Lot 66: - Taddeo di Bartolo , Siena 1362/3 (?) - after 28 August 1422 A Triptych: Central panel: the Madonna and Child with Music-Making Angels, God the Father above Left wing: Saint John the Baptist in a pink cloak, the Angel of the Annunciation above Right
Antichità Viva, Year XI, no. 2, 1972, p. 67, reproduced (reporting the painting's appearance in the Sotheby's sale the previous year); G. Freuler, in Engel sind überall, exhibition catalogue, Zurich, Credit Suisse, 27 October 1999 - 28 January 2000, p. 117, cat. no. 8, reproduced in colour on p. 118.
Provenance
Sir Edmund Waterton (1830-1887), Walton Hall, Yorkshire (his wax seal is affixed to the reverse); Lt.-Col. G.T.M. Scrope, O.B.E.; By whom sold, London, Sotheby's, 8 December 1971, lot 36, for £38,000 to Baile.
Notes
PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION FORMED BY THE LATE DR GUSTAV RAU This delightful triptych by Taddeo di Bartolo has only been published once since its appearance at auction for the first and only time in 1971; six years after the publication of Sibilla Symeonides' monograph on the artist. It is an exquisite example of Taddeo di Bartolo's late Gothic style: the colourful palette and curvilinear patterns of drapery are characteristic, as is the delicate ornamentation in the pounced and patterned robes of the angels, the Madonna and Christ Child. The son of a barber, Taddeo di Bartolo is first recorded in Siena in 1386 as a polychromist of statuettes for the Cathedral's new choir-stalls. Two years later he became counsellor to the Cathedral Works and in 1389 is listed as an independent painter for the first time. During the course of the 1390s he travelled to Pisa and Genoa, finding a wife in the latter, returning to Siena by 1399. It was in the first and second decades of the 15th century that Taddeo received most of his major commissions in his native city, by which time he had established a large workshop to cope with the growing demand for his work. This triptych's intimate scale and portable format suggest that it was intended for private devotion and Taddeo prominently signed the work along the lower edge of the central panel. Although this size is by no means unique in Taddeo di Bartolo's aeuvre, many of the artist's surviving paintings are on a much larger scale or are fragments from more complex polyptychs. Certain elements of the painting's composition can be found elsewhere in Taddeo's aeuvre and although the triptych is undated, its association with other works allows us to date it to circa 1400 or shortly afterwards. A number of similarities can be found in Taddeo's larger signed triptych of The Madonna and Child enthroned with music-making angels, flanked by Saints John the Baptist and Andrew in the Compagnia di Santa Caterina della Notte, Siena (the chapel beneath the hospital of Santa Maria della Scala), which is also dated 1400.υ1 That painting, considered one of Taddeo's masterpieces, shows the Madonna and Child enthroned whereas the Madonna here is seated on the ground, as usually found in representations of the 'Madonna of Humility'. Two angels play a viola da braccio and a harp at the Madonna's feet, rather like the music-making angels surrounding the central group here; such angels reappear in other works by Taddeo, such as in his famous polyptych of The Assumption of the Virgin in Montepulciano, which is dated 1401.υ2 The most striking resemblance between the two works, however, is the figure of St. John the Baptist. He flanks the left side of the central group and stands in an identical pose; feet planted a little apart, head in three-quarter view, left hand holding a cartellino inscribed 'Ecce agnus dei qui toll[is peccata mundi]...' and right hand pointing to the Madonna and Child in the centre of the composition. The figure of the Baptist was clearly repeated on other occasions, such as in Taddeo's signed panel in the church of San Donato, Ginestreto (Siena), also datable to circa 1400.υ3 All these works, including the present triptych, were produced at the very height of Taddeo di Bartolo's career and illustrate his position as one of the leading artists bridging the late Gothic and early Renaissance style in Siena. A note on the provenance The wax seal on the reverse is that of Sir Edmund Waterton (1830-1887), who used the obsolete title of 27th Lord of Walton. Whilst himself a pre-eminent collector of rings and Catholic manuscripts, his father had acquired a large collection of 148 Old Masters from Herr Berwind in Würzburg in 1830 and brought them back to Walton Hall. It is not known if the Taddeo triptych formed part of this collection which apparently included paintings by Paolo Veronese, Holbein, Van Dyck and Tiepolo. Sir Edmund was forced to sell Walton Hall in 1876 because of large debts, at which point the collection was presumably dispersed; it is not recorded as having been transferred to Alston Hall, near Preston, with his father's natural history collection. Both father and son were devout Catholics and Knights of the Supreme Order of Christ whilst Edmund was also a Knight of Malta and a Papal Privy Chamberlain. We are grateful to Dr. Gaudenz Freuler for his assistance in cataloguing this lot. Dr. Freuler believes that the triptych dates from an early phase in Taddeo di Bartolo's career, that is 1393-95, on the basis of stylistic comparisons with his Madonna of Humility of 1395, today in the Szépmûvészeti Múzeum, Budapest, but originally forming the central panel of a larger altarpiece for the Campigli-Sardi Chapel in the church of San Francesco, Pisa.υ4 1. See S. Symeonides, Taddeo di Bartolo, Siena 1965, p. 209, reproduced plate XVIII. The date has sometimes, incorrectly, been read as 1410. 2. The Madonna is surrounded by a throng of music-making angels in the central panel of the polyptych in the Cathedral at Montepulciano, for which see Symeonides, op. cit., plate XX and a detail plate XXVI. 3. Symeonides, ibid., p. 210, reproduced plate XIXa. 4. For which see G. Freuler, in Dagli eredi di Giotto al primo Cinquecento, Firenze 2007, pp. 44-49.
