Lot 200: Giovanni dal Ponte (Florence 1385-1437/8)

Giovanni dal Ponte (Florence 1385-1437/8)
A nobleman and lady - panel from a cassone or spalliera
on gold ground panel
17½ x 17 1/8 in. (44.5 x 43 cm.)

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This panel is very similar in size and composition to at least four other panels that Bernard Berenson described as possibly part of a spalliera: two paintings formerly in the collection of Lady Asburnham (B. Berenson, Italian pictures of the Reinassance. Florentine School, London, 1963, I, p. 90, pl. 486); a panel formerly in the collection of Ms. Louise Bishop, Fifield House, Oxfordshire, and sold in these Rooms (8 December 1989, lot 89); and a painting in the Czartoryski Museum in Cracow. These panels have also been linked to the cassone panel by Giovanni dal Ponte in the Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris. The subject has been variously described as Tristan and Isolde, A Roman hero and a matron or, more generically, Allegorical figures.