.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This fascinating quattrocento Florentine panel combines three entirely different devotional themes: the penitent St. Jerome, shown at the left striking his breast with a rock in front of an altar on which lean a book and a cardinal's hat; the stigmatization of St. Francis, whose miracle is witnessed by Brother Leo with a fictive view of Mount Subasio behind them; and Tobias with the Archangel Raphael, both elegantly dressed in contemporary Florentine costume and striding purposefully across a rocky terrain in the middle of the panel - no attempt being made to reconcile their scale to those of the other figures or the landscape. All three themes, especially that of Tobias and St. Francis, were individually popular in Italy during the lifetime of Neri di Bicci, but the compression of the three into one small panel is almost unique.
The story of Tobias comes from the Apocryphal Book of Tobit and tells of a son who travels to a far off land to collect money for his father who has been afflicted with blindness. He is guided by a young man, in fact the Archangel Raphael, who eventually helps him to cure his father's blindness, to collect the money, and to win his bride, Sarah. A fish with divine powers, usually carried in depictions of this story by Tobias, plays a role in all three deeds. Jerome, like St. Francis, was venerated for his ascetic life and is known as the translator of the bible from Hebrew into the Latin Vulgate. The cult of Tobias, with its natural resonance for a mercantile culture in which travel played a crucial role, was extremely popular in fifteenth century Florence and gave rise to such masterpieces as the Tobias and the Angel from the circle of Verrocchio (National Gallery, London) and the painting of the same subject by Pollaiuolo (Pinacoteca Sabauda, Turin). Lay societies in Florence such as Il Raffa and La Scala were dedicated to the veneration of Raphael and Tobias and it would have been for a patron with this sort of connection that this panel would most likely have been painted.
Neri di Bicci was the son of the artist Bicci di Lorenzo and himself ran one of the most successful workshops in Renaissance Florence. His business activities were recorded in a workshop diary, the Ricordanze, which is the single most extensive surviving document relating to a fifteenth century painter. Neri di Bicci, a third generation artist, perfected a decorative, legible style that, while showing an awareness of Filippo Lippi and Domenico Veneziano, always remained a humbler, less innovative product. He developed a skill for rendering architectural interiors that lent itself to popular depictions of the Annunciation. He also produced, with little variation, many Coronations of the Virgin. His dryness of outline was balanced by a richness of color - many of his works are lavishly adorned with gold, azurite and lake - and charm of detail. As a result his output appealed to a range of patrons from elite families such as the Soderini and Rucellai to small shopkeepers and country parish priests. Neri di Bicci employed many assistants, of which twenty-two are named in the Ricordanze, including Cosimo Rosselli and Francesco Botticini. Few, however, have survived as individual artistic identities.
This painting is, stylistically, a typical product of Neri di Bicci's workshop. The archaicizing rocky landscape, reminiscent of paintings by Domenico Veneziano, and the facial types - especially that of the Archangel Raphael with the strongly drawn features and highly colored cheeks and hair - are archetypically the work of Neri di Bicci. The subject of Tobias was popular among his clients. The Robert Lehman Collection (Metropolitan Museum, New York) owns two by the artist, one of which bears a sacred monogram with a sunburst on the back, a device associated with the kind of Franciscan Observant communities that might have commissioned the Weisl panel. Another Raphael and Tobias (Kereszteny Museum, Esztergom) shows the Archangel and Tobias on the left and St. Jerome on the right. The Ricordanze list the commission of 'dua Rafaegli gli dipinsi per le monache di Santo Ghagio' (two Raphaels painted for the monks of S. Gagio) in 1463, a reference to exactly the sort of votive panel under discussion here.
The story of Tobias comes from the Apocryphal Book of Tobit and tells of a son who travels to a far off land to collect money for his father who has been afflicted with blindness. He is guided by a young man, in fact the Archangel Raphael, who eventually helps him to cure his father's blindness, to collect the money, and to win his bride, Sarah. A fish with divine powers, usually carried in depictions of this story by Tobias, plays a role in all three deeds. Jerome, like St. Francis, was venerated for his ascetic life and is known as the translator of the bible from Hebrew into the Latin Vulgate. The cult of Tobias, with its natural resonance for a mercantile culture in which travel played a crucial role, was extremely popular in fifteenth century Florence and gave rise to such masterpieces as the Tobias and the Angel from the circle of Verrocchio (National Gallery, London) and the painting of the same subject by Pollaiuolo (Pinacoteca Sabauda, Turin). Lay societies in Florence such as Il Raffa and La Scala were dedicated to the veneration of Raphael and Tobias and it would have been for a patron with this sort of connection that this panel would most likely have been painted.
Neri di Bicci was the son of the artist Bicci di Lorenzo and himself ran one of the most successful workshops in Renaissance Florence. His business activities were recorded in a workshop diary, the Ricordanze, which is the single most extensive surviving document relating to a fifteenth century painter. Neri di Bicci, a third generation artist, perfected a decorative, legible style that, while showing an awareness of Filippo Lippi and Domenico Veneziano, always remained a humbler, less innovative product. He developed a skill for rendering architectural interiors that lent itself to popular depictions of the Annunciation. He also produced, with little variation, many Coronations of the Virgin. His dryness of outline was balanced by a richness of color - many of his works are lavishly adorned with gold, azurite and lake - and charm of detail. As a result his output appealed to a range of patrons from elite families such as the Soderini and Rucellai to small shopkeepers and country parish priests. Neri di Bicci employed many assistants, of which twenty-two are named in the Ricordanze, including Cosimo Rosselli and Francesco Botticini. Few, however, have survived as individual artistic identities.
This painting is, stylistically, a typical product of Neri di Bicci's workshop. The archaicizing rocky landscape, reminiscent of paintings by Domenico Veneziano, and the facial types - especially that of the Archangel Raphael with the strongly drawn features and highly colored cheeks and hair - are archetypically the work of Neri di Bicci. The subject of Tobias was popular among his clients. The Robert Lehman Collection (Metropolitan Museum, New York) owns two by the artist, one of which bears a sacred monogram with a sunburst on the back, a device associated with the kind of Franciscan Observant communities that might have commissioned the Weisl panel. Another Raphael and Tobias (Kereszteny Museum, Esztergom) shows the Archangel and Tobias on the left and St. Jerome on the right. The Ricordanze list the commission of 'dua Rafaegli gli dipinsi per le monache di Santo Ghagio' (two Raphaels painted for the monks of S. Gagio) in 1463, a reference to exactly the sort of votive panel under discussion here.