Lot 2005 D α

This tondo was painted in Florence as a private devotional image. It shows the holy family in an idyllic and intimate scene at the birth of Christ. Whilst Saint Joseph, shown as an older man, appears pensive and withdrawn, the Virgin Mary praises her divine child whilst he in turn communicates with her through lively gestures. In the background of the work, we see a peculiar apparition in the sky in the form of the child incarnated appearing to the shepherds grazing their flocks on a hill, telling them to make their way to visit the new born saviour. The apparition has already visited the three kings, whose procession we see coming over the hill, accompanied by a startled giraffe.
This peaceful depiction of the Christmas mystery is based on a composition by Filippo Lippi, which was reiterated by Domenico Ghirlandaio, the Florentine workshop of Cosimo Rosselli (1439-1507) and many other artists from their circle. The stylistic and iconographic references to the work of Cosimo Rosselli are unmistakable in this piece. His figural repertoire has here been translated into a stylistic vocabulary most comparable to that of an artist whose oeuvre was outlined for the first time in catalogue raisonnés of 1896 and 1927 by Ulmann (Ulmann 1896, p. 139) and G. De Francovich (G. De Francovich, 1926/27 p. 535-540). The anonymous master's style is undeniably influenced by the works of his contemporaries Domenico Ghirlandaio (1448-1494) but especially Cosimo Rosselli.
The stylistic parallels to the above mentioned artists led Ulmann and De Francovich to identify the unknown painter with a certain Jacopo del Tedescho, who Giorgio Vasari mentions as a pupil of Ghirlandaio (G. Vasari, 1568, ed. 1878/1906). However, this theory was later refuted by Everett Fahy due to the lack of conclusive evidence. The painter thus remained anonymous and he was assigned a notname based on his tondo with the adoration of the Christ Child in the Galleria Borghese in Rome: “Master of the Borghese Tondo” (Fahy 1976, p. 167-168). The present tondo depicting the adoration of the child by the holy family and the young John the Baptist is another work that displays strong stylistic parallels to the pieces assigned to this anonymous Florentine artist. As mentioned previously, the work is based on a popular composition by Cosimo Rosselli, which can be seen in a similar version in his tondo in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. This pictorial form, which was apparently highly sought-after, was reproduced numerous times by the present artist in various versions, including the eponymous tondo in the Galleria Borghese and a further tondo in private ownership.