Matteo di Pacino, formerly known as the Master of the Rinuccini Chapel active Florence 1360-74

Estimate

150,000 - 200,000 USD

bidding is closed

Description

Matteo di Pacino, formerly known as the Master of the Rinuccini Chapel
Saint Ivo with a Kneeling Supplicant
bears two old labels Pinacotheca/Al.Aberici Trivulti., Fogg Art Museum/Loan/533. 1940
tempera and gold on panel

Provenance

Possibly Rinuccini family (see note), from whom presumably acquired in 1831 by;
Princes Trivulzio, Milan;
Christopher Norris collection, Polesden Lacey, England, circa 1935;
Victor D. Spark, New York;
Purchased through Marco Grassi, New York, by the present collector in July, 2001.

Exhibited

Cambridge, MA, Fogg Art Museum, July 1940 to December 1945, as from an American Private collection.

Literature

G. Kaftal, Iconography of the saints in the painting of North East Italy, Florence 1978, p. 438, no. 140, and fig. 548 (as Bolognese School, late 14th Century);
A. Lenza, "Alcune novità su Matteo Pacino," Arte Cristiana, XCIII, 2005, pp. 34, 37, illus, fig. 10 (as Matteo di Pacino).

Catalogue Note

This panel was first identified as a work of Matteo di Pacino, then genereally known as the Master of the Rinuccini Chapel, by Miklós Boskovits. The Rinuccini Master had been christened by Offner, based around the lower range of frescoes in the eponymous chapel in the church of Santa Croce, Florence, the majority of which are by Giovanni da Milano. Luciano Bellosi first suggested the connection of the Master to Matteo di Pacino, an association which has been accepted by most scholars.¹ The artist’s personality appears to have been formed in the ambient of Bernardo Daddi, becoming soon influenced by the Cione brothers. He may be considered a painter of original character, an artist “di non scarsa originalità e fantasia narrative.”²

Saint Ivo, a thirteenth century priest and lawyer in Tréguier, Brittany, was canonized in 1366, and is the patron saint of lawyers, judges, and notaries (see Kaftal). The painting was once in the famous Trivulzio collection in Milan. It is likely it painting entered that collection, along with other Florentine and Tuscan paintings (such as Filippo Lippi’s Trivulzio Madonna, now in the Castello Sforzesco), on the marriage of Marianna Rinuccini to Don Giorgio Trivulzio in 1831. The label on the back is that of Prince Luigi Alberico Trivulzio (1868-1938), who dispersed much of the family's spectacular holdings.

1 see L. Bellosi, “Due note per la pittura fiorentina del secondo Trecento,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, XVII, 1973, pp. 179-194.

2 [trans: “of no small narrative originality and imagination”] Cataloghi della Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze, Dipinti, vol, I, M. Boskovits and A. Tartuferi, eds., Florence, 2003, p. 169.