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Lot Essay
This hitherto unrecorded Madonna of Humility is a characteristic and relatively early work, datable to the 1430s, by the most individual and uncompromising Sienese painter of the mid-fifteenth century.
The theme of the Madonna of Humility, with the Virgin seated on a cushion placed on the ground rather than a throne, was popular in Siena from the mid-trecento, as panels by such artists as Niccolo di Buonaccorso, Francesco di Vannuccio, Andrea di Bartolo and Gregorio di Cecco attest, although it also had a wider currency, as for example the panel by Gentile da Fabriano at Pisa exemplifies. The subject was treated at least nine times by the greatest master of quattrocento Siena, Sassetta, both within the context of full-scale altarpieces and in five panels that must have been intended for private devotion (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Pittsburg, Frick Art and Historical Center; Rome, Pinacoteca Vaticana; Siena, Pinacoteca Nazionale; and Zagreb, Strossmayerova Galerija), all datable to the 1430s and 1440s. Like his contemporary Sano di Pietro, whose panels of the subject include the beautiful example at Montalcino, Giovanni di Paolo was unquestionably aware of Sassetta's closely interrelated compositions. His best-known treatments of the subject, the Madonnas of Humility at Boston and Siena with landscape backgrounds, which like this unpublished picture were clearly supplied for private use, may have depended upon a further, now lost, Madonna of Humility by Sassetta. In this panel, as in that by Sassetta in New York, the Virgin is turned to the right. But Giovanni di Paolo, unlike Sassetta, frames Her head within Her mantle. Giovanni's Child is larger in proportion to His mother than in any of Sassetta's treatments of the theme, is of a more muscular type, and (as is the case in the picture by Sassetta at Siena) turns to look not at the Virgin but outwards to engage the viewer. The wiry dynamism of the Child and the prehensile fingers are wonderfully characteristic of Giovanni di Paolo, as is the rippling rhythm of the hem of the Madonna's mantle.
The theme of the Madonna of Humility, with the Virgin seated on a cushion placed on the ground rather than a throne, was popular in Siena from the mid-trecento, as panels by such artists as Niccolo di Buonaccorso, Francesco di Vannuccio, Andrea di Bartolo and Gregorio di Cecco attest, although it also had a wider currency, as for example the panel by Gentile da Fabriano at Pisa exemplifies. The subject was treated at least nine times by the greatest master of quattrocento Siena, Sassetta, both within the context of full-scale altarpieces and in five panels that must have been intended for private devotion (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Pittsburg, Frick Art and Historical Center; Rome, Pinacoteca Vaticana; Siena, Pinacoteca Nazionale; and Zagreb, Strossmayerova Galerija), all datable to the 1430s and 1440s. Like his contemporary Sano di Pietro, whose panels of the subject include the beautiful example at Montalcino, Giovanni di Paolo was unquestionably aware of Sassetta's closely interrelated compositions. His best-known treatments of the subject, the Madonnas of Humility at Boston and Siena with landscape backgrounds, which like this unpublished picture were clearly supplied for private use, may have depended upon a further, now lost, Madonna of Humility by Sassetta. In this panel, as in that by Sassetta in New York, the Virgin is turned to the right. But Giovanni di Paolo, unlike Sassetta, frames Her head within Her mantle. Giovanni's Child is larger in proportion to His mother than in any of Sassetta's treatments of the theme, is of a more muscular type, and (as is the case in the picture by Sassetta at Siena) turns to look not at the Virgin but outwards to engage the viewer. The wiry dynamism of the Child and the prehensile fingers are wonderfully characteristic of Giovanni di Paolo, as is the rippling rhythm of the hem of the Madonna's mantle.