Battista di Biagio Sanguigni, formerly known as the Master of 1419

Private collection, Brno, Czech Republic

The panel is uncradled and slightly bowed. The paint surface is clean and the varnish is relatively clear. Ultra violet inspection reveals a clear and even varnish. There is some restoration to the Madonna's face, and throughout her drapery. The two saints also have areas of restoration throughout in particular to the faces. At the lower margin there is a 7 cm vertical restoration. Furthermore there is an old 25 cm vertical restoration towards the upper margin.
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Battista di Biagio Sanguigni has until recently been known as the Master of 1419. The eponymous work from which this designation was derived is the central panel of the Santa Maria a Latera Altarpiece, depicting a Madonna and Child enthroned, that is inscribed and dated 1419 along its base, now at the Cleveland Museum of Art.¹

In 2002 both Miklós Boskovits and Lawrence Kanter assembled catalogues of Sanguigni's work and assigned between 12 and 15 works to him, ranging in date from 1410 to 1430.² The master has long been recognised as playing an important role in the transition from the Gothicism of Lorenzo Monaco (in whose workshop he probably trained) to Fra Angelico's classicizing style, but his connection with the latter artist has only recently become all the more pertinent. When the artist was identified as Sanguigni, his connection with Fra Angelico was confirmed, since close connections between the two are documented as early as 1417. The two artists are known to have worked for the same patrons, and it appears likely that Fra Angelico was indeed influenced by the older Sanguigni whose aforementioned work now at Cleveland, and another altarpiece in the Museo Civico di San Gimignano, are considered crucial in the design of the young Fra Angelico's ground-breaking Fiesole altarpiece of San Domenico .

The present work is unpublished; on the basis of photographs Dora Sallay was the first to attribute it to the artist.³ Dr Sallay notes in particular the weightlessness of the elongated figures and the large scale of the Madonna compared with the figures of the saints as characteristic of Sanguigni's early works executed between 1410 and 1419. She notes also the elegantly folded draperies, the rich decoration and the pattern on the ground, and the idiosyncratic black delineations of the eyes of the figures as being typical of Sanquigni's style.

We are grateful to Dr Kanter for endorsing the attribution to Battista di Biagio Sanguigni on the bases of photographs.

1. Inv. no. 1954.834.
2. M. Boskovits, 'Ancora sul Maestro del 1419', Arte Cristiana, XC, no. 812, September–October 2002, pp. 332–40; L. Kanter, 'Zanobi Strozzi miniature and Battista di Biagio Sanguigni', Arte Cristiana, XC, no. 812, September–October 2002, pp. 321–331.
3. Written communication with present owners, dated 14 November 2016.