Giovanni Battista Cima, called Cima da Conegliano Conegliano 1459/60 - 1517/18 Conegliano or Venice

Perhaps in the collection of the Baronne de Conantré, Château de Conantré (Seine-et-Marne), which was formed circa 1835-60;
In the collection of the Baronne’s direct descendant, the Comtesse de Bryas;
Acquired from the heirs of Mme. de Bryas by Cailleux, Paris, in 1960;
With Thomas Agnew & Sons Ltd. (inv. 26323), London, from whom acquired by the Countess Spencer in 1965;
By whom sold ("The Property of the Countess Spencer"), London, Sotheby’s, 3 July 1985, lot 7, for £230,000, where bought by the present owner.

F. Heinemann, "Ein unbekanntes werk des Cima da Conegliano", in Arte Veneta, vol. XX, 1966, p. 236, reproduced fig. 286;
F. Watson, The Wallace Collection, London 1968, p. 64;
P. Humfrey, Cima da Conegliano, Cambridge 1983, p. 101, cat. no. 47, p. 116, under cat. no. 73, and p. 153, under cat. no. 144, reproduced plate 124;
J. Ingamells, The Wallace Collection. Catalogue of Pictures, vol. I, London 1985, pp. 258 and 262, foonote 6.

Cima was born in Conegliano, near Treviso, the place from which he takes his name, and he probably studied there before he went to Venice, where he is recorded by 1486. Cima’s paintings are clearly influenced by the works of his contemporaries Giovanni Bellini and Antonello da Messina, but the rich colour palette and sharply defined style of painting visible in his paintings make Cima's style entirely his own. A number of the artist's works are signed and a few are documented or dated, but since his style did not change substantially throughout his career a clear chronology of his work is somewhat hard to establish.

Although known to scholars since the 1960s, when it was in an English private collection, opinion has been divided as to this painting’s original function. When the painting was sold in 1985 it was accompanied by a photostat of a letter by Prof. Federico Zeri, dated 1968, who believed the panel to have originally formed part of the left wing of a triptych, as yet untraced. Watson (see Literature) also believed the panel once belonged to a larger polyptych and suggested that this panel once stood on the upper register of the triptych formerly on the high altar of S. Rocco in Mestre; the signed central panel of which is in the Wallace Collection, London, and the two flanking panels of Saints Sebastian and Roch in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Strasbourg (see Humfrey, under Literature, p. 115, cat. no. 73, reproduced plate 103, and p. 145, cat. no. 133, reproduced plates 104-5). Both these theories were rejected by Humfrey who considers the panel a fragment from a larger Sacra conversazione altarpiece; an opinion further shared by Ingamells (see Literature). Humfrey argues that Watson’s theory is implausible on both visual and historical grounds: there are no parallels in Cima’s œuvre for representing figures in an upper register in knee-length format and foreshortened dal sotto in su; compare, for example, the single figures in the upper register of the Miglionico triptych of 1499 which are not foreshortened and are only shown bust-length (reproduced in Humfrey, op. cit., pp. 118-9, cat. no. 79, fig. 71). Furthermore various early references to the Mestre triptych make no mention of missing saints and the engraving of the altarpiece by A. Baratti (1724-87), presumably showing the triptych before it was dismembered, consists of the three full-length saints and a lunette with The Madonna and Child with two Franciscan saints above, but no sign of the present panel.

Humfrey dates the Saints Christopher and Peter to the middle of the first decade of the 16th century, that is to circa 1504-6, on the basis of a stylistic comparison with Cima’s Incredulity of St. Thomas with St. Magnus in the Accademia, Venice, which can be dated to just before 1505-6 (op. cit., pp. 151-2, cat. no. 143, reproduced plate 121). Both paintings share the same rich use of colour and crisp modelling so characteristic of Cima’s works. The figure of St. Peter is re-elaborated by Cima a couple of years later, in circa 1507-9, when he uses the same figure - his head is identical and seen from the same viewpoint although the saint is shown full-length - in his S. Fior polyptych, where St. Peter appears with another saint in the lower register on the left (ibid., cat. no. 130, reproduced plate 146). St. Christopher on the other hand does not relate compositionally to any other known treatments of the subject in Cima’s œuvre, though Humfrey tentatively suggests that it may reflect the appearance of a work by Antonello da Messina formerly in the church of S. Giuliano, Venice, recorded there by Sansovino in 1581 but since lost.