Gregorio di Cecco di Lucca

Anonymous sale, Zurich, Galerie Tanner, 30 September 1932, for CHF. 20,000;
With Julius Böhler, Munich;
With José Carreras, Barcelona.

Zurich, Kunsthaus, Ausländische Kunst in Zürich, 1943.

"The following condition report has been provided by Sarah Walden, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting on a fairly thick poplar panel is not a folding triptych. It was not possible to see the back but the panel appears perfectly stable and flat, and has not been thinned or cradled in any way. There is a fairly even craquelure with slightly more towards the centre, and although the gilding of the integral frame is tending to flake and there have been a few lost flakes in Mary Magdalen's vermilion drapery, the paint elsewhere appears stable and secure. The gilding in general is rather well preserved, but there has been one notable damage in the upper part of the central panel, where the pelican feeding its offspring with its blood has been almost entirely defaced then repaired with an almost circular retouched filling, the only section left intact being the gilding above the nest and below the head of the bird. The two flying angels beneath were in a fragile transparent resinous pigment that is partially lost, but this was laid over a glittering cluster of minute indentations in the gold leaf that remain to fill out the flying figures. St John the Baptist is finely intact, as is the figure of Christ and much of the central panel including the delicate drapery of St. John on the right. There is some old darkened varnish unevenly in places and one quite marked crack through the head of the Madonna, but scarcely any wear, apart from some lost glazing in the drapery of Mary Magdalen. Her under robe was presumably originally green copper resinate, now turned brown with time. Overall the painting has been finely preserved and is unusually intact and unworn. This report was not done under laboratory conditions."
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

We are grateful to Dr. Gaudenz Freuler for proposing the attribution to  Gregorio di Cecco following first-hand inspection. On the basis of photographs, however, both Prof. Miklós Boskovits and Everett Fahy independently endorse the traditional attribution to Paolo di Giovanni Fei (c.1345 - c.1411).

Gregorio di Cecco was a pupil of Taddeo di Bartolo in Siena, with whom he jointly signed an altarpiece in 1420 for the Marescotti chapel in the church of Sant' Agostino in Siena (now lost). He became Taddeo's partner in 1421 and his adoptive son and heir following his death in 1422. In the same year he was one of the advisors on the construction of the church and loggia of San Paolo, Siena. His style is unsurprisingly derived from that of Taddeo, but differs in its refinement and colouring. The placing of Saint Francis here at the foot of the cross alongside the mourning Virgin and John the Evangelist, where Mary Magdalene normally kneels, might suggest that this portable triptych was commissioned by a Franciscan or by someone who wished his name-saint to appear in such a prominent position.