Michele Tosini, called Michele di Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio

George Perkins, Chipstead, Kent;
His deceased sale, London, Christie's, 14 June 1890, lot 36, for £46.4s to Davis (as Baroccio); 
Perhaps acquired by Sir George Faudel-Phillips, 1st Baronet (1840–1922), Balls Park, Herts.;
Sir Lionel Faudel-Phillips, 3rd Baronet (d. 1941), Balls Park, Herts.;
Thence by direct family descent.

The poplar panel is in a beautiful state, is in cradled and seemingly totally undisturbed. It is slightly bowed at each margin. There is a thin filet attached to each vertical margin. The paint surface is in a remarkable state of preservation, finely intact in every major part. The only area affected by damage and subsequent restoration is just below the centre right margin to an area around the virgins hand in shadow. Some of the darker shadows have turned a little translucent and there are some very minor spot retouchings elsewhere but overall the painting has survived in a state that is unusually perfect. Sold with an elaborate Victorian gilt frame.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

This impressive Florentine painting has not been seen on the market for over 125 years. Displayed in a magnificent carved and gilded frame, which is likely to have been designed for it in the nineteenth-century, the painting is first recorded in an English private collection in 1890. The high esteem in which the work was held is reflected not only in the elaborate openwork frame but also in the attribution given to the painting when it was sold at auction in London that year as a work by Barocci. Unpublished until now, The Holy Family with St Elizabeth and the young St John the Baptist is a characteristic and finely preserved work by Michele Tosini.

It is not known when exactly the painting was acquired by its next recorded owner, the Faudel-Phillips family, but it is likely to have been during the first decades of the twentieth century. Certainly a number of outstanding old masters were being bought then by Sir George Faudel-Phillips, Bt., and placed at Balls Park, Hertford, where this painting also hung. Foremost among Sir George’s acquisitions was Guercino’s monumental painting Saint Gregory the Great with Saints Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier, now in the National Gallery and formerly in the collection of Sir Denis Mahon.¹ In the mid-1930s Sir Denis saw the Guercino at the house, where he might also have seen Tosini’s sacra conversazione.

Michele Tosini began his artistic training in Florence with Lorenzo di Credi (c. 1456–1536) and Antonio del Ceraiuolo (fl. 1520–38) before entering the workshop of Ridolfo Ghirlandaio (1483–1561). By the mid-1520s, the two of them were frequent collaborators. According to Vasari, Tosini loved Ridolfo like a father, an attachment reflected in Tosini’s adoption of the older artist’s name. Their close working relationship spanned several decades.² His early works adopt an idiom that is strongly rooted in the tradition of Fra Bartolomeo and Andrea del Sarto but from the second quarter of the sixteenth century, Tosini’s works became more mannerist in style. In the 1550s Tosini was engaged on a number of significant commissions, foremost among them the fresco decoration of the Salone dei Cinquecento in the Palazzo Vecchio, where he worked alongside Vasari and other leading artists.

The creation of devotional paintings for his Florentine clientele was his speciality and Tosini would often repeat his most successful compositions, altering certain elements. This painting is an excellent example of his most refined Madonna and Child compositions. Tosini’s treatment of the flesh tones is particularly subtle, seen to best effect in the contrasting faces of Elizabeth and Mary. The physiognomy, scale and positioning of St Joseph in this painting is similar to the eponymous figure in a panel by Tosini formerly in an aristocratic Bohemian collection of the Counts von Klebelsberg, Barons von Thumberg, which sold in these Rooms in 2002.³

A considerably larger variant, with the same placement of the Virgin and Child but without the ancillary saints Elizabeth and Joseph, is recorded in a private collection in Connecticut.⁴ Two smaller variations are in the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo and the Pinacoteca Comunale in Faenza, the latter with St Catherine on the left kneeling before Christ.⁵ Indeed the gesture of the Christ Child blessing is common to all of these and in some versions is directed at the young St John. In this painting Christ’s gaze is focused towards an unseen presence outside of the picture space towards the left. Christ’s downward gaze suggests also a deliberate intent on the part of Tosini to invite contemplation from a particular side, presumably with a specific site in mind, perhaps in the context of a family home or private chapel.  

The painting’s attribution to Michele Tosini was endorsed by Everett Fahy, former curator of Italian paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, on the basis of photographs (letter dated 15 November 1999).

 

1. G. Finaldi and M. Kitson, Discovering the Italian Baroque. The Denis Mahon Collection, London 1997, pp. 108–09, no. 47. Guercino’s painting was acquired at auction at the Faudel-Phillips sale, Christie’s, 1 September 1941 and ff., on day 4, lot 671.

2. On the two artists' development from the later 1520s to the 1540s, see D. Franklin, 'Towards a new chronology for Ridolfo Ghirlandaio and Michele Tosini', in The Burlington Magazine, vol. 140, no. 1144, July 1998, pp. 455–55.

3. London, Sotheby’s, 10 July 2002, lot 58 for £65,000.

4. See Archivio Zeri, no. 34588, 156 x 126 cm. This may be the same work that was sold at Drouot, Paris in 1988, which looks to be identical albeit with differing dimensions.

5. Respectively 64 x 50 cm., inv. 318 (771); and 73 x 57 cm.