Lot Essay
Keith Christiansen notes that the present lot is connected to two miniatures of the same subject (op. cit., p. 154, no. 21; and G. Damiani, I Libri di Coro, L'Osservanza di Siena: La Basilica e i suoi condici miniati, 1984, p. 163), datable to 1459-63 and a somewhat later predella of the Nativity in the Vatican. The prototype for all of these compositions is a fragment of the center panel of an altarpiece in the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena, Inv. no. 262, which dates to the 1450s.
While he dates the present lot to the last decade of the artist's life, the conservative use of fourteenth century pictorial elements, such as the cave, the kneeling figures of Mary and Joseph and the Annunciation to the Shepherds in the background, is not so much due to a lack of artistic ambition, but more that the paintings were conceived as devotional aids, or Franciscan arte sacra, rather than works of art.
While he dates the present lot to the last decade of the artist's life, the conservative use of fourteenth century pictorial elements, such as the cave, the kneeling figures of Mary and Joseph and the Annunciation to the Shepherds in the background, is not so much due to a lack of artistic ambition, but more that the paintings were conceived as devotional aids, or Franciscan arte sacra, rather than works of art.