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Lot Essay
This Madonna and Child enthroned with Saints was originally the central panel of a portable triptych. Triptychs of this type and size were typically used for private devotion and meditation, and could be folded shut when not in use. Laurence B. Kanter proposes that this panel may have been flanked by two wings of corresponding dimensions now in the Salini collection at the Castello di Gallico, near Asciano (private communication with the owner, 2020). The Salini wings were attributed to Gregorio di Cecco by Miklós Boskovitz and later published by Andrea De Marchi who gave them to an anonymous Umbrian hand (A. De Marchi, La collezione Salini…, L. Bellosi, ed., Florence, 2009, I, pp. 256-259, no. 32). The wings depict Saints Anthony Abbot, John the Baptist, Francis, and Jerome, and have since been regilt and therefore cannot be compared with the present central panel on the basis of punch tooling. Carl Brandon Strehlke has noted stylistic parallels between this triptych and another, now dispersed, the central panel of which is in the Liechtenstein Collection, Vienna, and the side panels in the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples.
Here the enthroned Madonna holds the Christ Child in her lap and is flanked by four onlooking saints with their distinctive attributes: Peter with the keys of the Church, Paul with the sword by which he was beheaded, James the Great with a pilgrim’s staff, and Andrew with a fish. The perspectival drawing of the tiled floor and base of the throne, as well as on the reverse of the panel, demonstrates the artist experimenting with illusionistic space and depth.
Gregorio di Cecco was registered with the Sienese Painters’ Guild by 1418 and his only surviving signed altarpiece is now in the Museo dell’Opera, Siena. He was greatly influenced by Taddeo di Bartolo, with whom he collaborated and co-signed an altarpiece for the Marescotti chapel of the church of Sant’Agostino, Siena in 1420. Later, in 1422, he became Taddeo’s adopted son and heir.
Here the enthroned Madonna holds the Christ Child in her lap and is flanked by four onlooking saints with their distinctive attributes: Peter with the keys of the Church, Paul with the sword by which he was beheaded, James the Great with a pilgrim’s staff, and Andrew with a fish. The perspectival drawing of the tiled floor and base of the throne, as well as on the reverse of the panel, demonstrates the artist experimenting with illusionistic space and depth.
Gregorio di Cecco was registered with the Sienese Painters’ Guild by 1418 and his only surviving signed altarpiece is now in the Museo dell’Opera, Siena. He was greatly influenced by Taddeo di Bartolo, with whom he collaborated and co-signed an altarpiece for the Marescotti chapel of the church of Sant’Agostino, Siena in 1420. Later, in 1422, he became Taddeo’s adopted son and heir.