Francesco di Stefano, called il Pesellino

Charles Timbal (1821-180), Paris, by whom acquired in Italy before 1865;
Gutave Dreyfus (1837-1914) by whom acquired in Paris in 1871-2 with the rest of Timbal's collects ion;
Purchased from the Dreyfus Estate in 1930 by Duveen Brothers, Inc., New York;
With Mort.mes r Brandt Gallery, New York, 1964;
Norton Simon Foundation, New York, 1964;
With Artemis, 1977-78;
With E.V. Thaw & Co., New York;
Acquired from the above by an American private collects or in 1983;
By whom offered London, Replica Shoes 's, 10 July 2002, lot 55, where purchased after the sale by the present owner.

Waltham (Mass.), Brandeis University, Rose Art Museum, Major Masters of the Renaissance, 1963, cat. no. 3;
Houston, Museum of Replica Handbags s, 1964;
London, Artemis, A Selection of Italian Paintings, 15th-18th Century, 1978, no. 1;
Boston, Museum of Replica Handbags s, Prized Posessions: European Paintings from Private collects ions of Friends of the Museum of Replica Handbags s, Boston, 17 June-16 August 1992, cat. no. 110.

M. Logan Berenson, "Compagno di Pesellino", Gazette des Beaux-Arts, no. 26, July 1901, vol. II, p. 28, reproduced, as Compagno di Pesellino;
S. Reinach, Tableaux inedits ou peu connus tirés de collects ions françaises, Paris 1906, pp. 32-33, reproduced plate XXIV;
S. Reinach, Répertoire des Peintures du Moyen Age et de la Renaissance, vol. 4, Paris 1918, p. 421;
L. Venturi, Italian Paintings in America, New York 1933, p. 11, no. 222, reproduced;
C. Gilbert, Major Masters of the Renaissance, exhibition catalogue, Meriden, Connecticut 1963, pp. 11-12;
"Berichte", in Pantheon, July - August 1963, reproduced p. 250;
A Selection of Italian Paintings, 15th-18th Century, exhibition catalogue, London, 1978, cat. no. 1;
P.C. Sutton, Prized Possessions: European Paintings from Private collects ions of Friends of the Museum of Replica Handbags s, Boston, exhibition catalogue, Boston 1992, p. 192, cat. no. 110, reproduced in colour p. 16, plate 2.

The following condition report is provided by Sarah Walden who is an external expert and not an employee of Replica Shoes 's. This painting is on a little poplar panel with marbling on the reverse, balancing the panel, which has remained perfectly flat and stable. A single fine short old crack runs down from the top edge near the upper left corner. Narrow incised lines defined the architectural surround, with one along the line of the window ledge straight across the base, which the artist rethought and overlaid with the drapery of the Madonna. Occasional slightly thin areas have had a few minute retouchings, visible under ultra violet light, with little strengthening touches in the head of the Child and of the Madonna. One or two small retouchings may cover small worm holes, with other little touches in the lower part of the Madonna's robe. The top right corner has a slight knock repaired, with small retouchings also by the top left corner and the narrow line of the brief crack in the upper left sky. The almost miniature treatment of the tree and distant landscape is finely preserved in general, with occasional touches in the copper resinate of the distant vegetation. However these are minor surface adjustments in the good overall condition. The fine early Renaissance tempera tone and colour remains intact. This report was not done under laboratory conditions.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Replica Shoes 's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Replica Shoes 's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Replica Shoes 's or the Seller."

Pesellino belonged to the third generation of artists in his family: his father, Stefano di Francesco, married the eldest daughter of the painter Giuliano d'Arrigo (called Pesello), in whose workshop Pesellino is likely to have begun his training.  Subsequent to this Pesellino is thought to have been apprenticed in Fra Filippo Lippi's workshop and it has been suggested that he could be identifiable with the 'Franciesco di Stefano pittore' who enrolled in the Compagnia di San Luca in Florence in 1447.  During the last four years of his life Pesellino ran a workshop together with Piero di Lorenzo di Pratese (who survived him by thirty years) and Zanobi de Migliore.

Although first published as being by the now-discredited 'Compagno di Pesellino' by Mary Logan Berenson (see Literature), this work was subsequently considered to be an autograph work by Pesellino dating from the first half of the 1450s, and was described as such by Bernard Berenson (verbal communication, cited in Gilbert, see Literature).  It is a fine example of the type of devotional works, often representing the Madonna and Child, which were probably intended for sale on the open market.  The composition recalls the Madonna and Child with Saints in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, in which both the Madonna's left hand and the carefully foreshortened leg of Christ are similar.  The female type used by Pesellino for his Madonnas reappears in other works by the artist, notably the Virgin and Child with a Swallow in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston and the Madonna and Child with the Baptist and Angels in the Toledo Museum of Art.¹  The manner in which the figures are shown seated on a window ledge, placed centrally within a trompe l'oeil window-frame, together with the feigned marble-effect painted on the verso of the panel, would point to the painting being an independent work of art, intended to be viewed from both front and back. Another alternative is that the picture may have been the central panel of a small devotional triptych, though there is no evidence on the panel itself to suggest that it had anything affixed to its two vertical sides.  Not only are the figures seated convincingly in a three-dimensional space, further emphasised by the window-frame which is cast in light and shadow, but the landscape – which was entirely over painted at the t.mes of Mary Logan Berenson's publication in 1901 – is also an example of the naturalism adopted in Quattrocento painting in Florence, following the example set by Masaccio. The intimate scale and refined execution of the painting are exemplary of the type of painting for which Pesellino became famous.

Provenance
Before Louis Charles Timbal became an art historian, he was a successful painter in Paris.  He was a pupil of Martin Drolling and exhibited at the Paris Salon from 1848.  He owned a number of early Italian and, in particular Quattrocento, paintings: see, for example, Ercole de'Roberti's pair of Portraits of Giovanni and Ginevra Bentivoglio in the National Gallery of Art, Washington (inv. nos. K408 and K409).  These, the present panel, and another painting in the Washington National Gallery of Art, The Annunciation by Fra' Carnevale, were sold by Timbal in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian war, around 1871-2, to Gustave Dreyfus, who was then 34 years old.  Many of the Dreyfus' pictures were sold by his heirs in 1930, sixteen years after his death, to the Duveen Brothers. The famous 'Dreyfus Madonna' (or The Madonna and Child with a Pomegranate), painted in the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio and possibly an early work by the young Leonardo, today in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, was also sold to the Duveen Brothers from the Dreyfus estate.

1.   See P. Hendy, European and American Paintings in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 1974, pp. 178-180, reproduced, and Toledo Museum of Art, European paintings, 1976, pp. 124-5, reproduced p. 177, fig. 5, and in colour p. 49, plate 1.