Giovanni de Lorenzo Larciani, formerly the Master of the Kress Landscapes

The identity of the Master of the Kress Landscapes was established by Louis Waldman as the Florentine Giovanni di Lorenzo Larciani.¹ The artist’s oeuvre had been reconstructed by Federico Zeri around a set of three spalliere panels from the Kress collection and now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C..² As his former pseudonym implies, Larciani often made use of beautiful, stylized landscapes usually combining dramatic, rocky terrains painted with a confident, swift brushwork.³  Despite his singular style, Larciani was very much aware of the major developments in Florentine painting of the time, especially the works of Fra Bartolommeo and Francesco Granacci, in whose studio he may have worked.

When last on the market, Everett Fahy endorsed the attribution to Larciani. 

1. See L.A. Waldman, 'The Master of the Kress Landscapes unmasked: Giovanni Larciani and the Fuecchio altarpiece', in The Burlington Magazine, no. 1144, vol. CXL, July 1998, pp. 456-469;
2. See F. Zeri, 'Eccentrici fiorentini', in Bollettino d'Arte, vol. XLVII/1, 1962.
3.  See L.A. Waldman, op. cit., p. 457.