Lot 40: f - GIOVANNI DEL BIONDO DOCUMENTED IN FLORENCE 1356 - 1399

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION

THE 'MADONNA DEL LATTE'

measurements note
81.3 by 61 cm.; 32 by 24 in.

tempera on panel, gold ground, pointed top, within an integral frame

PROVENANCE

Acquired by Heinz Kisters, Kreuzlingen, in 1965.

LITERATURE

Meisterwerke der Malerei aus Privatsammlungen im Bodenseegebiet, exhibition catalogue, Bregenz, Künstlerhaus Palais Thurn und Taxis, 1965, p. 43 (as Giovanni del Biondo; an attribution first suggested by Federico Zeri);
R. Offner & K. Steinweg, A Corpus of Florentine Painting, section IV, vol. V, New York 1969, p. 30, reproduced plate V;
M. Boskovits, Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento,1370-1400, Florence 1975, p. 311 (as datable to 1375-80).

NOTE

"The composition and colouring of the panel single it out as one of Giovanni del Biondo's most beautiful works": thus begins Offner and Steinweg's critical analysis of this impressive panel. The painting's composition combines standard three-quarter-length representations of the Madonna and Child with the easily-recognisable iconography of the Virgin Mary suckling the Christ Child (commonly known as the "Madonna del Latte"). Offner remarked upon the panel's adherence to Florentine Trecento models, making particular reference to a panel by the Master of the Dominican Effigies.¹ The Christ Child's pose and the fact that He is enveloped in the Virgin's embroidered robe both find parallels in Niccolò di Tommaso's painting of 1362 formerly in the Stoclet collection, Brussels,² but Giovanni del Biondo has succeeded in giving "a new and individual solution to the composition". His Christ Child is held in a more naturalistic way by the Madonna, His upper body emerging from her tender embrace, thus simplifying the composition for greater emotional and pictorial impact.

Giovanni del Biondo is first recorded in a document of 1356, where he is described as "de Casentino" and granted Florentine citizenship. Not much is known of his early artistic training although he is thought to have been apprenticed to the Orcagna workshop, assisting Nardo di Cione on the frescos of the Strozzi Chapel in the church of Santa Maria Novella, Florence. Del Biondo probably began to work independently from 1360 onwards and most of his securely dated works are from the 1360s and '70s. The present panel is likely to date from the artist's maturity and can be closely compared to Del Biondo's Madonna and Child in the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena, which is signed and dated 1377.³ Both paintings demonstrate the influence of Ambrogio Lorenzetti, not only in the pose of the Madonna and the unusual patterning of Her robe (the latter more characteristic of Sienese than Florentine painting), but also in the physiognomical types of both mother and child. The Siena panel also shows the Madonna in half-length, with Her drapery falling in distinctive folds beside Her, and the connection between the two works led Offner and Steinweg to suggest a similar date of execution, proposing a slightly earlier date for the present painting.

1. See R.Offner & K. Steinweg, under Literature, sec. III, vol. VII, reproduced plate XI and p. 34n.
2. Sold by Mme. Michèle Stoclet, from the collection formed by Adolphe Stoclet, London, Sotheby's, 30 June 1965, lot 20.
3. Inv. 584; reproduced in R. Fremantle, Florentine Gothic Painters from Giotto to Masaccio. A guide to painting in and near Florence, 1300 to 1450, London 1975, p. 248, fig. 496.