Lot 31: Saints Peter and Paul; and Saints John the Baptist and Benedict: lateral panels of an altarpiece

Niccolò di Tommaso (active c.1346-1376)
Saints Peter and Paul; and Saints John the Baptist and Benedict: lateral panels of an altarpiece
the second inscribed 'Ecce.Angnus [sic].de[i].ecce.quitolis [sic]. peca[ta] [sic] [mundi]'
on gold ground panel, unframed
35 x 21¼ in. (89 x 54 cm.)
two (2)

Spinelli, Florence.

First published by Miklós Boskovits -- who significantly enlarged the catalogue of the artist's work -- and studied most recently by Milvia Bollati, these accomplished panels evidently formed part of a major altarpiece by Niccolò di Tommaso, most likely with a central panel of an enthroned Madonna and Child . One of the more successful Florentine painters of the mid-trecento, Niccolò was influenced at the outset of his career by Maso di Banco and Nardo di Cione, and was clearly an associate of the latter, witnessing his will in 1365. Bollati fairly senses in the grandness of the forms in these panels and the plausibility and plasticity of his modelling evidence of the painter's debt to Nardo. She proposes a dating in the 1360s and thus earlier than the artist's first dated works, the S. Antonio triptych of 1371 and the frescoes of the following year at Pistoia. More specifically, she compares the Saint Paul with the panel of the same Saint in the Museo Horne, Florence, which is in turn closely related to the triptych with the Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine at the Museo Fesch, Ajaccio.