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Lot Essay
Benvenuto di Giovanni was probably a pupil of Vecchietta, but during an unusually long working career - he died in his eighties - he responded to the influence of contemporary miniaturists as well as painters. With Matteo di Giovanni, Francesco di Giorgio and Neroccio, he ranked as one of the major masters of Siena in the last third of the quattrocento, and a large corpus of pictures testifies to the esteem in which he was held both in that city and in the wide area under its artistic and economic influence.
Since its publication by Kaftal in 1952 - the year in which Berenson endorsed it - the attribution of this panel to Benvenuto has been generally accepted. By 1972, the picture had been correctly linked with two predella panels, the Martyrdom of Saint Fabianus and the Massacre of the Innocents, from the Campana collection, now at Avignon, first restored to Benvenuto by Laclotte in 1956. Zeri proposed that the three panels had belonged to the predella of the artist's altarpiece in San Domenico, Siena, The Madonna and Child with Saints Fabianus, James, John the Evangelist and Sebastian, and his view found support long before he published it himself in 1987. Kanter, however, in the 1988-9 exhibition catalogue persuasively rejected the connection on iconographic grounds, pointing out that the San Domenico altarpiece in turn had been wrongly associated with a documented commission of 1483. Bandera (1989) added a further panel to the predella, the Saint Jerome in the Wilderness once in the Southesk collection, sold by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1986 (her no. 29). She considers the four panels to have probably belonged to an altarpiece of somewhat earlier date than that at San Domenico, circa 1475-6. Like the other components of the predella, this panel - in which the artist had no direct iconographic tradition to follow - shows how distinctive Benvenuto's skills were for narrative composition.
The present panel is first recorded in one of the most distinguished collections in England of early Italian painting formed in the nineteenth century, that of the Rev. Walter Davenport Bromley (1787-1863). The younger son of a prominent Cheshire family, Davenport Bromley first revealed a penchant for collecting pictures during a visit to Florence and Rome in 1844 when he was in his late fifties. During the following sixteen years he acquired more than 170 early Italian panels, almost all of them of religious subjects as befitted his cloth. He began in style, purchasing more than forty paintings at Cardinal Fesch's sale held in Rome in 1845. On his return to England he purchased a dozen pictures from the collection of William Young Ottley and during the following thirteen years acquired paintings at all the major sales at Christie's, including those of Edward Solly (1847), Edward Harman (1847), General Meade (1851), King Louis-Philippe (1853), Joly de Bammeville (1854), James Dennistoun (1855), Samuel Rogers (1856), Lord Northwick (1859) and Samuel Woodburn (1860). Most of Davenport Bromley's collection was housed at Wootton Hall, Staffordshire, while a few paintings were hung in his London house at 32 Grosvenor Street (see G.F. Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain, London, 1854, III, pp. 371-80, and Galleries and Cabinets of Art in Great Britain, London, 1857, pp. 166-8).
At Davenport Bromley's posthumous sale at Christie's London in 1863 only eight of the 174 lots failed to find buyers. Several pictures were bought back for the family, including Taddeo Gaddi's Bromley Davenport Altarpiece, which was sold with four other panels from the collection at Christie's, London, 24 May 1991, lots 33-7.
Since its publication by Kaftal in 1952 - the year in which Berenson endorsed it - the attribution of this panel to Benvenuto has been generally accepted. By 1972, the picture had been correctly linked with two predella panels, the Martyrdom of Saint Fabianus and the Massacre of the Innocents, from the Campana collection, now at Avignon, first restored to Benvenuto by Laclotte in 1956. Zeri proposed that the three panels had belonged to the predella of the artist's altarpiece in San Domenico, Siena, The Madonna and Child with Saints Fabianus, James, John the Evangelist and Sebastian, and his view found support long before he published it himself in 1987. Kanter, however, in the 1988-9 exhibition catalogue persuasively rejected the connection on iconographic grounds, pointing out that the San Domenico altarpiece in turn had been wrongly associated with a documented commission of 1483. Bandera (1989) added a further panel to the predella, the Saint Jerome in the Wilderness once in the Southesk collection, sold by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1986 (her no. 29). She considers the four panels to have probably belonged to an altarpiece of somewhat earlier date than that at San Domenico, circa 1475-6. Like the other components of the predella, this panel - in which the artist had no direct iconographic tradition to follow - shows how distinctive Benvenuto's skills were for narrative composition.
The present panel is first recorded in one of the most distinguished collections in England of early Italian painting formed in the nineteenth century, that of the Rev. Walter Davenport Bromley (1787-1863). The younger son of a prominent Cheshire family, Davenport Bromley first revealed a penchant for collecting pictures during a visit to Florence and Rome in 1844 when he was in his late fifties. During the following sixteen years he acquired more than 170 early Italian panels, almost all of them of religious subjects as befitted his cloth. He began in style, purchasing more than forty paintings at Cardinal Fesch's sale held in Rome in 1845. On his return to England he purchased a dozen pictures from the collection of William Young Ottley and during the following thirteen years acquired paintings at all the major sales at Christie's, including those of Edward Solly (1847), Edward Harman (1847), General Meade (1851), King Louis-Philippe (1853), Joly de Bammeville (1854), James Dennistoun (1855), Samuel Rogers (1856), Lord Northwick (1859) and Samuel Woodburn (1860). Most of Davenport Bromley's collection was housed at Wootton Hall, Staffordshire, while a few paintings were hung in his London house at 32 Grosvenor Street (see G.F. Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain, London, 1854, III, pp. 371-80, and Galleries and Cabinets of Art in Great Britain, London, 1857, pp. 166-8).
At Davenport Bromley's posthumous sale at Christie's London in 1863 only eight of the 174 lots failed to find buyers. Several pictures were bought back for the family, including Taddeo Gaddi's Bromley Davenport Altarpiece, which was sold with four other panels from the collection at Christie's, London, 24 May 1991, lots 33-7.