Lot 12 D α

Francesco Rosselli was the younger brother of the Florentine painter Cosimo Rosselli (1439–1507). From the 1460s onwards, he worked in Cosimo's workshop and later specialised as a miniature painter and cartographer. In 1470, he worked as a miniature painter for Siena Cathedral. From 1480 onwards, he was active at the court of Matthias Corvinus in Buda, Hungary.
The small panel painting, formerly attributed to Cosimo, was identified by Federico Zeri (Fototeca Zeri, no. 13307) as a work by Francesco, an attribution that Gaudenz Freuler also endorses upon request.
Four saints kneel in the foreground of the composition: Jerome, Francis of Assisi, Lucy and Benedict. Behind them, Christ appears in half figure, standing in a sarcophagus. In the hilly landscape of the background, the painter depicts individual scenes from the Passion of Christ.
The position of Christ and the composition, which is staggered in depth, are reminiscent of other works from Rosselli's workshop from the 1460s and 1470s, including, for example, the ‘Entombment’ in the Gemäldegalerie Berlin (fig. 1). The figures themselves, however, are reminiscent of Francesco's engraved models (in particular, there is a close connection to the figure of Saint Jerome, a fragment now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; fig. 2).
The panel was probably designed for domestic worship, and its small size is likely to be related to Francesco's preference for working in small dimensions.
The painting originally came from the Hungarian Nemes Collection, which was auctioned in Amsterdam by Frederick Muller in 1928. It was presumably acquired there by art dealer Jacques Goudstikker, in whose gallery holdings it remained until 1940. This art collection was unlawfully seized by Herman Göring and Alois Miedl. Along with other artworks from Goudstikker's property, this the small panel was sold in Berlin in 1940 through the Lange auction house.
The work is being auctioned in agreement with the heirs of Jacques Goudstikker.