Zanino di Pietro

With Clausen Art Rooms, New York (according to a label on the reverse);
Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, 29 April 2010, lot 38, where purchased by the present owner.

At the time of the 2010 sale, Andrea de Marchi, who proposed the attribution, dated this work to the early 1420s and compared the pose of the Christ Child with that in Zanino's work in the Pinacoteca nazionale di Ferrara, of 1415–20.¹ Born in Bologna, Zanino became one of the major Venetian painters of the first quarter of the fifteenth century. It has been suggested that Gentile da Fabriano, active in Venice from 1408, was dependent on the example of Zanino early in his career and that Zanino was instrumental in transmitting an Emilian style to him.  

1. D. Benati, in La Pinacoteca nazionale di Ferrara. Catalogo generale, Bologna 1992, pp. 81–82, cat. no. 86, reproduced.