Tommaso del Mazza (Maestro di Santa Verdiana) - Madonna with Child and the Archangel Michael - image-1

Lot 2002 Dα

Tommaso del Mazza (Maestro di Santa Verdiana) - Madonna with Child and the Archangel Michael

Auction 1097 - overview Cologne
18.11.2017, 11:00 - Old Master Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture
Estimate: 140.000 € - 160.000 €
Result: 916.000 € (incl. premium)

Tommaso del Mazza (Maestro di Santa Verdiana)

Madonna with Child and the Archangel Michael

Tempera on panel. 120 x 67 cm.

The present panel originally formed part of a polyptych. It would have been placed beside either the panel with Saint Peter in the collection of the Bob Jones University Gallery (inv. 63.331.29) or, more probably, the panel with John the Baptist in a London private collection (cf. Deimling 2000, op. cit., p. 199-207). The piece is a characteristic early work by the artist who has now been identified as Tommaso del Mazza, but was previously known only as the “Maestro di Santa Verdiana” after his “Heavenly Maddonna dell´Umiltà with Saint Verdiana” in the High Museum of Art in Atlanta (for his identification cf. Deimling 1991, op. cit., p. 401-411). The piece is comparable to a work in a Tuscan private collection depicting the mystical marriage of Saint Catherine (cf. Deimling 2000, op. cit., p. 194-196), which has also been identified as one of Tommaso del Mazza's early works. During this period, the artist's work was still strongly influenced by the circle of the Orcagna brothers, under whom he received his artistic training.
The simplified abstraction and statuesque forms of the present Madonna display stylistic parallels to the work of another “Orcangesco”, namely that of Giovanni del Biondo. This would date the piece to the period before Tommaso del Mazza began to orientate himself more towards both the style of Niccolò Gerini and the linear, late Gothic tendencies of Agnolo Gaddi in around 1385-1400. A date of circa 1375 is considered plausible for the present work, and Barbara Deimling (Deimling 2000, op. cit.) confirms this approach but suggests a marginally later date of 1375-1380.
The respectable size of this painter's known œuvre, the gradual increase in elegance and artistic quality in his works, and the extent to which he worked for the Datini family, merchants in Prato, all attest to del Mazza's importance as an artist in 14th century Florence (cf. also: Discovering a Pre-Renaissance Master: Tommaso del Mazza", 2008, op. cit.)
We would like to thank Professor Gaudenz Freuler in Zurich for cataloguing this work.

Provenance

1903 Paris, The Admiral Saint-Bon Collection. - Paris, The Michele Lazzaroni Collection. - Continental private collection.

Literature

S. Wagstaff: An Exhibition of Italian Panels and Manuscripts from the 13th and 14th centuries in Honor of Richard Offner, Wadsworth Atheneum Hartford (CT) 1965, p. 14, no. 6. - B. A. Jones: Bob Jones University. Supplement to the Catalogue of the Art Collection. Paintings Acquired 1963-1968, Greenville (SC.) 1968, p. 9. - B. Fredericksen, F. Zeri: Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections, Cambridge (Mass.) 1972, p. 136. - Miklos Boskovits: La pittura Fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento, Florenz 1975, p. 106, 230 (note. 99) & 384. - Barbara Deimling: Il Maestro di Santa Verdiana. Un polittico disperso e il problema dell’ identificazione. In Arte Cristiana, LXXIX, 1991, p. 401-411. - Simona Pasquinucci & Barbara Deimling: Tradition and Innovation in Florentine Trecento Painting. Giovanni Bonsi, Tommaso del Mazza. In M. Boskovits (ed.): Corpus of Florentine Painting IV/VIII, Florence 2000, p. 203. - Barbara Deimling, John M. Nolan, Carl Brandon Strehlke, Yvonne Szafran: Discovering a Pre-Renaissance Master. Tommaso del Mazza, Greenville 2008, p. 72.