Lot 86: Antonio della Corna (active Padua 1469-1491)

Christ the Man of Sorrows with Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist inscribed on the scrolls 'ecce qui tolit peccata mundi' (centre left) and '.et habitavit in nobis' (centre right) on gold ground panel 301/2 x 231/2 in. (77.5 x 59.6 cm.) PROVENANCE Anon. Sale [R... Collection], Palais Galliera, Paris, 25 March 1965, lot 33, as Ecole du Midi de la France, XVe siŠcle. LITERATURE F. Zeri, 'Studies on Italian Paintins: II - Panels of the Passion of Christ by Antonio della Corna', Journal of the Walters Art Gallery, XXIX-XXX, 1966-7, p. 59 and note 13, fig. 8, reprinted in idem, Giorno per giorno nella pittura: scritti sull'arte dell'Italia settentrionale dal trecento al primo cinquecento, Turin, 1988, p. 336 and note 13, fig. 206. M. Tanzi, 'Della Corna, Antonio', in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, XXXVI, Rome, 1988, pp. 760-1. A. Bacchi, 'Antonio della Corna', in Saur. Allgemeines Knslter-Lexikon. Die bildenden Knstler aller Zeiten und V”lker, IV, Munich and Leipzig, 1992, p. 374. A. Galli, 'Antonio della Corna e il Maestro di Palazzo d'Arco', Arte Cristiana, LXXXIII, no. 769, July-August 1995, pp. 280 and 286 and note 31. NOTES The attribution to Antonio della Corna was proposed by Federico Zeri, who noted that this picture revealed not only the influence of Mantegna, but also - particularly in the figure of Christ - of Vincenzo Foppa. More recently, however, it has been proposed (Galli, op. cit.) that this and a stylistically related series of panels depicting The Passion of Christ are in fact by an anonymous hand active in late-fifteenth-century Verona and Mantua whose sobriquet, the Master of the Palazzo d'Arco, derives from the repository of one of the above-mentioned panels. As with Antonio della Corna, this artist's style is largely dependent on Mantegna, although his earliest works seem to have more in common with paintings by Liberale da Verona.