Master Paintings Part II

Master Paintings Part II

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 568. Madonna and Child Enthroned Between Two Angels and Saint Nicholas, Catherine of Alexandria, John the Baptist and Lawrence.

Property from a Distinguished Private Collection

The Master of the Ashmolean Predella

Madonna and Child Enthroned Between Two Angels and Saint Nicholas, Catherine of Alexandria, John the Baptist and Lawrence

Lot Closed

January 30, 04:08 PM GMT

Estimate

150,000 - 200,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Property from a Distinguished Private Collection

The Master of the Ashmolean Predella

Active in Florence circa 1360 - 1390

Madonna and Child Enthroned Between Two Angels and Saint Nicholas, Catherine of Alexandria, John the Baptist and Lawrence


tempera on panel

panel: 15 3/8 by 10 5/8 in.; 39 by 27 cm.

framed: 17 by 12 1/2 in.; 43.2 by 31.8 cm.

G. Sterbini, Rome;
Private collection, Italy, by 1979;
Private collection;
With Moretti Fine Art, Florence;
From whom acquired, 2011. 
A. Tartuferi, in Da Ambrogio Lorenzetti a Sandro Botticelli, Florence 2003, pp. 62-67, reproduced. 

The author of this tender Madonna and Child scene is so named after a predella depicting the Birth of the Virgin in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.1 Datable to circa 1385-1390, it can be considered a late work of this Florentine painter, comparable with a similarly rendered panel in the Chigi-Saraceni collection, Siena. 

Though little is known of this elusive artist’s life, he trained in Orcagna's workshop in the 1360s and continued his work there following his master’s death in 1368, when the workshop passed to Orcagna's younger brother, Jacopo di Cione.2 He is known to have assisted Orcagna from 1367-1368 with the Saint Matthew triptych, today in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence,3 and he has also been identified as the collaborator in Jacopo’s elaborate, large scale Crucifixion altarpiece of 1369-1370, today in the National Gallery in London.4 With the influence of his two teachers as his foundation, this master developed his own individualized style that is most clearly visible later in his career.  


1. Tempera on panel, gold ground, 37.4 by 65.2, inv. no. A47. See The Ashmolean Museum: Complete Illustrated Catalogue of Paintings, Oxford 2004, p. 141, reproduced.  

2. L. Kanter, Painting and Illumination in Early Renaissance Florence, 1300-1450, exhibition catalogue, New York 1994, p. 193.

3. Tempera on panel, 257 by 264 cm., inv. 1890, no. 3163. See Gli Uffizi: Catalogo Generale, Florence 1979, p. 396, cat. no. P1120, reproduced.

4. Tempera on panel, 154 by 138.5 cm., inv. no. NG1468. See C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 1995, p. 118, reproduced.