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Lot Essay
This panel by Filippino Lippi depicts the young Saint John the Baptist kneeling in a landscape, wrapped in a crimson robe and absorbed in prayer. In the distance, Saint Jerome appears in devotion before a crucifix set within the wooded hillside, his lion resting beside him.
The painting has long been regarded as a fragment. In 1938, Katherine B. Neilson supported the earlier views of William George Constable and Bernard Berenson to this effect, despite the then-owner, William Harrison Woodward, insisting that the panel was intact. Neilson argued that it was likely a fragment of a Madonna or a Holy Family (loc. cit.). In their 2004 catalogue raisonné, Patrizia Zambrano and Jonathan Katz Nelson proposed instead that it may have been part of an Adoration of the Christ Child (loc. cit.). X-rays carried out by the previous owner substantiate this hypothesis, revealing a recumbent infant Christ at lower right that was later painted over with the scroll and flowering bushes.
While previously considered to be a work of the late 1480s, Nelson and Zambrano date the panel to the previous decad - to the late 1470s - closely comparing the physiognomy and treatment of the landscape to the Madonna and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist in the National Gallery, London (NG1412; fig. 1).
The painting has long been regarded as a fragment. In 1938, Katherine B. Neilson supported the earlier views of William George Constable and Bernard Berenson to this effect, despite the then-owner, William Harrison Woodward, insisting that the panel was intact. Neilson argued that it was likely a fragment of a Madonna or a Holy Family (loc. cit.). In their 2004 catalogue raisonné, Patrizia Zambrano and Jonathan Katz Nelson proposed instead that it may have been part of an Adoration of the Christ Child (loc. cit.). X-rays carried out by the previous owner substantiate this hypothesis, revealing a recumbent infant Christ at lower right that was later painted over with the scroll and flowering bushes.
While previously considered to be a work of the late 1480s, Nelson and Zambrano date the panel to the previous decad - to the late 1470s - closely comparing the physiognomy and treatment of the landscape to the Madonna and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist in the National Gallery, London (NG1412; fig. 1).