Jacopo del Sellaio

The following condition report has been provided by Karen Thomas of Thomas Art Conservation LLC., 336 West 37th Street, Suite 830, New York, NY 10018, 212-564-4024, info@thomasartconservation.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. A picture that is structurally sound with a good deal of restoration throughout. Wear and past cleaning have led to restoration, particularly in more sensitive paints such as the brown paints and the resinous glazes. Restoration has been employed to re-establish the modeling in the flesh passages, with the darks heavily reliant on the retouching. The mottled appearance of Mary's blue mantle is attributable to restoration that has discolored over time. The patterned edging on the mantle has been realized by bridging undamaged stretches of the original gilding with restoration. The panel displays a marked lateral convex warp and appears to retain its original thickness.
"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."

Previously unpublished, this Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist is a typical work by the Florentine painter Jacopo del Sellaio, working in the second half of the 15th century.  According to Giorgio Vasari, Sellaio was a pupil of Fra Filippo Lippi and trained in his workshop alongside Sandro Botticelli; though today no documentary evidence survives to attest this.¹ While working in Prato from 1452-1469, however, Lippi listed among his assistants two garzoni, Domenico and Jacopo.²  It is possible that the former was Domenico Ghirlandiao while the latter is likely identifiable as Sellaio.  Jacopo set up his own workshop with Filippo di Giuliano which would later pass to his son, Archangelo di Jacopo del Sellaio (see lot 121).  The artist’s smoothly undulated forms and elegantly elongated figures, though influenced by his master Lippi, are also clearly indebted to his contemporary Botticelli. 

Sellaio painted a number of similar such Madonnas in upright formats, each time varying the background landscape, on occasion including an architectural element at right, and at times omitting the Infant Saint John at left.  In the majority of these paintings, the Christ Child is represented with his left leg raised upward, and with one or both arms outstretched toward the Virgin, such as that in the panel now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia (inv. no. 52).  As Nicoletta Pons indicates, the present composition is closest to a painting, known only through photographs today (fig. 1).³  In both that and the present compositions, the Child is serenely posed, with his feet and knees together and his hands drawn towards his chest.  

We are grateful to Nicoletta Pons for endorsing the attribution on the basis of photographs.

 

1.  G. Vasari, Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori, 1550, G. Milanesi ed., Florence 1878-1885, vol. II, pp. 627, 642–3.
2.  E.W. Rowlands, “Filippo Lippi”, in J. Turner ed., The Grove Dictionary of Art, vol. 19, p. 445.
3.  Private written communication with Nicoletta Pons, dated 24 November 2014.