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Lot Essay
Bernardino di Mariotto was in some ways the most individual Perugian painter of his generation. Trained apparently in a somewhat conservative workshop, he never became a slavish dependent on the example of Perugino, as so many of his contemporaries did. This was largely because, while maintaining a connection with Perugia where he obtained a number of altarpiece commissions for lesser churches, he was based for much of the period between 1502 and 1521 at San Severino in the Marche, where he absorbed the influence of the last significant local master, Lorenzo d'Allessandro: he also studied works by the Cortonese Luca Signorelli, who obtained a number of Marchigian commissions, and Crivelli. When in the Benson collection, this picture was accompanied by a pendant of The Marriage of the Virgin, and later sold in these Rooms on 25 April 2008, lot 105. That the main characters in both are placed to the right of the centre of the compositions may imply that the altarpiece of which the panels constituted the predella was intended for an altar on the left side of a church or chapel.
Robert Henry Benson (1850-1929), a prominent banker, married Evelyn Holford, daughter of the notable collector, Robert Stayner Holford, of Dorchester House and Westonbirt, niece of Robert Loyd-Lindsay, 1st Baron Wantage, also a senior collector, and niece by marriage of another outstanding collector, Alexander, 25th Earl of Crawford, author of the History of Christian Art. Both Benson and his wife shared a serious interest in early Italian pictures, and the collection they began to put together in the late nineteenth century was by any standard remarkable. This was sold en bloc to Duveen, and as a result most of the outstanding pictures from it are now in American collections, including: Bellini's Saint Jerome, Dosso's Circe, Giorgione's Benson Adoration and works by Duccio, Benvenuto di Giovanni and Carpaccio in the National Gallery of Art, Washington. Lord Duveen presented the early Correggio, Christ taking leave of his Mother to the National Gallery, London, of which Benson had become a trustee in 1912.
Robert Henry Benson (1850-1929), a prominent banker, married Evelyn Holford, daughter of the notable collector, Robert Stayner Holford, of Dorchester House and Westonbirt, niece of Robert Loyd-Lindsay, 1st Baron Wantage, also a senior collector, and niece by marriage of another outstanding collector, Alexander, 25th Earl of Crawford, author of the History of Christian Art. Both Benson and his wife shared a serious interest in early Italian pictures, and the collection they began to put together in the late nineteenth century was by any standard remarkable. This was sold en bloc to Duveen, and as a result most of the outstanding pictures from it are now in American collections, including: Bellini's Saint Jerome, Dosso's Circe, Giorgione's Benson Adoration and works by Duccio, Benvenuto di Giovanni and Carpaccio in the National Gallery of Art, Washington. Lord Duveen presented the early Correggio, Christ taking leave of his Mother to the National Gallery, London, of which Benson had become a trustee in 1912.