Lot Essay
This well-preserved work is among the earliest Florentine panel paintings to depict the Madonna and Child. Originally published by Siren (op. cit., 1922), whose attribution to Barone Berlinghieri (active in Lucca 1228-1282), while accepted by some, generally found only limited support from other scholars of the period. Offner (op. cit., 1933) was the first to relate the present work with a group of panel paintings that bear a close affinity with a Crucifixion in the Museo del Bigallo, Florence, and coined the name 'Bigallo Master'. This nomenculture was subsequently accepted by Garrison (op. cit., 1949), who characterised this artist as the most important and innovative painter working in Florence in the first half of the thirteenth century.
Other Madonnas from this group include one formerly in the collection of Harold Acton, Florence; another in the Museé des Beaux-Arts, Nantes (both heavily restored); a third in the Conservatorio delle Montalve, La Quiete, near Florence (almost entirely repainted); and a fourth in the Museu de Arte, São Paulo. They are characterised by their awareness of Byzantine models, possibly assimilated through Pisan channels, combined with a greater plasticity of form and warm skin tones. The posture of the Madonnas can also be related to the mosaics in the 'scarsella' of the Baptistery, Florence, dated 1225, although the panels are generally regarded as later than this, around circa 1240-50.
Among the present picture's former owners was Carl W. Hamilton (1886-1967) who, for a brief period, was one of the most active American collectors of early Italian pictures, buying in particular from Duveen. It was to him that the Berensons presented the predella panel of Saint John the Baptist in the Desert (Washington, National Gallery of Art, Kress Collection, inv. no. 1943.4.48), before it was realised that this was a missing element of Domenico Veneziano's Santa Lucia dei Magnoli altarpiece, a key Florentine commission of the 1440s. Hamilton's collection was exhibited in the Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey in 1925-6.
Other Madonnas from this group include one formerly in the collection of Harold Acton, Florence; another in the Museé des Beaux-Arts, Nantes (both heavily restored); a third in the Conservatorio delle Montalve, La Quiete, near Florence (almost entirely repainted); and a fourth in the Museu de Arte, São Paulo. They are characterised by their awareness of Byzantine models, possibly assimilated through Pisan channels, combined with a greater plasticity of form and warm skin tones. The posture of the Madonnas can also be related to the mosaics in the 'scarsella' of the Baptistery, Florence, dated 1225, although the panels are generally regarded as later than this, around circa 1240-50.
Among the present picture's former owners was Carl W. Hamilton (1886-1967) who, for a brief period, was one of the most active American collectors of early Italian pictures, buying in particular from Duveen. It was to him that the Berensons presented the predella panel of Saint John the Baptist in the Desert (Washington, National Gallery of Art, Kress Collection, inv. no. 1943.4.48), before it was realised that this was a missing element of Domenico Veneziano's Santa Lucia dei Magnoli altarpiece, a key Florentine commission of the 1440s. Hamilton's collection was exhibited in the Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey in 1925-6.