Battista di Biagio Sanguigni (Florence 1393-1451)   The Prop...

Estimate

£50,000 - £80,000

Battista di Biagio Sanguigni
(Florence 1393-1451)
 
The Prophet Jeremiah
 
Inscribed, on gold ground panel, shaped top
13 ¾ x 7 ⅛ in. (34.9 x 18 cm)
 
Provenance:
Anon. Sale [The Property of a Gentleman], Christie’s, London, 4 July 1986, lot 59, as Rossello di Jacopo Franchi (purchased on behalf of the present owners).
 
Literature:
M. Boskovits, ‘Ancora sul Maestro del 1419’, Arte cristiana, 90, 2002, pp. 332-40.
 
 
Professor Miklòs Boskovits recognised this panel at the time of the 1986 sale as the work of an artist then known as ‘The Master of 1419’. The artist was named by Georg Pudelko after a Madonna and Child in the Cleveland Museum of Art, which is dated 1419 and was originally the centre panel of an altarpiece in the Oratory of Santa Maria a Latera in Florence. Two side panels have also survived, one sold at Christie’s, London, 6 July 2010, lot 33. Boskovits also identified this panel as part of the same altarpiece as The Prophet Daniel, of almost identical size, and Christ blessing in the Museo di Palazzo Venezia, Rome, which had been attributed by Roberto Longhi to the Master of 1419 (see A. Santangelo, Museo di Palazzo Venezia. Catalogo: I dipinti, Rome, n.d., p. 35). He subsequently grouped about a dozen altarpieces, altarpiece fragments and private devotional panels under this moniker, all datable between 1410 and c. 1430 (loc. cit).
 
The Master of 1419 was soon afterwards identified as Battista di Biagio Sanguigni, documented as a miniature painter and to a lesser extent as a panel painter. Presumed to have been trained by Lorenzo Monaco, the artist was intimately associated with Zanobi Strozzi, who was his apprentice and with whom he cohabited 1430-38. He was also closely associated with Fra Angelico, by as early as 1417, and the two subsequently became longterm friends.
 
The Cleveland Madonna and Child was among works by Sanguigni included in the Fra Angelico exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 2005-6, the catalogue of which includes the best overview of current knowledge, by Laurence Kanter (pp. 227-41). Sanguigni is now credited with five illuminated manuscripts and a magnificent sheet of The Ascension of Christ was lent to the exhibition by the J. Paul Getty Museum (no. 41).
 
We are grateful to Charles Beddington for his help in cataloguing this lot.