TUSCAN SCHOOL, 15TH CENTURY
TUSCAN SCHOOL, 15TH CENTURY
TUSCAN SCHOOL, 15TH CENTURY
2 More
TUSCAN SCHOOL, 15TH CENTURY
5 More
This lot has been imported from outside of the UK … Read more PROPERTY FROM A DISTINGUISHED PRIVATE COLLECTION
TUSCAN SCHOOL, 15TH CENTURY

Figures listening at the door

Details
TUSCAN SCHOOL, 15TH CENTURY
Figures listening at the door
tempera on panel
10 3⁄4 x 8 in. (27.2 x 20 cm.)
Provenance
with Moretti Galleria d'Arte, November 2013, from whom acquired by the present owner.
Special notice
This lot has been imported from outside of the UK for sale and placed under the Temporary Admission regime. Import VAT is payable at 5% on the hammer price. VAT at 20% will be added to the buyer’s premium but will not be shown separately on our invoice.

Brought to you by

Clementine Sinclair
Clementine Sinclair Senior Director, Head of Department

Lot Essay

This panel has been plausibly identified as from the lower section of a representation of the Pentecost. The two men stand for the multitudes who marvelled as the Holy Spirit revealed itself to the apostles who were gathered in the upper room of a house in Jerusalem: they hear the message in their own languages through the open door.
The first Tuscan artist to include auditors in this way was apparently Giotto in his panel in the National Gallery, London (no. 578), but the most ambitious Florentine treatment of the theme is a fresco by Andrea di Bonaiuto in the Spanish Chapel at Santa Maria Novella, Florence. It has been plausibly suggested that this fragment was from an upright treatment of the subject, like the panel from Jacopo di Cione’s San Pier Maggiore altarpiece (London, National Gallery, no. 578), in which the event is heard though an open door to the lower floor of the building. The painter was clearly aware of such iconographic precedents and is likely to have been Tuscan rather than Bolognese as formerly supposed.

More from Old Masters Evening Sale

View All
View All