After Tino di Camaino (Siena circa 1280 - circa 1337 Naples)

With Donate Arte Classica, Lugano, July 2017;

From whom acquired.

Depicting a tender vignette of the Madonna and Child, the present relief is a variation of a composition given to the Italian Gothic sculptor Tino di Camaino. Typically, in Tino's reliefs, the Mother and Child are depicted looking towards each other, but they are shown here facing outward.

Current scholarship attributes only a small number of Madonna and Child reliefs directly to Tino, with the remainder assigned to his workshop and followers. Works from this broader group often depart from the original composition, incorporating subtle variations—some depict the Virgin standing, others include God the Father above the figures, and still others show the Christ Child holding the gospel.¹

An itinerant sculptor, Tino di Camaino received commissions from prominent noble patrons and established his reputation primarily as a master of tomb sculpture. After early work in Siena and Pisa, where he executed significant ecclesiastical and funerary monuments, Tino moved to Naples in the 1320s at the invitation of the House of Anjou. It was there, around 1335, that he likely created the small-scale relief Madonna and Child with Queen Sancia, Saints and Angels, now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington (accession number: 1960.51), which may have served as the original inspiration for the aforementioned series of reliefs.

¹ F. Baldelli, Tino di Camaino, Ticino 2007, pp. 388-390 and figs. 475, 478, 480 and 481.