Lot 1003 Dα

We would like to thank Prof. Gaudenz Freuler for identifying this panel as the work of the Master of Lonigo. This previously unknown panel from a Spanish private collection could be convincingly added to the slender oeuvre of the as yet unidentified master through comparison with a further group of works attributed to him. This depiction of the Madonna seated humbly upon the ground adoring the Child lying naked in Her lap can almost certainly be placed among the previously attributed works of the “Maestro di Lonigo”. His oeuvre encompasses several similar devotional images kept in various museums and private collections, all depicting a walled in meadow, or hortus conclusus, in which the seated Virgin is shown adoring the Christ Child. Freuler has recognised this type of image as combining Gentile da Fabriano's depictions of the Virgin in Perugia (Galleria Nazionale dell' Umbria) and Pisa (Museo Civico), which were also taken up by Zanino di Pietro and Jacobello del Fiore. Both of these painters were also active in Veneto and exerted a strong influence on the Master of Lonigo, as shown by comparison with Jacobello del Fiore's Madonna in the Museo Sartorio in Triest and Zanino die Pietro's Madonna in a private collection. The name given to this unidentified master refers to Madonna once kept in the cathedral of Lonigo near Vicenza which is now sadly lost.
The disc shaped, and thus three-dimensional, depiction of Christ's halo allows us to date this panel to the later phase of the master's oeuvre in the 1450s. At this time other Venetian artists such as Jacopo Bellini and Michele di Giambono also began to depict halos as three-dimensional discs.