Datable to circa 1490-1495, this Adoration of the Christ Child is a late work by the renowned Florentine Renaissance artist Benozzo Gozzoli and highlights the end of his highly successful career. Beautifully rendered, intensely moving, and rich in tonality, it records a type of devotional image popular in late fifteenth century Florence where conventional Nativity elements were reformulated into a meditation on the Christ Child’s divinity. This panel was unknown prior to its appearance on the market in 2001, when it was attributed to Benozzo Gozzoli’s most gifted son, Alesso di Benozzo, also known as the Maestro Esiguo and Alunno di Benozzo.^[1] It has since been returned to the mature hand of the father by several scholars including Diane Cole Ahl and Pia Palladino, both of whom date it to the last few years of his career, the former to circa 1495 and the latter slightly earlier.

Gozzoli’s long career was concentrated in and around Florence, as well as in Umbria and Rome. He was primarily active as a fresco painter, and his altarpieces and smaller devotional paintings on panel like the present example are rarer in his corpus. All of his works, however, are notable for his harmonious color palette as well as his attention to design and ornamentation. Early in his career, in 1445, Gozzoli worked with Lorenzo and Vittorio Ghiberti on the east doors of Baptistry in Florence, and two years later, in 1447, he is recorded as assisting Fra Angelico on the famed frescoes in the Convent of San Marco in Florence and the chapel of San Brizio in Orvieto Cathedral. Among his most celebrated projects was his Journey of the Magi, a splendidly colorful fresco painted between 1459-1461 that covers three walls of the private chapel of the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi in Florence (fig. 1). In 1467, Gozzoli began a fresco series of twenty-five Old Testament scenes for the Composanto in Pisa, an ambitious project that would consume over 15 years. Towards the end of his career, the master looked toward the assistance of his workshop for various projects, in particular his sons, Francesco and Alesso di Benozzo, though there does not appear to be any discernible workshop participation in the present panel.

An imposing figure of the Virgin, kneeling in prayer with hands folded and a downward reverent gaze, fills the composition. From the delicate pleats and stitching of her veil to the gold detail that edges her mantle, she is regally adorned in colorful fabrics and an elegant ermine-lined robe that cascades to the ground around her and cushions the Christ Child lying at her feet. A contemplative Saint Joseph looks on from the right, the ox and the ass from the left, and a choir of angels hovering above the Virgin; finally,a traveling shepherd approaches from the distance at upper left beyond the hill. From the upper edge shines the rays of the guiding star that descend upon the Christ Child as a dotted gold line. The deep piety imbued within this simple scene may be a reflection of Domenico Savonarola, whose preachings were highly influential in Florence towards the end of the fifteenth century.

An earlier precedent for the present composition is Gozzoli’s Madonna of Humility, dated to circa 1452 and today in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (fig. 2),^[2] which shows the enthroned Virgin, Saints Francis and Bernardino of Siena, as well as the Donor Fra Jacopo da Montefalco, all in Adoration of the Christ Child. That painting was one of Benozzo’s earliest introductions to the theme of the mystical adoration, and the compositional elements he employed—the dense background, the captivating expressions of the figures, and the lavishly decorated fabrics—inspired other contemporary artists as well as his own work until the end of his career, as exemplified by the present lot.

^[1] The inscription on the reverse of the panel, however, suggests that it once may have belonged to a French Private collection, where it was attributed correctly to Benozzo Gozzoli.
^[2] Inv. no. 221, tempera on panel, 34.5 by 54.5 cm.