Niccolò Pisano Pisa 1470 - 1538

Erick W. Bergmann;
His sale, New York, Parke-Bernet Galleries, February 24, 1949, lot 63 (as Boccaccio Boccaccino);
There purchased by L. Medina for $425;
In a family collection by circa 1950 and thence by descent until sold, New York, Sotheby's, 22 January 2004, lot 12, where acquired (after the sale) by the present owner.

E. Sambo, "Niccolò Pisano tra Ferrara e Bologna", in Paragone, no. 455, 1988, p. 20, note 41;
A. Pattanaro, "La 'scuola' del Boccaccino a Ferrara", in Prospettiva, 64, 1991, pp. 65, 74, note 39, fig. 26;
E. Sambo, Niccolò Pisano pittore (1470-post 1536), Rimini 1995, pp. 132-133, no. 131.

Until relatively recently this painting was attributed to the Cremonese painter Boccaccio Boccaccino, with whom Pisano has often been confused; in her 1988 article Elisabetta Sambo first proposed the attribution to Pisano (see Literature). It was in Ferrara, where Pisano lived from 1499 until 1534 and Boccaccio from 1497 until 1500 (having been extracted from prison by Ercole I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, after having killed his own common-law wife), that the two artists' styles fused. The head of St. Joseph in the present work, who turns to look directly at the spectator, is a direct quotation (in reverse) of the same figure in Boccaccino's Holy Family in Modena, Galleria Estense (see A. Puerari, Boccaccino, Milan 1957, reproduced plate III).