Florentine School, 16th century

Anonymous sale, Saint-Raphaël, Var Enchères, 24 July 2020, lot 115 (as attributed to Francesco Morandini);

Where acquired by the present owner.

This intriguing and unusual painting is likely to have originated in Florence in the first half of the 16^th century and bears stylistic similarities to the expressive and unconventional pictorial manner of the eccentric Rosso Fiorentino (1494–1540), notably in the use of irridescent colouring and angular poses of the figures. A notoriously difficult and thorny figure, he was one of the leading proponents of Florentine mannerism, known for his idiosyncratic use of colour and dynamic and asymmetrical compositions, at odds with the more restrained classicism popular amongst his contemporaries Andrea del Sarto and Jacopo Carucci, called Pontormo.