Raffaellino del Garbo

Private collection, Italy;

Anonymous sale, Milan, Sotheby's, 20 November 2007, lot 17, where acquired by the present owner.

The following condition report is provided by Sarah Walden who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's: Raffaellino del Garbo. Tondo. Madonna and Child with the Infant St John. This tondo is on a thick poplar panel with three joints and a single old cross bar. None of the joints have moved and the paint surface has remained beautifully stable and secure. There may once have been a few slightly ridged flakes in the upper veil over the head of the Madonna, but these are in fact perfectly firm, not raised or loose. The overall condition is remarkably good, with a very few minor largely surface retouchings: by the upper right outer edge, along the edge in the left sky, and at the edge below on St John's elbow. Other surface retouches are along the outline of the Madonna's shoulder with her red drapery against the sky and just above near the Child's hand on her neck, with a little retouching on the Child's chin and His heel, with little line on St John's forehead. There is an occasional small mark or indentation inside the veil of the Madonna and one or two old worm holes at upper centre and in the Child's ankle. The silver detail on the Madonna's book has tarnished, and there is some blanching around the shell gold decoration of her veil. The cross of St Jerome and the nearby trees are a little thin in places against the sky but the free painterly treatment throughout is beautifully preserved generally. The Madonna's red drapery is faintly uneven in the stomach and her blue drapery slightly patchy on her knee and by the back of the seat. The overall condition however is unusually good in a painting of this period. The fresh quality and sureness of the brushwork has been preserved intact and unworn almost throughout. 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."

Pupil of Filippino Lippi, teacher of Bronzino and Andrea del Sarto. Raffaellino’s highly considered yet relatively small body of work neatly links the art of the Quattrocento with that of the High Renaissance in Florence. While always grounded in the idiom of the great Florentine masters of the mid-to-late fifteenth century, his art draws on a variety of influences, not just from his native city of Florence, but from the likes of Perugino and Pintoricchio, the latter with whom he worked in Rome in the 1490s. For much of his career however it is his teacher Lippi who remained the overriding influence, though Raffaellino politely shuns the final flourish of whimsical exuberance that characterises much of his master’s œuvre, favouring instead the measured style of, for example, Ghirlandaio. Here the well balanced composition is constructed upon two planes, the protagonists offset by the miniature figures of, on the left, Saint Jerome, kneeling with his crucifix in front of a cave, his wide-brimmed hat hanging behind him against the rock, and, on the right, the scholarly Saint Francis at peace with his texts. The two saints are seen in profile, essentially facing one another, and subtly frame the composition as a whole.

In his mature work, of which this tondo is an example, the Umbrian influence becomes more marked especially in his use of colour. In later works, in a vain attempt to keep up with the rapid artistic development made by his peers in Florence, he employs violets, carmines and yellows that in some cases border on the garish. Here, however, the serenity of the scene is enlivened by a vivid palette in beautiful balance between the richness of the Virgin’s red dress, the cool, light blue of her headdress and the brilliant green of the pastures beyond.

Conceived very much in the classical idiom prevalent in the art of Florence circa 1500, it is reminiscent not just of Lippi but also of Botticelli and Piero di Cosimo. Indeed, the composition is clearly linked to one that originated in the Botticelli studio, and of which innumerable versions exist, the best of which is in the Cleveland Museum of Art; the Christ child stands astride His mother, with their faces however turned towards one another, St. John standing to the left in similar pose.¹ But the precise composition we see here, with both Christ and His mother looking directly out at us has, through the twentieth century, been most commonly associated with Piero di Cosimo and Raffaellino, though most scholars now consider those previously given to Piero to be, in fact, by Raffaellino: the tondo most commonly given to Piero was formerly on the London art market and was catalogued by Anna Forlani and Elena Capretti  in 1996 as the work of Piero, though others, including Everett Fahy, now attribute it to Raffaellino.² Other versions have in the past been attributed to Francesco and Raffaello Botticini as well as Botticelli. 

While the pose of the Virgin and Child, and even that of St. John, are to be found in other works (Forlani and Capretti list nine in addition to the one they attribute to Piero) the background landscape included here is unique.³ The version with which the painting as a whole is most closely associated is that in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen. From a stylistic point of view a close comparison may be made with Raffaellino’s tondo of the same subject in the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples, particularly in the figure of St. John, the face of the Virgin and the elegant linearity of the drapery, a hallmark of Raffaellino’s style.⁴ A comparison with the so-called ‘Benson tondo’, formerly in the W. R. Hearst collection, New York, is also of merit.⁵

1. See R. Lightbown, Sandro Botticelli, London 1978, vol. II, pp. 124–25, cat. no. C19, reproduced.
2. See A. Forlani Tempesti and E. Capretti, Piero di Cosimo, Florence 1996, p. 95, cat. no. 5, reproduced p. 26.
3. Ibid, p. 150, cat. nos B1–B9.
4. See B. Molajoli, Notizie su Capodimonte. Catalogo delle Gallerie e del Museo, Naples 1960, reproduced fig. 11.
5. B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Florentine School, London 1963, vol. I. p. 187, reproduced vol. II, fig. 1158.