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Lot Essay
Berenson terms this picture a 'Madonna and Child'. The composition is developed from the theme of the Adoration of the Child, so popular in the mid-quattrocento Florentine painting, while the ruined wall recalls many representations of both the Nativity and the Adoration. The inclusion of the saddle, and, less prominently, of Saint Joseph with an ass in the landscape evidently alludes to the Flight into Egypt, but the ox by the saint would more normally be found in a Nativity. Filippino clearly did not feel himself constrained by traditional iconography and his intention was rather to create an innovative Madonna composition suited to its circular format. The relationship between the two main figures is effective precisely because this echoes the form of the tondo: the pointing of the ruined wall and the vertical lines of the trees anchor the figures within the fictive space. Filippino's subtle and original understanding of the compositional requirements of tondi had previously been demonstrated in the paired Angel of the Annunciation and Virgin Annunciate of 1482-4 at San Gimignano.
Since its first appearance in Berenson's lists, his view that this picture was a late work has generally been accepted. Van Marle related it to the 1496 Adoration of the Magi in the Uffizi and Neilson, who noted the influence of Piero di Cosimo, considered that the picture was 'probably painted towards the end of 1496': a dating in the late 1490s was endorsed by St. John Gore in the 1965 exhibition catalogue. Zeri, in his survey of that exhibition wrote: 'Connections of this masterpiece with the early period of Piero di Cosimo contradict the later dating, ..., generally adopted; the most likely suggestion would be that in the early 1480s.'
Everett Fahy (letter of 22 March) advances a date in the early 1480s, when Filippino had moved from the Botticellian phase that led Berenson to attribute so many of the pictures of the previous decade to his 'Amico di Sandro'. As Fahy notes, Lippi's palette darkened, presumably under Netherlandish influence, which had been felt by other Florentines in the mid-1470s. The San Gimignano tondi that were commissioned on 3 January 1482 (1483 new style) are key works of this 'dark phase, with almost Leonardesque chiaroscuro' which the artist maintained up to the mid decade, as the altarpiece of the Madonna and Child with Saints John the Baptist, Victor, Bernard and Zenobius of February 1485 (1486 new style) for the Palazzo Vecchio, now in the Uffizi, demonstrates. As Zeri implied and Fahy notes this phrase 'runs parallel with early Piero di Cosimo', but by the 1490s both artists were working in a lighter chromatic vein. As Fahy suggests, the Wernher picture may be 'an immediate response' to the arrival in Florence of Hugo van der Goes's Portinari altarpiece (Florence, Uffizi) in 1483.
Since its first appearance in Berenson's lists, his view that this picture was a late work has generally been accepted. Van Marle related it to the 1496 Adoration of the Magi in the Uffizi and Neilson, who noted the influence of Piero di Cosimo, considered that the picture was 'probably painted towards the end of 1496': a dating in the late 1490s was endorsed by St. John Gore in the 1965 exhibition catalogue. Zeri, in his survey of that exhibition wrote: 'Connections of this masterpiece with the early period of Piero di Cosimo contradict the later dating, ..., generally adopted; the most likely suggestion would be that in the early 1480s.'
Everett Fahy (letter of 22 March) advances a date in the early 1480s, when Filippino had moved from the Botticellian phase that led Berenson to attribute so many of the pictures of the previous decade to his 'Amico di Sandro'. As Fahy notes, Lippi's palette darkened, presumably under Netherlandish influence, which had been felt by other Florentines in the mid-1470s. The San Gimignano tondi that were commissioned on 3 January 1482 (1483 new style) are key works of this 'dark phase, with almost Leonardesque chiaroscuro' which the artist maintained up to the mid decade, as the altarpiece of the Madonna and Child with Saints John the Baptist, Victor, Bernard and Zenobius of February 1485 (1486 new style) for the Palazzo Vecchio, now in the Uffizi, demonstrates. As Zeri implied and Fahy notes this phrase 'runs parallel with early Piero di Cosimo', but by the 1490s both artists were working in a lighter chromatic vein. As Fahy suggests, the Wernher picture may be 'an immediate response' to the arrival in Florence of Hugo van der Goes's Portinari altarpiece (Florence, Uffizi) in 1483.