Rossello di Jacopo Franchi, Virgin and Child in Glory with Saint John the Baptist, Saint Peter, and Two Angels

Marchese Alfonso Tacoli-Canacci (1724–1801), Florence, 1789–96; Cesare Canessa (1863–1922) and Ercole Canessa (1868–1929) Collection, New York and Paris, by 1924; C. and E. Canessa sale, American Art Galleries, New York, January 25–26, 1924, lot 172; Maitland Fuller Griggs (1872–1943), New York, 1924

The panel, of a vertical wood grain, is composed of three planks measuring, from left to right, 14, 24, and 11 centimeters wide. It has been cut on all four sides and thinned to a depth of 2.2 centimeters. The paint and gilded surfaces have been severely abraded throughout. The gold ground is almost entirely lost around the Virgin and Child; it is slightly better preserved in the haloes of the figures and within the lobes of the missing engaged frame. Two areas of spandrel decoration outside the frame margins have been reduced to triangles of gesso preparation. The Christ Child’s head and torso and the faces of the two flanking angels are worn to a pale gray-green preparatory layer. The Baptist is similarly worn, revealing a darker-green underpaint, while the faces of the Virgin and Saint Peter retain slightly greater modeling effects. The blue tail feathers (or wing tips?) of the cherubim at the top of the panel are lost entirely. Shadows in the Virgin’s blue robe and in the draperies of the two figures at the left were selectively overcleaned in a restoration of 1958–59, which also left deep gouges in the center of the panel, near the Child’s right thigh. The figures on the right, though abraded, were left undisturbed except for aggressive cleaning of Peter’s rose-colored lower garment.

As indicated by a comparison with early photography (fig. 1), the appearance of this work has been greatly compromised by past interventions. The image conflates the traditional theme of the Madonna of Humility, in which the Virgin is shown seated on the ground, with the celestial vision of the Virgin and Child in Glory, where she is suspended in the sky and surrounded by golden rays. In the present instance, the Virgin was originally placed against a gilded, brocaded cloth of honor, now reduced to the original bole preparation. Framing the Virgin and Child as in a mandorla are two cherubim, who close off the composition at the top; two standing angels bearing offerings of lilies in a vase, at the sides; and a red seraph with spread wings at the bottom. Standing on a porphyry floor, in the viewer’s realm, are Saint John the Baptist, who raises his left hand in a gesture of presentation, and Saint Peter. In the middle between them are two large vases of lilies. The palette, now less discernible as a result of the abraded surface, once consisted of delicate pastel tones, contrasted with brilliant hues of blue, yellow, and orange.

The earliest record of the Yale Virgin and Child is in the inventories of the famous eighteenth-century dealer and collector, the marchese Alfonso Tacoli-Canacci, whose label appears on the back of the panel (fig. 2). The painting is cited in the 1789, 1792, and 1796 lists with an attribution to Agnolo Gaddi and is described in the following terms: “A gold ground picture with gothic lunette above, showing the Madonna and Child, with Cherubim, and two Angels on the sides, with vases of flowers; in the foreground are Saint John the Baptist, on the right, and Saint Peter, on the left. B. [braccia] 1 2/3-B. 1 – By Angelo Gaddi – of [sic] Taddeo Gaddi – 1324.1387 – 3.”¹ Its subsequent whereabouts are unknown; the picture did not reappear on the art market until 1924, when it was included in the New York sale of the Ercole Canessa collection and purchased by Maitland Griggs. The Canessa auction catalogue listed the painting with an attribution to Rossello di Jacopo Franchi, confirmed by Richard Offner. In an undated expert opinion, Offner pointed out the losses to the original surface already evident at the time but also highlighted the work’s intimate charm and the essential qualities of the artist: “This is one of those minor masters, never without charm, who, if he lacks the great sturdy traits of his native Florence, is unfailingly and exquisitely sensitive. In Mr. Griggs’ little panel which has been rubbed in cleaning, there is a lovely delicacy of tone; and ‘quality’—by which I understand evidence at every point of a caressing love of the material. The painting reveals an intimacy and a dainty sobriety of sentiment, which even his master Lorenzo Monaco rarely possesses.”² Offner went on to describe the Yale Virgin and Child as a typical work of Rossello, sharing the characteristics of two altarpieces universally attributed to him in the Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence: the monumental Coronation of the Virgin, datable on the basis of a fragmentary inscription to around 1424–25; and the slightly later triptych of the Virgin and Child between Saints John the Baptist, Francis, Mary Magdalen, and John the Evangelist.³

