Kings Lynn, Fermoy Art Gallery, 1300-1500 Renaissance Painting in Tuscany, July-August 1973, no. 4. London, Thomas Agnew and Sons, Sir Geoffrey Agnew 1908-1986, Dealer and Connoisseur. An Exhibition of Old Master and English Pictures and Watercolours lent by his friends, June-July 1988, no. 4. London, Matthiesen Fine Art Ltd., no. 7.
Literature
O. Sirén, Giotto and some of his followers, 1917, I, pp. 191-2, as attributed to Jacopo del Casentino. R. Offner, 'Jacopo del Casentino. Integrazione della sua opera', Bolletino d'Arte, III, 1923, pp. 249-51, 264, 268, 273, 280. W. Suida, 'Ein Triptychion des Jacopo di Casentino', Belvedere III, 1923, p. 26, questioning the attribution to Jacopo del Casentino. R. van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, III, The Hague, 1924, p. 272, as Giottesque, and p. 653, accepting Offner's attribution to Jacopo del Casentino. C.H. Weigelt, Giotto, Berlin and Leipzig, 1925, p. 239. R. Offner, Studies in Florentine Painting. The Fourteenth Century, New York, 1927, pp. 24-5. H. Gronau, 'Notes on Trecento Painting', The Burlington Magazine, LIII, 1928, p. 82. B.C. Kreplin in U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler, XXII, Leipzig, 1928, p. 296. M. Salmi, 'Berichte über die Sitzungen des Institues im Jahre', 1928, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Intitutes in Florenz, III, 1929, p. 146. R. Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, section III, II, part III, Florence, 1930, p. 98, p. 39. B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance, Oxford, 1932, p. 272. Anon. Gemälde und Bildhauerwerke in der Kunsthalle zu Bremen, 1935, p. 51, under 292. A.S. Cavallo, 'A newly discovered Trecento Orphery from Florence', The Burlington Magazine, CII, 1960, p. 509, fig. 20. B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Florentine School, London, 1963, I, p. 101. G. Previtali, Giotto e la sua bottega, Milan, 1967, pp. 111-12, fig. 174. M. Gosebruch in Giotto e il suo tempo. Atti del Congreso Internazionale...VII Centenario della Nascita di Giotto [Assisi, Padua, Florence, 1967], 1971, p. 248. M. Dupré dal Poggetto, Il Maestro del Codice di San Giorgio e il Cardinale Jacopo Stefaneschi, Florence, 1981, p. 78. C. Volpe in Early Italian Painting and Works of Art 1300-1480, exhibition catalogue, Matthiesen Fine Art Ltd, London, 1983, no. 6. J. Gardner, review, The Burlington Magazine, CXXV, 1985, p. 568. R. Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, The Fourteenth Century (ed. M. Boskovits), section III, II, Florence, 1987, pp. 396-8.
Provenance
Charles Loeser, Torri Gattaia, Florence; (+) Sotheby's, London, 9 December 1959, lot 24, when acquired by the following with Agnew's, London. Anonymous sale [The Property of a Lady]; Sotheby's, London, 8 July 1992, lot 24.
Notes
No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 15% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis. Jacopo del Casentino was one of the most individual Florentine painters of the generation inspired by the example of Giotto, and was very probably a pupil of the latter's associate in the great series of scenes from the Life of Saint Francis at Assisi, the Master of Saint Cecilia. Vasari believed that Jacopo del Casentino was a pupil of Giotto's most distinguished Florentine successor, Taddeo Gaddi, and there are indeed instructive parallels between the two painters. While closely linked with the painters of the so-called 'Miniaturist Tendency' and known for many devotional panels of intimate size, Jacopo was, as this Dormition demonstrates, also at ease on an altogether more ambitious scale. That this was recognised by his contemporaries is proved by the fact that he was chosen, about 1322, to decorate the chapel of the Velluti family in the Franciscan church of Florence, Santa Croce, where Giotto himself had supplied frescoes in two other chapels. In 1339 Jacopo was chosen as the first consigliere of the Compagnia di San Luca, the new painters' guild of Florence, and his Saint Bartholomew of the same year from Orsanmichele (Florence, Uffizi) anticipates the work of younger artists in the ensuing period.
That this panel is by the artist was first recognised by Osvald Sirén, and has subsequently been generally accepted. Richard Offner suggested that the border in the gold ground at the top of the panel on the left might imply that there was a further scene above this, and therefore that this may have formed part of a series of scenes from the Life of the Virgin. Carlo Volpe believed that it constituted the right side of a diptych with the stylistically similar Annunciation in the Museo Poldi-Pezzoli, Milan, which was also in the possession of Carlo Loeser. This suggestion, which has found some support, seems implausible as the panel appears to be complete and is rather smaller than the Annunciation which measures 78 by 61.2 cm. and which may itself have been trimmed on the right. The two are, however, very similar in style, and correspond closely in such details as the halo patterns. Both panels were widely considered to date from the second decade of the trecento, but Miklós Boskovits ('The Painters of the Miniaturist Tendency', A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, section III, IX, Florence, 1984, p. 58) proposes a date 'round 1330, presumably between 1325 and 1335' for the Annunciation.
Jacopo del Casentino's point de départ for the composition was Giotto's celebrated Dormition from Orsanmichele, now at Berlin. The patron may well have insisted that the iconography of the main figures was closely adhered to, but the characterisation of these expresses Jacopo's very personal sense of characterisation, and his sympathy for what Offner termed 'the massiveness and bone of Taddeo Gaddi' (1930, p. xix). Jacopo recalibrates the central element of Giotto's horizontal design, introducing the two pairs of kneeling angels in place of the single angels that stand at either end of the bier in the prototype, and by placing the more prominent of these on a plain in front of the kneeling Saint John, endows his composition with added depth, further emphasizing this by adding the hill in the background on the right. That Jacopo's panel was in turn both accessible and admired is implied by the derivation from this of a section of a fourteenth-century Florentine orphrey1now at Boston, which was noted by Cavallo in 1960: the kneeling angels are omitted from this.
