Biagio di ANTONIO TUCCI and his workshop (Florence 1446-Rome - Lot 6

Biagio di ANTONIO TUCCI and his workshop (Florence 1446-Rome after 1508) Madonna and Child with Angel Softwood panel with parquet floor. Old restorations, small chips at top 52.5 x 40.5 cm Under a luminous but threatening sky, the Virgin receives in her arms the Child held out to her by the angel. Seen in three-quarter view, these two figures are standing, while the half-naked Child, playing with his Mother's veil, is seated between them. The angel looks at the viewer, while Mother and Child exchange looks of tender complicity. This intimate, unpublished devotional panel was probably inspired by the work of Filippo Lippi (1406-1469) (Florence, Uffizi Museum), and influenced the young Biagio di Antonio in his early years around 1468, when he came under the influence of Andrea Verrocchio and frequented his studio. Having become a master, Biagio moved to Faenza in Romagna, where he is recorded from 1476 to 1483, and again in 1504. For a long time, his works were labelled under the names of Benedetto Ghirlandajo or Andrea and Giovanni Battista Utili, painters from Faenza, a denomination retained in Berenson's latest lists1 despite the documentary studies carried out by C. Grigioni in 1935, which revealed the artist's true identity2 . From his youthful experience, Biagio retains the incisive, vigorous mark of Verrocchio, evident here in the faces with their high, open foreheads and sinuous eyelids, or in the veins of the hands with their long, tapering fingers. fingers. The abundantly folded drapery, the bright, vivid colors in which black and pink exalt the whiteness of the complexion, the subtle ornamentation of the clothing accessories and halos, and the somewhat fanciful of the Virgin's headdress, evoke the meticulous craftsmanship of a painter whose work Biagio was able to imbibe from Verrocchio. These characteristics can be found in the artist's early works, such as the History of the Argonauts on two cassoni (wedding chests, New York, Metropolitan Museum inv. 09.136.1 and.2), one of which is attributed to Biagio d'Antonio and the other to the Master of the Argonauts3. The latter undoubtedly helped Biagio in the execution of our panel, as the dreamy expression of the Madonna, the evasive one of the angel and the clearly angular We can place our panel in Biagio's workshop, around 1468-1470, before he collaborated with Jacopo del Sellaio in 1472.