Neri di Bicci Florence 1419 - 1491

Ercole Canessa, his sale, New York, American Art Association, 25-26 January 1924, lot 164;
Purchased from the above by James W. Oliver;
With Durand Ruel, Paris, 1952;
Evan M. Evans, New York;
Victor D. Spark, New York, 1961 and 1967 (see under Literature below);
Anonymous sale, New York, Sotheby's Parke-Bernet, 14 January 1988, lot 58, where purchased by the present collector.

Advertisement in The Art Quarterly, Spring 1961 and Spring 1967, reproduced.

This small devotional painting of The Madonna and Child with Angels is a characteristic work by Neri di Bicci. Its iconography is traditional and its style, though a little archaic and retardataire for Quattrocento painting in Florence, is instantly recognisable. Characteristic of Neri di Bicci are the decorative details in the painting; the gold trim of the Madonna’s robe and the cushion on which Christ sits; the delicate punchwork of the haloes; and the gold rays emanating from the stars and clouds scattered throughout the sky.

Neri di Bicci was the third in line from a family of artists: his father Bicci di Lorenzo (1373-1452) and his grandfather Lorenzo di Bicci (1350-1427) had been successful painters before him. He was a member of the Compagnia di San Luca in Florence in 1434 and began his artistic career as an assistant in his father’s workshop, taking over its running after Bicci di Lorenzo became ill in 1446. It was after his father’s death in 1452 that Neri di Bicci became an independent artist in his own right and he began keeping a diary, both professional and personal, which covers his principal years of activity from 1453 to 1475: this account, called Le Ricordanze, has been described as “the most extensive surviving original document to record the activity of a 15th-century painter”.¹ His paintings successfully integrate the early Quattrocento models of his father’s paintings with those of the more naturalistic artists of his own generation, such as Fra Angelico, Domenico Veneziano, Filippo Lippi and Andrea del Castagno. Although not considered an innovator, Neri di Bicci and his workshop received a constant stream of commissions from the Florentine nobility and religious institutions, and a number of talented artists were employed by him over the years: Cosimo Rosselli, Giusto d’Andrea, Francesco Botticini and Bernardo di Stefano Rosselli are amongst those documented there.

Dating Neri di Bicci’s paintings is extremely difficult because the style and iconography of his works remained largely unchanged throughout his career. A number of parallels between this Madonna and Child and other panels by Neri di Bicci can be found, however: the Madonna’s facial type and costume (white veil, gold-trimmed robe and brooch) are the same as those in the large altarpiece of The Madonna with the Girdle in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow. Variations on the theme of this panel, where the Madonna and Child are seated before a star-lit sky, were in the collection of Georg Hartmann, Frankfurt-am-Main,² and another (in which the Madonna is helped by two angels to cover the sleeping Christ Child) was sold in these rooms, 16 April 1980, lot 45.

1. B. Santi, "Neri di Bicci", in J. Turner ed., The Dictionary of Art, London 1996, vol. II, p. 801. The manuscript of Le Ricordanze consists of 189 sheets and is held at the Uffizi, Florence.
2. Exhibited in Frankfurt in 1924-5, no. 150 (Witt Library mount).