Madonna and Child Enthroned in the Clouds
Provenance
Paris, Tajan, 22 June 2006, lot 4
with Antichità dei Bardi, Florence
The Alana Collection, Delaware, by 2013
New York Sotheby’s, 22 May 2019, lot 17
Acquired from the above sale by present owner
“Mariotto was a restless man, a follower of Venus, and a good liver… who took up a baser, less difficult, and more cheerful craft. Accordingly, he kept open for many months a fine inn… saying that he had found an art which did not need muscles, foreshortening, or perspective; the one imitated flesh and blood, but the other created them.” Vasari’s account of Albertinelli has long been responsible for the reputation of this Renaissance master as a lascivious wastrel. However, Albertinelli’s considerable oeuvre shows us a far more substantial figure.
Born in Florence, Mariotto Albertinelli, aged about thirteen, joined the studio of Cosimo Rosselli (1439-1507) where he worked alongside Piero di Cosimo (1462-1522) and Fra Bartolomeo (1472-1517). Albertinelli was patronized at an early stage by members of important Florentine families, notably Alfonsina Orsini, wife of Piero II de’ Medici. Later, he collaborated with Fra Bartolomeo and, under his influence, Albertinelli developed a more forward-looking style that combined an attention to linear perspective and monumental scale with ornamental detail and bold colors. He also had a knowledge of Flemish traditions which he had already learned from Piero di Cosimo. Vasari’s somewhat imprecise account of Albertinelli, his biographical misconceptions and character judgements, as well as the undeniable affinity of Mariotto’s style with that of Fra Bartolomeo, have led some to underestimate the former’s artistic contribution. It is interesting to see Vasari’s ambivalence: on the one hand dwelling on Albertinelli’s passion for ‘the good life’ rather than art and belittling his disegno, while on the other being a collector of his drawings and praising them. From the nineteenth century onwards, scholars such as Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, Adolfo Venturi, Heinrich Bodmer, and Ludovico Borgo realized that, despite the close link between Albertinelli’s art and that of Fra Bartolomeo, the former was an original artistic personality, a prominent caposcuola who had been the teacher of Pontormo –among others– and an important master in his own right. After all, Albertinelli painted one of the icons of the Florentine High Renaissance, the Visitation, now in the Uffizi (inv. no. 1890n.1587; fig 1).
The intense spirituality of this cool and formal composition shows the continued influence of the pious Dominican monk, Savonarola, whose uncompromising message in the 1490s had a profound impact on a number of Florentine artists, especially Botticelli and Fra Bartolomeo- who briefly gave up painting. Stylistically, the heads of the Virgin and cherubs from our tondo are close to those of the Madonna and Child in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (inv. no. 1542). We also find the same outline of the figure of the Child in the Palazzo Pitti Adoration.
In both the Pitti Adoration and our Madonna and Child, Albertinelli organizes the composition as a tondo, a format inextricably linked with Renaissance Florence. While the Berlin painting and the one in Florence are dateable to the last five years of the fifteenth century our tondo was probably executed a little later. This is suggested by the greater formal rigor, the more simplified monumentality, and the plasticity of the divine group, somewhat unconventionally placed against a simple blue sky. Our panel, therefore, likely dates to 1506-09, the period just before Albertinelli and Fra Bartolomeo formed a joint studio, the so-called ‘Bottega di San Marco’. Typical of Albertinelli is the archaic motif of the ribbons which bind the Instruments of the Passion, their swirls fluttering elegantly in the air. We see similar ribbons held by the seraphim in the upper part of the San Giuliano altarpiece, painted shortly afterwards in 1510, now in the Museum of San Marco, Florence as well as an earlier fresco of The Crucifixion in the Certosa di Val d’Ema, dated 1505. Our tondo was painted around the time that Albertinelli was working on one of his greatest masterpieces, the Annunciation (inv. no. 1890n.9643), painted for the Duomo in 1508-10 and now in the Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence. Sydney Freedberg considers the latter “the first expression of dramatic style in the post-Leonardesque and post-Michelangelesque phase of Florentine painting.” Not only was this a truly “significant contribution to the history of creation within the Florentine classical style,” but it also directly influenced and altered the direction of Fra Bartolomeo’s art. This assessment reinforces the idea that Albertinelli and Fra Bartolomeo enjoyed the mutually beneficial relationship of two great masters, working alongside each other.
A compositionally similar tondo by Mariotto Albertinelli was sold by Rudolph Lepke’s Kunst-Auctions-Haus, Berlin in 1934 (lot 104). The Lepke tondo and our tondo have previously been incorrectly catalogued as the same painting.
Alessandro Marabottini confirmed Albertinelli’s authorship of the present tondo in 2010.