Following Raimond van Marle, who mentioned the Yale Virgin and Child among a group of works produced by Rossello after the Accademia Coronation, Bernard Berenson and Federico Zeri included the panel in the artist’s oeuvre.⁴ Since then, modern scholarship has not questioned the picture’s attribution, but efforts to determine its place in the reconstruction of Rossello’s chronology—anchored by few secure points of reference—have not been convincing. While Charles Seymour, Jr., advanced a date around 1440,⁵ Carol Talbert Peters classified the Yale Virgin and Child more broadly as a product of the artist’s “Earlier Middle Period,” in the 1430s⁶—a decade that is marked on one end by the artist’s illuminations in a gradual in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Prato, dated 1429, and on the other by the signed and dated 1439 Coronation of the Virgin in the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena.⁷ The dynamic pose of the Yale Christ Child and the turbulent folds of the Virgin’s mantle, however, lend the present image an agitated atmosphere that contrasts sharply with the delicate equilibrium of the Prato miniatures. While the latter anticipate the calm, balanced control of the Siena Coronation, the Yale Virgin and Child relates to an earlier phase in the artist’s development, represented by the Saint Catherine of Alexandria in the Museo Diocesano in San Miniato al Tedesco (Pisa) (fig. 3), datable on circumstantial evidence between around 1415 and 1420.⁸ Identical in proportions and facial morphology to the Yale Virgin and enveloped in a similar flow of cascading material, the San Miniato Saint Catherine also shares the loose handling and unruly graphic energy of the present panel. In contrast to the artist’s efforts in the following decade, which adhere more closely to the example of Lorenzo Monaco, the San Miniato and Yale panels betray Rossello’s response to the more vivacious Late Gothic idiom of Jacopo Starnina, whose eccentric approach to traditional subjects exerted a powerful influence on Florentine painting during this period. Certain elements of the Yale composition, like the restless attitude of the Christ Child or the combination of vase-bearing angels and cherubim around the Virgin, may in fact owe a debt to Starnina’s own rendering of the same subject in devotional panels such as the Virgin and Child in Glory between Saints John the Baptist and Nicholas in the Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence (fig. 4), most recently dated between around 1405 and 1410.⁹

Based on formal and stylistic analogies with the San Miniato Saint Catherine, a comparable chronology between around 1415 and 1420 also seems plausible for the Yale Virgin and Child. The panel is the earliest among several versions of the Virgin and Child in Glory with attendant saints that were produced in Rossello’s busy workshop and that were most likely intended for private devotion in domestic settings. Two other examples, similar in dimensions to the Yale picture, are located in the Museo Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona (fig. 5), and in a private collection. Both are more consistent in style with the 1429 miniatures and with the Siena Coronation and have been convincingly dated in the fourth decade of the fifteenth century.¹⁰ —PP

1. “106-Tavola. Quadro con fondo d’oro nella sommità a lunette Gottica [sic] Rappresentante la Madonna col Bambino, con Cherubini, e due Angeli lateralmente, con vasi di Fiori; nel piano a destra San Giovanni Battista ed’a sinistra San Pietro. B. 1 2/3-B. 1 – Di Angelo Gaddi – Di Taddeo Gaddi – 1324.1387 – 3”; see A. Tacoli-Canacci, Etruria Pittrice (Florence, 1789), Real Biblioteca, Madrid, MS II/574, inv. 106, as cited by Buonocore 2005, 218, no. 394. The fragmentary label on the reverse of the Yale panel has both the 1789 and 1792 inventory numbers, recorded in ink: “N. 106 [crossed out] 81. /. . . A. Gaddi /. . . discepolo . . . / 1324.” The measurements of the panel in braccia correspond to the dimensions of the Yale picture. ↩︎

2. Richard Offner, recorded in curatorial files, Department of European Art, Yale University Art Gallery. ↩︎

3. Inv. nos. 1890 n. 8460, 1890 n. 475. For these works, see, most recently, Michela Palmeri, in Hollberg, Tartuferi, and Parenti 2020, 207–17, nos. 46–47 (with previous bibliography). The triptych is dated by Palmeri between 1425 and 1430. ↩︎

4. van Marle 1927, 56, fig. 32; Berenson 1932a, 494; Berenson 1963, 1:193; and Federico Zeri, in Fredericksen and Zeri 1972, 600. ↩︎

5. Seymour 1970, 174, no. 125, fig. 125. ↩︎

6. Talbert Peters 1981, 94–97, 243–45, no. 15, pl. 15. ↩︎

7. For the Prato gradual, see Sara Giacomelli, in Natali, Neri Lusanna, and Tartuferi 2012, 280–83, nos. 91–92; the Siena Coronation is illustrated in Torriti 1977, 409, no. 608, fig. 491. ↩︎

8. The Saint Catherine is a pendant to a Saint Michael by Lippo d’Andrea in the same museum. The pair, formerly in the church of San Domenico in San Miniato, were first dated between 1415 and 1420 by Serena Padovani (in Tesori d’arte antica 1979, 55–56, 64), based on stylistic considerations. The subsequent recovery of a 1416 document recording Lippo’s involvement in a series of frescoes in San Domenico has allowed modern scholarship to posit that the panels were most likely commissioned around the same time. See Chiodo 2008, 87. ↩︎

9. Alberto Lenza, in Hollberg, Tartuferi, and Parenti 2020, 54–57, no. 9. ↩︎

10. Elisa Camporeale, in Caioni 2011, 80–85. ↩︎