture of the Veneto, perhaps directly as well as through the work of such painters as Andrea Solario.
The Pseudo-Boltraffio was so named for the first time by William Suida (Leonardo und sein Kreis, Munich, 1929, pp. 288-9) to identify the anonymous artist responsible for a distinct and heteregenous group of over twenty pictures painted in Milan in the early sixteenth century. Those paintings had previously been regarded by some writers as representing the early oeuvre of Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, before he entered the workshop of Leonardo da Vinci in circa 1491, and displaying the hypothetical influence of Vincenzo Foppa and Bernardo Zenale. Suida instead proposed that they were by a separate hand, strongly influenced by Boltraffio himself, a view that remains accepted today. Other works by the artist include a Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist recorded by Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Central and Northern Italian Schools, London, 1968, I, p. 57, as Boltraffio, and subsequently sold, Sotheby's, London, 20 April 1988, lot 270, as Milanese School, 16th Century (£8,580), and two small panels of Saints and donors formerly regarded as by Boltraffio, in the Castello Sforzesco, Milan. Most recently, the latter two panels were reattributed to Boltraffio himself, and dated to later in his career in circa 1505 (see M.T. Fiorio, Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, Milan, 2000, pp. 71-4 and 117-9), although that opinion has not been universally accepted.
Stylistically the present panel is a characteristically Lombard work, however the composition is very unusual for that region, and derives from the artistic tradition of the Veneto, as found for example in the oeuvres of Mantegna (e.g. the Adoration of the Magi in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles) and Giovanni Bellini. This artistic idiosyncracy is of particular interest, suggesting as it does a further development in the artist's as yet largely unknown career: that, after his initial exposure to the Leonardesque influence of artists such as Boltraffio in Milan, he was subsequently in touch with the culture of the Veneto, perhaps directly as well as through the work of such painters as Andrea Solario.