Benvenuto Tisi, called il Garofalo

With Thomas Agnew & Sons Ltd, London;
With Galerie Heinemann, Munich, 20 February 1924;
Private Collection, Switzerland, from the mid-1950s;
Anonymous sale, Zurich, Koller Auktionen, 26 March 2004, lot 3082 (as Garofalo and possibly workshop).

A. Venturi, Storia dell'Arte Italiana, vol. IV, Milan 1929, p. 287, reproduced p. 295, fig. 243;
A.M.F. Baraldi, Benvenuto Tisi da Garofalo tra Rinascimento e Manierismo, Ferrara 1976–77, p. 137, under cat. no. 50;
E. Mattaliano, 'Benvenuto Tisi detto il Garofalo: Originali, repliche, copie. Alcune esemplificazione', in Per Giuseppe Mazzariol. Quaderni di Venezia Arti/1, Venice 1990, pp. 165–66 (as Garofalo and workshop);
A.M.F. Baraldi, Il Garofalo, Rimini 1993, p. 137, under cat. no. 68.

This painting is one of three known versions of Garofalo's Sacra Conversazione composition. One is recorded as being in a private collection in Frankfurt, while the other more well-known work of almost the same dimensions as the present canvas is in the Pinacoteca Capitolina, Rome (inv. no. 2), with a sketch for the Circumcision on the reverse.¹ That work has variously been ascribed to Garofalo's early education and his mature period, but most scholars date the work to about 1520–30, which would also appear to be true of the present painting.² We are grateful to Dr Anna Maria Fioravanti Baraldi for endorsing the attribution to Garofalo, on the basis of a digital image.

1. Oil on panel, 64 x 82 cm.; see Baraldi 1993, p. 137, cat. no. 68, reproduced.
2. For a summary of these views, see Baraldi 1993, p. 137, under cat. no. 68.