The Madonna and Child Enthroned with Angels

Details

Master of the Bigallo Crucifixion (active Florence 1225-1255)
The Madonna and Child Enthroned with Angels
on gold ground panel
47 x 24 in. (119.5 x 61 cm.)

Provenance

with Stefano Bardini (1836-1922), Florence.
Charles Fairfax Murray (1849-1919).
with Joseph Duveen, New York, circa 1920, from whom purchased by
Carl W. Hamilton (1886-1967), New York, by whom made over with the rest of his collection in 1945 to
George R. Hann, Bewickley Heights, Pittsburgh; (+) Christie's, New York, 5 June 1980, lot 100, as 'The Master of the Bigallo Cross'.
with Harari & Johns, London, 1989.

Literature

O. Siren, Toskanische Maler im XIII Jahrhundert, Berlin, 1922, pp. 99-100, no. 215, fig. 23, as Barone Berlinghieri.
R. van Marle, Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, The Hague, 1923-38, I, p. 358; V, p. 422, as Tuscan school.
O. Siren, 'Quelque peintures Toscanes inconnues du XIII siècle', Gazette des Beaux Arts, XIII, June 1926, p. 349, '...une manière beaucoup plus virile que les peintures du vieux Berlinghieri ou de Bonaventura'.
R.F.M., Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago, XX, 1926, p. 78, as 'Barone Berlinghieri'.
E. Sandberg Vavalà, La croce dipinta italiana e l'iconografia della passione, Verona, 1929, p. 716, 'È da escludersi dall'intiero cerchio dei Berlinghieri'.
G.M. Richter, 'Megliore di Jacopo and the Magdalen Master', The Burlington Magazine, LXII, November 1930, p. 229, '...closely related to Bonaventura Berlinghieri executed after 1250'.
R. Offner, 'The Mostra del Tesoro di Firenze Sacre - I', The Burlington Magazine, LXIII, August 1933, p. 76, as Bigallo Master.
V. Lasareff, 'New Light on the Problem of the Pisan School', The Burlington Magazine, LXVIII, February 1936, p. 62.
E. Sandberg Vavalà, 'A Crucifix at Chicago', Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago, XXXIII, 1939, p. 40, as Master of the Bigallo Crucifix.
E.B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel painting: An Illustrated Index, Florence, 1949, p. 12, fig. 231, as Bigallo Master. Assisted (?) 1240-50.
R. Oertel, 'Ein toskanisches Madonnenbild um 1260', Mitteilungen des kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, VII, 1953, pp. 25-7.
C.L. Ragghianti, Pittura del duecento a Firenze, Florence, 1955, pp. 11-12.
J.H. Stubbelbine, 'The Development of the Throne in Dugento Tuscan Painting', Marsyas, VII, 1957, p. 27, n. 11, as 'Bigallo Master...second quarter of the thirteenth century'.
L. Marucci, Gallerie nazionali di Firenze: i dipinti toscani del secolo XIII; scuole bizantine e russe dal secolo XII al secolo XVIII, Rome, 1958, p. 25 as 'Maestro del Bigallo...non oltre la metà del secolo'.
S. Eimerl, ed., The World of Giotto, New York, 1967, p. 20, illustrated.
M. Boskovits, et al., Corpus of Florentine Painting, IX, Florence, 1984, pp. 316-9, pl. XVII.
L.C. Marques, La Peinture du duecento en Italie Centrale, Paris, 1987, p. 290, as product of a workshop called 'Maître du Bigallo...milieu du siècle'.
A. Tartuferi, La pittura a firenze nel duecento, Florence, 1990, pp. 13-5, 71-2.
M. Boskovits, The Origins of Florentine Painting 1100-1270, I, Florence, 1993, pp. 316-9, illustrated.
L'archivio storico fotografico di Stefano Bardini, E. Fahy, Dipinti, disegni, miniature, stampe, Florence, 2000, p. 38, no. 269, pl. 269.

Exhibited

Greenburg, Pennsylvania, Westmoreland County Museum of Art, Madonnas and Saints from the Hann Collection, 1959, no. 10, pl. I.

Special notice

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer's premium.

Lot Essay

This well-preserved work is among the earliest Florentine panel paintings to depict the Madonna and Child. Originally published by Siren (op. cit., 1922), whose attribution to Barone Berlinghieri (active in Lucca 1228-1282), while accepted by some, generally found only limited support from other scholars of the period. Offner (op. cit., 1933) was the first to relate the present work with a group of panel paintings that bear a close affinity with a Crucifixion in the Museo del Bigallo, Florence, and coined the name 'Bigallo Master'. This nomenculture was subsequently accepted by Garrison (op. cit., 1949), who characterised this artist as the most important and innovative painter working in Florence in the first half of the thirteenth century.

Other Madonnas from this group include one formerly in the collection of Harold Acton, Florence; another in the Museé des Beaux-Arts, Nantes (both heavily restored); a third in the Conservatorio delle Montalve, La Quiete, near Florence (almost entirely repainted); and a fourth in the Museu de Arte, São Paulo. They are characterised by their awareness of Byzantine models, possibly assimilated through Pisan channels, combined with a greater plasticity of form and warm skin tones. The posture of the Madonnas can also be related to the mosaics in the 'scarsella' of the Baptistery, Florence, dated 1225, although the panels are generally regarded as later than this, around circa 1240-50.

Among the present picture's former owners was Carl W. Hamilton (1886-1967) who, for a brief period, was one of the most active American collectors of early Italian pictures, buying in particular from Duveen. It was to him that the Berensons presented the predella panel of Saint John the Baptist in the Desert (Washington, National Gallery of Art, Kress Collection, inv. no. 1943.4.48), before it was realised that this was a missing element of Domenico Veneziano's Santa Lucia dei Magnoli altarpiece, a key Florentine commission of the 1440s. Hamilton's collection was exhibited in the Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey in 1925-6.

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