Material oil on panel
Dimensions 92 × 70 cm
Place of Creation Florence
Status Vetted

About the Work

This expressive Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist exemplifies Andrea Boscoli’s mature engagement with late sixteenth-century Florentine Mannerism. Boscoli was trained in Florence in the circle of Santi di Tito, with whom he absorbed the principles of late sixteenth-century Florentine reform painting. A brief period of study in Rome in the early 1590s proved formative, encouraging close engagement with classical antiquity and with the fresco cycles of Polidoro da Caravaggio, as evidenced by an extensive surviving corpus of drawings. Boscoli was admitted to the Accademia del Disegno in 1584.

His early career is documented primarily through works on paper, which display a confident command of light and shadow, a rapid and expressive handling, and a wide range of visual references. Alongside Florentine models of the early Cinquecento, his drawings and paintings reflect awareness of contemporary artistic developments in central Italy. The fresco of the Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew (1587, Florence, Church of San Pier Maggiore) marks his first secure pictorial commission and exemplifies his assimilation of reformed naturalism combined with lessons drawn from Roman art.

This lively and vibrant painting presents a masterful use of contemporary tonalities, with striking shades. The composition breathes life into the figures through a soft portrayal of the Virgin, reminiscent of Neo-Pontormo’s style, and the ethereal quality of John the Baptist’s hair and fleece. The meticulous emphasis on anatomical accuracy, underscored by the balanced use of shadows, alongside the intricate arrangement of drapery, echo the artistic fervour of the early 1590s.

All the stylistic elements confirm a dating around 1594, as proposed by Forlani, who convincingly suggested associating this work with the painting documented on December 20, 1594, in Boscoli’s libro dei conti that details a transaction involving forty-two lire for this piece to “Master Luca di Potenti,” a craftsman from Borgo San Jacopo, Florence.

Boscoli’s Neo-Pontormesque attention to the chipped, swirling folds of the cloaks, the deep shadows inhabiting the eye sockets or cast across the forehead, and the lucid transparency of a palette composed of muted pinks, yellows, and purples - occasionally flecked with sharper, higher-pitched shadows - is especially noteworthy. The plump hands of the Virgin and the bodies of the two children move beyond mere stylization to acquire a median tone of everyday naturalness and a charming irregularity of profiles, bending themselves to the formal articulation of emotions. Although the face of the Madonna may appear abstract and distant, her hands and the expressive gestures of Jesus, holding one end of a ribbon inscribed with “ECCE AGN[US] DEI,” constitute the point from which that emotional chain unfolds, embracing the children through gestures and faces in the game-symbol of the fruit. In this restitution of illustrious models reinterpreted in a lyrical and intimate key, the full depth of Santi di Tito’s teaching is revealed, and above all the affectionate and tender influence of Barocci’s painting of the affections.

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Provenance

Florence, commissioned by Luca di Potenti, Borgo San Jacopo, 20 December 1594
Rome, Joachim (Gioacchino) Ferroni, until 1909
Rome, his estate sale, Jandolo e Tavazzi, Galleria Sangiorgio, 14-22 April 1909, lot 676
Munich and Berlin, Julius Böhler Gallery and Galerie Paul Cassirer, 24 November 1921
Prague, from whom acquired by R. Svoboda, 21 October 1922
Prague, private collection until 1946 c. where confiscated
Prague, National Gallery, acquired in 1950 (inv. O 10297)
Returned to the heirs of the aforementioned private collection in 1992
Prague, National Gallery, on loan from 1992
New York, Sotheby’s, 1 February 2024, lot 329

EXHIBITION
Warsaw, National Museum, Sztuka czasów Michała Anioła: wystawa w czterechset setną rocznicę
śmierci artysty, December 1963 - March 1964

Literature

Libro di debitori e chreditori di Andrea di Francescho Boscholi, MS, Biblioteca Moreniana, Firenze, Bigazzi 169, fol. 11v
A. Forlani, Andrea Boscoli, in ”Proporzioni”, 4, 1963, pp. 103, 132
D. Heikamp, II Libro di debitori e creditori di Andrea Boscoli, in ”Proporzioni”, 4, 1963, p. 184
J. Białostocki, Sztuka czasów Michała Anioła: wystawa w czterechset setną rocznicę śmierci artysty, [Il tempo di Michelangelo: mostra commemorativa nel quarto centenario della morte dell’artista, exhibition catalogue, Warsaw 1963, pp. 66-67
L. Daniel, National Gallery in Prague, European Old Masters: Šternberk Palace, Prague 1993, p. 40
F. Baldassari, Dipinti Fiorentini del Seicento e del Settecento. Florentine Paintings of the 17th and 18th Centuries, Padua 2007, p. 8
N. Bastogi, Andrea Boscoli, Florence 2008, pp. 123-125, 230, 239-240, 284

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