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Master Paintings & Sculpture Day Sale

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 145. FAMILIARE DEL BOCCATI | MADONNA AND CHILD.

FAMILIARE DEL BOCCATI | MADONNA AND CHILD

Auction Closed

January 30, 06:45 PM GMT

Estimate

80,000 - 120,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

FAMILIARE DEL BOCCATI

Active in Lucca, circa 1460 - 1480

MADONNA AND CHILD


oil on panel

22½ by 16½ in.; 57.2 by 41.9 cm.

Roberto Longhi was first to isolate the personality of this distinct artist, dubbing him the "Familiare di Boccati" and uniting his oeuvre which then comprised the present panel, at that time in the Umberto Pini collection, Bologna; a further Madonna and Child with Two Angels in the Louvre, Paris; a Coronation of the Virgin in the Staedelsches Kunstinstitute, Frankfurt; and a Saint Sebastian in a private collection.1  Though somewhat elusive as a personality, the grouping of works by this anonymous artist is unmistakably homogenous and the moniker of the "Familiare del Boccati" was coined by Longhi due to the artist's apparent likeness in style to the Perugian painter, Giovanni Boccati, active in Marche and Umbria between 1445 and 1480. Modern scholarship, meanwhile, has disputed the Familiare's association with this region and Andrea de Marchi considers him to have been a Lucchese painter, linking him to the Master of Benabbio (now identified as Baldassare di Biagio del Firenze) and Matteo Civitali, both of whom were active in Lucca during the same period.  The composition here takes as its departure Fra Filippo Lippi's late 1460's Madonna and Child in the Museo di Palazzo Medici, Florence. This panel, and another in the Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe, which Ruda considers quite close to Lippi's technique, feature the Madonna and Child in an open air, flowering, architectural setting as opposed to the closed lunette in Lippi's original composition.2 


1. R. Longhi, Un 'familiare del Boccati' under Appunti in Paragone, vol 153, Milan September 1962, pp.62 - 64.

2. J. Ruda, Fra Filippo Lippi. Life and Work with a Complete Catalogue, London 1993, pp. 470-471, under cat. no. 63.