Lot 143: *FRANCESCO PESELLINO (1422-1457)

tempera on panel, the verso painted with feigned marbling Pesellino belonged to the third generation of artists in his family: his father, Stefano di Francesco, married the eldest daughter of the painter Giuliano d'Arrigo called Pesello, in whose workshop Pesellino is likely to have begun his training. Subsequent to this Pesellino is thought to have been apprenticed in Fra Filippo Lippi's workshop and it has been suggested that he could be identifiable with the ``Franciesco di Stefano pittore'' who enrolled in the Compagnia di San Luca in Florence in 1447. During the last four years of his life Pesellino ran a workshop, together with Piero di Lorenzo di Pratese (who survived him by thirty years) and Zanobi di Migliore. Although first published as being by the now-discredited ``Compagno di Pesellino'' by Mary Logan Berenson (see Literature below), this work was subsequently considered to be an autograph work by Pesellino dating from this late period (the first half of the 1450s) and was described as such by Bernard Berenson (verbal communication, cited in Gilbert, see Literature below). It is a fine example of the type of devotional works, often representing the Madonna and Child, which were intended for sale on the open market. The composition recalls the Madonna and Child with Saints in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, in which both the Madonna's left hand and the carefully foreshortened leg of the Christ Child are similar. The female type Pesellino used for his Madonnas reappears in other works by the artist; notably the Virgin and Child with a Swallow in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (see P. Hendy, European and American Paintings in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 1974, pp. 178-180, illus.), and the Madonna and Child with the Baptist, and Angels in the Toledo Museum of Art (see Toledo Museum of Art. European Paintings, 1976, pp. 124-5, illus. p. 177, fig. 5, and in color p. 49, pl. 1). The manner in which the figures are shown seated on a window-ledge, placed centrally within a trompe l'oeil window-frame, together with the feigned marble-effect painted on the verso of the panel, would point to the painting being an independent work of art, intended to be viewed from both front and back. Alternatively the picture may have been the central panel from a small devotional triptych, though there is no evidence on the panel itself to suggest that it had anything affixed to its two vertical sides. Not only are the figures seated convincingly in a three-dimensional space, further emphasised by the window-frame which is cast in light and shadow, but the landscape - which was entirely overpainted at the time of Mary Logan Berenson's publication in 1901 - is also an example of the naturalism adopted in Florentine Quattrocento painting, following the example set by Masaccio. The intimate scale and refined execution of the painting are exemplary of the type of painting for which Pesellino became famous.

Charles Timbal (1821-1880), Paris, by whom acquired in Italy before 1865 Gustave Dreyfus (1837-1914), by whom acquired in Paris in 1871-2 purchased from the Dreyfus estate in 1930 by Duveen Brothers, Inc., New York with Mortimer Brandt Gallery, New York, 1964 Norton Simon Foundation, 1964 with Artemis, 1977-1978 with E.V. Thaw & Co., New York from whom acquired by the present collector in 1983 Exhibited: Waltham (Mass.), Brandeis University, Rose Art Museum, Major Masters of the Renaissance, 1963, no. 3 Houston, Museum of Fine Arts, 1964 Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1970 Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Prized Possessions: European Paintings from Private Collections of Friends of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, June 17-August 16, 1992, cat. no. 110