Borghese di Piero, formerly called the "Master of Saints Quiricus and Julitta"

Achillito Chiesa, Milan.

C. Volpe, "Alcune restituzioni al Maestro dei Santi Quirico e Giulitta",  in Quaderni di Emblema 2 Miscellanea di Bonsanti, Fahy, Francisci, Gardner, Mortari, Sestieri, Volpe, Zeri, Bergamo 1973, pp. 19-20, reproduced fig.18 (as by the Master of Saints Quirico and Giulitta).

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This panel has been thinned and cradled. The paint layer is stable. There is one crack running from left to right across the center and another in the upper left running through the shoulders of Christ, however the remainder of the work is healthy. The painting has been fairly recently restored but the varnish and the restorations are not particularly attractive. Retouches are faintly visible under ultraviolet light in various little spots yet none of them seem to address any major issue. There is more delicacy to this picture than is visible at present, which would be revealed if the restoration were to be reexamined.
"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 Maria Teresa Filieri for confirming the attribution, based on an image.  She dates this painting to the middle of the 15^th century.

This depiction of the Baptism of Christ is almost certainly a section of the predella for an, as yet, unidentified altarpiece.  Borghese di Piero was a native of Pisa, but active much of his career in nearby Lucca.  A body of work attributable to the artist began to take shape beginning in 1965, when Roberto Longhi recognized that three predella panels depicting scenes from the life of Saints Quiricus and Julitta (then in the Gambier-Parry collection and now in the Courtauld, London [inv.P.1966.GP.264.1-3]) were by the same artist as an anconetta of the Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints Sebastian and Leonard in a private collection.  He christened the artist the "Master of Saints Quiricus and Julitta" after the London panels.¹  Carlo Volpe added nine paintings to this nucleus in 1973 with some at the suggestion of Miklòs Boskovits.²  Volpe's article confirmed the anonymous artist's apparent Florentine influences (particularly Masaccio and Masolino), but also suggested a certain provincialism, not least because some of these new additions were still in situ or with known provenances that placed their original locations well outside of the city of Florence.  Both Volpe and Zeri suggested that the painter might be identified with the Pisan painter Battista di Gerio, a reasonable theory given the influences seen in his works.³  The emergence of further works attributed to the Master in Lucca and its environs seemed to secure an ambient for the artist in Western Tuscany.  The identity and personality—and the apparent anomalism of his artistic personality, at times more "Florentinizing" and others more "Pisanizing"—continued to be discussed and it was only in 1995 that Maria Teresa Filieri was able to confirm the true name of the artist by connecting the eponymous London predelle with the commission for the high altar of the church of San Quirico di Capannori given to Borghese di Piero in 1448.⁴  This connection was stylistically confirmed by the discovery of another document of 1457 charging Borghese with the fresco decoration in the chapel of Santa Caterina in the Carmelite church of San Piero Cigoli, Lucca.

 

1. R. Longhi, "Un incontro col 'Maestro dei Santi Quirico e Giulitta'," in Paragone, XVI, 1965, 185, pp. 40-43.
2. C. Volpe, "Alcune restituzioni al Maestro dei Santi Quirico e Giulitta," in Quaderni di Emblema 2, 1973, pp. 17-21.
3.  F. Zeri, "Una scheda per Battista di Gerio" in Quaderni di Emblema 2, 1973, pp. 13-16; and F. Zeri, "Battista di Gerio: un piccolo passo avanti," in Diari di lavoro 2, 1976, pp. 36-8.
4.  M.T. Filieri, "Proposte per il maestro dei Santi Quirico e Giulitta," in Arte Cristiana, LXXXIII, 1995-274.