Lot 37: PIERO DI COSIMO FLORENCE 1461/61 - 1521

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE EUROPEAN COLLECTION

THE MADONNA AND SLEEPING CHRIST CHILD WITH THE INFANT SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST

measurements note
diameter: 34 3/4 in.; 88.3 cm.

oil on panel, a tondo

PROVENANCE

Belli e Della Bruna collection, Florence (according to a label on the reverse);
With Testa, Florence;
Pazzagli collection, Florence;
Antonini collection, Paris, by 1936.

LITERATURE

M. Bacci, L'opera completa di Piero di Cosimo, Milan 1976, p. 101, cat. no. 77, reproduced (under "Opere attribuite");
E. Capretti & A. Forlani Tempesti, Piero di Cosimo: Catalogo Completo, Florence 1995, p. 143, cat. no. A4, reproduced (under "Appendix A. Opere derivate, di attribuzione incerta", known to the authors only from photographs).

NOTE

Piero di Cosimo must be regarded as one of the most singular artists of the Florentine Renaissance. This reputation for individuality was reinforced in large part by Vasari's Vita of the artist which focuses on his supposed peculiarities and outlandish personal habits. However, his artistic vision was certainly exceptional, and such works as his so-called Portrait of Simonetta Vespucci (Musée Condé, Chantilly), showing a bare breasted sitter whose neck is draped with a serpent, or his Discovery of Honey (Worcester Art Museum) assure a unique place among the artists of his own generation, and his importance as a teacher (his students including Fra Bartolomeo, Albertinelli, Pontormo and probably Andrea del Sarto) assures a place among the artists of the next.

In addition to the more unusual allegorical and mythological subjects that he painted, Piero also produced a number of religious or devotional paintings of a more standard type. This panel is exactly the sort of devotional image that the artist's many private patrons would have expected of him. The tondo format, then still in fashion in Florence is used, and certain details, such as the turbanned Madonna, suggest the influence of the younger generation of artists, particularly Raphael.

This painting was first (verbally) attributed to Piero di Cosimo by F. Mason Perkins in 1924, according to the mount of a photograph in the Frick Art Reference Library. The complex rock structure in the centre of the composition also features in Piero di Cosimo's tondo of Saint Jerome in the Museo Horne, Florence.

We are grateful to Everett Fahy and Dennis Geronimus for independently endorsing the attribution to Piero di Cosimo after first-hand inspection. The painting will be discussed in Dennis Geronimus' forthcoming monograph on the artist, tentatively titled Piero di Cosimo, Odd Man In: His Life and Art (Yale University Press, 2006).