MASTER OF THE STERBINI DIPTYCH (SECOND QUARTER 14TH CENTURY)
MASTER OF THE STERBINI DIPTYCH (SECOND QUARTER 14TH CENTURY)
MASTER OF THE STERBINI DIPTYCH (SECOND QUARTER 14TH CENTURY)
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MASTER OF THE STERBINI DIPTYCH (SECOND QUARTER 14TH CENTURY)
5 More
These lots have been imported from outside the EU … Read more PROPERTY FROM A DISTINGUISHED PRIVATE COLLECTION
MASTER OF THE STERBINI DIPTYCH (SECOND QUARTER 14TH CENTURY)

The Madonna and Child

Details
MASTER OF THE STERBINI DIPTYCH (SECOND QUARTER 14TH CENTURY)
The Madonna and Child
on goldground panel
18 ¾ x 13 1/5 in. (47.5 x 34.2 cm.)
Provenance
with Wildenstein & Co., as 'Pietro Lorenzetti.'
with Matthiessen, London, before 1949.
Sir Kenneth Clark, later 1st Baron Clark of Saltwood (1903-1983), by 1960, as 'Vitale da Bologna'; (+), Sotheby's, London, 6 July 1988, lot 3, as 'School of Veneto, c. 1340'.
Anonymous sale [Property from an English Collection]; Christie's, London, 7 December 2006, lot 43, when acquired by the present owner.
Literature
E.B. Garrison, Italian Romanesque Panel Paintings. An illustrated index, Florence, 1949, p. 58, no. 92, as 'Adriatic, group C, probably Venetian, second quarter of 14th Century.'
D.C. Schorr, The Christ Child in Devotional Images during the XIV Century, New York, 1954, p. 103-4, as 'Venetian School, circa 1335.'
A. Jääskinen, The icon of the Virgin of Konevitsa, Helsinki, 1971, pp. 149-175.
M.S. Frinta, 'Searching for an Adriatic Painting Workshop with Byzantine Connections', Zograf, XVIII, 1987, pp. 12-21.
F. Zeri, La Collezione Federico Mason Perkins, Turin, 1988, p. 82, under no. 27.
L.B. Kanter and P. Palladino, in The Treasury of Saint Francis of Assisi, Milan, 1999, pp. 86-88.
M. Bacci, 'Some Thoughts on Greco-Venetian Artistic Interactions in the Fourteenth and Early-Fifteenth Centuries', in Wonderful Things: Byzantium Through Its Art: Papers from the Forty-Second Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, A. Eastmond and L. James eds., London, 2009/13, pp. 203-227.
M. Bacci, 'Veneto-Byzantine "hybrids": towards a reassessment', Studies in Iconography, XXXV, 2014, pp. 73-106.
R. Cornudella, 'The Master of Baltimore and the origin of Italianism in Catalan Painting of the Fourteenth Century', The Journal of the Walters Art Museum, LXXII, 2014, pp. 10-11, fig. 3.
M. Bacci, 'Un ibrido di successo; il 'dittico Sterbini', la Madonna 'dal risvolto bianco' e la Vergine Konevskaja', in Survival, Revivals, Rinascenze: Studi in onore di Serena Romano, N, Bock, I. Foletti, and M. Tomasi eds., Rome, 2017, pp. 469-483.
M. Bacci, 'On the Prehistory of Cretan Icon Painting', Frankokratia, Leiden, 2020, p. 17, fig. 2A.
Exhibited
London, Royal Academy, Italian Art and Britain, 1960, no. 271, as 'Vitale da Bologna.'
Special notice
These lots have been imported from outside the EU or, if the UK has withdrawn from the EU without an agreed transition deal, from outside of the UK for sale and placed under the Temporary Admission regime. Import VAT is payable at 5% on the hammer price. VAT at 20% will be added to the buyer’s premium but will not be shown separately on our invoice.
Sale room notice
Please note that the panel has been transferred from its original panel support to a board support, as specified in the condition report. The new support is stable and flat and the paint is securely attached to it.

Brought to you by

Clementine Sinclair
Clementine Sinclair Senior Director, Head of Department

Lot Essay

This refined panel forms part of a small group of works given to the Master of the Sterbini Diptych, a hand named after the work formerly owned by Giulio Sterbini (now Rome, Palazzo Venezia), whose collection was significant in both its scope and quality (see D. Farabulini, La pittura antica e moderna e la galleria del Cav. Giulio Sterbini, Rome, 1874). Probably a Greek master who worked in Venice and the south of Italy, he was active in the second and third quarters of the fourteenth century and was originally identified by Edward Garrison, who grouped four pictures, including this Madonna and Child, under ‘Adriatic School: Group C’ (op. cit.), reflecting the Adriatic influence that distinguished them from other Venetian panels of the time. The body of work was later expanded to include a triptych in the Museo Regionale, Messina, whose central Madonna and Child is close in composition to the present lot. In particular, the delicate handling of the folds here reveals an artist who managed to skilfully combine local Venetian duecento tradition with a marked Byzantine technique. Other proposals have been put forward as to the master’s origins: Miklós Boskovits (in a private communication at the time of the 2006 sale) suggested he may have been from Liguria and subsequently settled in the Veneto.
The panel was formerly owned by Kenneth Clark, Lord Clark of Saltwood, one of the leading figures in the British art world in the twentieth century. At the age of only thirty-one he was appointed Director of the National Gallery, London (1934-45), and also Surveyor of the King's Pictures (1934-44). He was a distinguished patron of the arts as well as an author, impresario and broadcaster. The landmark television series Civilisation, written and presented by Clark himself, in 1969, was one of the most influential arts programmes ever aired. He was also a collector in his own right, acquiring, mostly during the 1920s and ‘30s: ‘examples of almost every kind of artefact and almost every epoch’ (K. Clark, ‘Upper Terrace House: An Attempt to Keep Alive a Tradition in English Art’, House and Garden, II, no. 4, 1947, p. 27); and he noted that there were two kinds of collector: ‘those who aim at completing a series, and those who long to possess things that have bewitched them’ (K. Clark, Another Part of the Wood: A Self-Portrait, London, 1974, p. 193).

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