Lot 206: CECCO DI PIETRO

DOCUMENTED IN PISA FROM 1364 TO 1399 - DIED BEFORE 1402 MADONNA AND CHILD tempera on panel, gold ground with glass stones 69.7 by 53.9 cm.; 27 3/8 by 21 1/4 in.

Anonymous sale, New York, Sotheby's, 18 May 2006, lot 38.

While details of Cecco di Pietro’s artistic development remain uncertain, we can assume that when first documented in Pisa in 1364, he was a young artist emerging as an independent personality within a larger workshop. This Madonna and Child is a relatively early work by the artist, displaying the hallmark heavy-lidded eyes and pronounced contour shadowing that were prevalent in his youthful career, when he remained much influenced by Francesco Traini.1 A close examination of the punch work decoration can assist with dating the panel by comparing the tools used here with those in other signed and dated works. In the Christ child’s halo, the artist uses a flower-shaped tool with four large petals, interposed with four smaller ones, originally from the workshop of Francesco Traini, the foremost painter in early fourteenth century Pisa. According to Erling Skaug, this tool was among a set nine of Traini’s punches that were dispersed to Giovanni di Nicola, who in turn passed five of them to Cecco di Pietro in the 1370s.2 The punch is noted, for example, in Traini’s Scenes from the life of Saint Dominic, dating to circa 1345 and was used again in Giovanni di Nicola’s Madonna and Child with Four Saints, dating to the 1350s.3 The flower then later appeared in Cecco di Pietro’s Madonna and Child, signed and dated, 137(?) and in his Pietà with six saints, dated 1377.4 The eight-petalled flower decoration then disappeared from Cecco’s works from 1379, being perhaps lost or damaged, and was replaced by 1386 with a similar stamp which instead produced a flower with an incised circular center rather than the former concave dimple. 5 The presence of the earlier dimpled flower in this painting therefore allows a dating before 1379. Also of note is the decoration in the border of the Madonna’s robe, incorporating a punch not listed by Skaug among those in Cecco’s workshop. Furthermore, an almost identical flower with four tri-lobed petals is featured in works by both Traini and di Nicola, suggesting either the tool was indeed passed to Cecco di Pietro, or that he ordered the production of a replica.6 We are grateful to Andrea De Marchi for supporting an attribution of this lot to Cecco di Pietro. 1. A. de Marchi and L. Sbaraglio, “Ragionamenti sull’attività pisana di Giovanni da Milano”, in Predella, 1, (“Primitivi pisani fuori contesto”, L. Pisani ed.) 2010, p.35. 2. E. Skaug, Punch marks from Giotto to Fra Angelico, Oslo 1994, vol. I, p. 290 and vol. II, no. 9.1.(iii) and 9.1., (punch no. 376). 3. Ibid., (punch no. 377) both works are now housed in the Museo Nazionale di San Matteo, Pisa. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. E. Skaug, op. cit. vol. II (punch no. 360).