Follower of Giovanni Pietro Birago, called Giampietrino

Saint Mary Magdalene

Details

Follower of Giovanni Pietro Birago, called Giampietrino
Saint Mary Magdalene
oil on board
25¼ x 19¾ in. (64.2 x 50.2 cm.)

Provenance

Charles Stirling of Keir, by 1826, and by descent to
Lt.-Col. William Stirling of Keir; Sotheby's, London, 3 July 1963, lot 40, as Giampietrino, a 'Portrait of a Lady as the Magdalen' (£1,200 to Wengraf).
Somerset de Chair, Esq.; Christie's, London, 19 July 1974, lot 213; Christie's, London, 6 April 1984, lot 49, as a 'Portrait of a Lady as the Magdalen' (£30,000 hammer).

Literature

Stirling collection catalogue, 1826.
B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Central Italian and North Italian Schools, 1968, I, p. 168, as Giampietrino.

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Lot Essay

The collection at Keir, near Glasgow in Lanarkshire, Scotland, was formed primarily by Charles Stirling (b. 1771), who, like his father and grandfather, was a West India merchant. Many of his pictures, most of which were Italian, were purchased abroad in 1824-5, while others were bought on his behalf by the Earl of Elgin at London sales in 1829. The next significant addition to the collection was made by William Stirling (later Sir William Stirling-Maxwell, Bt.), one of the earliest authorities on Spanish art. The present picture, long accepted as an autograph work by Giampietrino thanks to its fine quality and dramatic chiaroscuro, appears in the 1826 catalogue of the Stirling pictures, and must have been acquired by Charles Stirling by that date.

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