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Lot Essay
This rediscovered picture is one of a group of paintings that can be assigned to Garofalo's early years from 1497-1506, when he produced a number of panels depicting the Madonna and Child, that were greatly influenced by his teacher, the Cremonese painter Boccaccio Boccaccino (c. 1465-c. 1524), with whom Garofalo's early work is often confused. This group was first identified by A. Venturi in Storia dell'arte italiana, IX, 4, Milano, 1929, and included works in the Cà d'Oro, Venice, the Perkins Collection, Assisi and the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, all of which he dated to before 1506. The present picture, which had been previously attributed to Boccaccino, was first recognised as the work of his Ferarrese pupil by Pattanaro, (loc. cit.). It is very close to the Copenhagen picture in composition, colouring and in the brightly-lit river landscapes seen in the background.
Both pictures show a clear debt to Boccaccino's treatment of the subject, particularly to the Madonna and Child in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and to another in the Museo Civico, Padua, both circa 1500. A.M. Fioravanti Baraldi dates the Copenhagen picture to before 1499, the year that Lorenzo Costa arrived in Ferrara and introduced the young Garofalo to Bolognese classicism. A similar date for the present picture would thus seem plausible.
Both pictures show a clear debt to Boccaccino's treatment of the subject, particularly to the Madonna and Child in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and to another in the Museo Civico, Padua, both circa 1500. A.M. Fioravanti Baraldi dates the Copenhagen picture to before 1499, the year that Lorenzo Costa arrived in Ferrara and introduced the young Garofalo to Bolognese classicism. A similar date for the present picture would thus seem plausible.