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Lot Essay
This stately panel is a characteristic late work by Lorenzo di Bicci, whose luminous, nuanced palette is evident in the carefully modelled pink robe of Saint John the Baptist and the elegant armour and wings of Saint Michael the Archangel. Saint John the Baptist, at left, is positioned at an angle relative to the picture plane, creating a sense of depth that is enhanced by the figure’s foreshortened proper left hand, shown receding into the deep green lining of his mantle. The Archangel, depicted frontally, regards the viewer with an intense gaze, his gracefully articulated boots falling in folds below his knees and tied at the ankles with delicate gold thread.
The surviving records of Lorenzo di Bicci’s activity, which span the period from 1370, when he registered in the Florentine painter’s guild, until 1410, provide fascinating insight into what life was like for an artist in trecento Italy. Born in Florence around 1350, Lorenzo was paid not only for independently commissioned paintings, but also for valuations, designs for future projects, and work on major decorative campaigns, including a series of Apostles which he collaborated to design, paint, and gild for the Florence Cathedral (1387). Lorenzo was a painter-businessman who established a practice which lasted for three generations: he worked closely with his son, Bicci di Lorenzo, who inherited the workshop that he in turn passed on to his own son, Neri di Bicci, in the mid-15th century. So cohesive was the workshop practice that it is often difficult to distinguish the hand of Lorenzo from that of the precociously talented Bicci di Lorenzo.
Some scholars have convincingly argued that Lorenzo di Bicci was trained in the workshop of the so-called Master of the San Niccolò Altarpiece, but his art is informed most obviously by the great inheritors of the Giottesque tradition in Florence: Andrea di Cione, called Orcagna, and Niccolò di Pietro Gerini. Indeed, the present work was published by Berenson as a work of Lorenzo’s contemporary Spinello Aretino (loc. cit.), who collaborated with Lorenzo on the Apostles series for the Florence Cathedral and was himself a proponent of the Florentine tradition established at the dawn of the 14th century. A photograph in the Witt Library, London, also records the early attribution to Spinello Aretino, and notes that the present work was once housed in the Convent of Sant’Agata, Florence. This provenance, along with the distinctive pattern of tooling in the saints’ haloes, may one day serve to connect the present work with other elements of the altarpiece of which it was surely once a part. The direction of Saint John the Baptist’s gaze indicates that the present saints originally occupied a position on the left side of a larger complex, whose central panel is likely to have shown the Virgin and Child Enthroned or the Annunciation.
The surviving records of Lorenzo di Bicci’s activity, which span the period from 1370, when he registered in the Florentine painter’s guild, until 1410, provide fascinating insight into what life was like for an artist in trecento Italy. Born in Florence around 1350, Lorenzo was paid not only for independently commissioned paintings, but also for valuations, designs for future projects, and work on major decorative campaigns, including a series of Apostles which he collaborated to design, paint, and gild for the Florence Cathedral (1387). Lorenzo was a painter-businessman who established a practice which lasted for three generations: he worked closely with his son, Bicci di Lorenzo, who inherited the workshop that he in turn passed on to his own son, Neri di Bicci, in the mid-15th century. So cohesive was the workshop practice that it is often difficult to distinguish the hand of Lorenzo from that of the precociously talented Bicci di Lorenzo.
Some scholars have convincingly argued that Lorenzo di Bicci was trained in the workshop of the so-called Master of the San Niccolò Altarpiece, but his art is informed most obviously by the great inheritors of the Giottesque tradition in Florence: Andrea di Cione, called Orcagna, and Niccolò di Pietro Gerini. Indeed, the present work was published by Berenson as a work of Lorenzo’s contemporary Spinello Aretino (loc. cit.), who collaborated with Lorenzo on the Apostles series for the Florence Cathedral and was himself a proponent of the Florentine tradition established at the dawn of the 14th century. A photograph in the Witt Library, London, also records the early attribution to Spinello Aretino, and notes that the present work was once housed in the Convent of Sant’Agata, Florence. This provenance, along with the distinctive pattern of tooling in the saints’ haloes, may one day serve to connect the present work with other elements of the altarpiece of which it was surely once a part. The direction of Saint John the Baptist’s gaze indicates that the present saints originally occupied a position on the left side of a larger complex, whose central panel is likely to have shown the Virgin and Child Enthroned or the Annunciation.