The Nativity

The son of a wealthy apothecary, Mainardi is thought to have entered the studio of Domenico Ghirlandaio in the late 1470s. The present composition is loosely inspired by Domenico’s 1485 Adoration altarpiece in the Sassetti Chapel in Santa Trinità, Florence, with the pose of the Christ Child depicted in reverse, and is part of a group of autograph variants produced by the artist. One is at the Muzeum Narodowe, Warsaw; another was sold in these Rooms, 5 July 1996, lot 400; and a further variant sold in these Rooms, 8 December 1995, lot 66. After Domenico’s death in 1494, his younger brothers Davide and Benedetto took over the running of the studio. Mainardi continued to work closely with them, and married their half-sister Alessandra Bigordi in the same year.

With a lack of documented works and an important but somewhat ill-defined role within the Ghirlandaio workshop, Mainardi’s oeuvre is complex to reconstruct, and numerous paintings that emerged from the workshop have been erroneously attributed to him. Like many of the artists who trained there, including Michelangelo, Mainardi favoured the tondo format and employed it to considerable success.

During the first years of the sixteenth century, Mainardi returned to his native San Gimignano where he received a number of prestigious commissions, including the frescoes for the Chapel of San Bartolo in the church of Sant’Agostino (1500), and other works that reveal the development of a more individualised style. He later returned to Florence where, in 1513, he died of the plague that was ravaging the city.