Tommaso di Credi, called Tommaso

Believed to have passed down by inheritance in the present owner's extended family since the late 19th century.

The panel has been strongly thinned, backed and cradled, and appears perfectly flat and stable. There is an old, repaired, diagonal split, running down from the top left-hand side of the wall behind the Madonna across the entire panel. Another smaller vertical split runs down from the centre of the upper edge. An irregular area, 10cm. at its widest, running across the lower edge of the panel, may indicate a later extension or reconstruction, probably dating back to the 19th century. The vast majority of the paint surface is otherwise in remarkably good condition. There has been some minor thinning of the paint, due to natural ageing, but the majority is very well-preserved indeed. Inspection under ultraviolet light reveals scattered, minor, local spot retouchings, for example to the body of the Christ Child, a small 1 cm. square loss on the foot of the Baptist, and around the largest split. Offered in a nineteenth-century gilt plaster rectangular wood frame, with punched and foliate decoration.
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This tondo is a characteristic work by Tommaso di Credi, also known as the Master of the Santo Spirito Sacra Conversazione, after an altarpiece in the church of Santo Spirito in Florence, depicting the Madonna and Child enthroned.¹ Tommaso, who specialised in scenes such as the present one destined for a domestic setting, was a close follower of Lorenzo di Credi and in all likelihood trained in his workshop.

Lorenzo’s influence is visible throughout the composition, from the expansive landscape and arrangement of figures, to the pose of the Madonna and the physiognomy of the child. Tommaso’s Madonna is of a type which frequently appears in Lorenzo’s work, with one such example being that in the latter’s Virgin Adoring the Child of 1490–1500, in the National Gallery, London (inv. no. NG648).² The posture of the National Gallery Madonna and even the colour scheme of her garments have been reused by Tommaso in the present work.

Of other known works by Tommaso, our tondo is closest to the Madonna adoring the Child with two angels in the Los Angeles County Museum.³ The Madonna-type inherited from Lorenzo is reused in this painting and the protagonists are placed against the dilapidated stone wall of the stable.

1. G. Dalli Regoli, Lorenzo di Credi, Pisa 1966, p. 190, cat. no. 225, reproduced fig. 259.

2. Dalli Regoli 1966, p. 125, cat. no. 51, reproduced fig. 77B.

3. B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Florentine School, London 1963, vol. II, reproduced fig. 1180.