Lot Essay
This extremely rare early Giottesque panel has been identified by Miklos Boskovits and Everett Fahy as a work by Francesco, the son of Giotto, an artist whose existence is recorded in the Guild of Physicians and Apothecaries (between 1320 and 1338) and the Company of St Luke (in 1341), in whose rolls he is recorded as 'Francesco di Maestro Giotto'. Boskovits has connected the name of Francesco di Giotto with a group of works he has attributed to the Master of the Refectory of Santa Maria Novella. Giotto's personal participation in small works of this nature has been called into question, though panels attributed to Giotto depicting The Crucifixion are in a number of collections (Alte Pinakothek, Munich; Berenson collection, I Tatti) for which the main prototype is one of the frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel, Padua. Whilst Freuler sees a connection between the Sienese Duccioesque tradition and this Crucifixion - this panel was in fact first attributed to Luca di Tomé - the emotive intensitiy of the figures and their monumentality suggest an artist far closer to Giotto.
Boskovits compares this picture to a number of paintings by an artist he formerly described as the Maestro di Refettorio di Santa Maria Novella. In particular we are grateful to him for drawing our attention to a strikingly similar Crucifixion sold at Sotheby's, London, 6 December 1967, lot 23, as 'Follower of Giotto, c.1330' (fig. 1), in which comparable facial types, the wide footrest on the cross and a similar patterning in the tooling of the gold occur.
Boskovits compares this picture to a number of paintings by an artist he formerly described as the Maestro di Refettorio di Santa Maria Novella. In particular we are grateful to him for drawing our attention to a strikingly similar Crucifixion sold at Sotheby's, London, 6 December 1967, lot 23, as 'Follower of Giotto, c.1330' (fig. 1), in which comparable facial types, the wide footrest on the cross and a similar patterning in the tooling of the gold occur.