Lot 10: Benozzo Gozzoli (Florence c.1420/2-1497 Pistoia)

Salvator Mundi
on panel, in an engaged frame
22 1/8 x 14 1/8 in. (56.1 x 35.9 cm.)

Anonymous sale; Weinmuller, Munich, 10-11 June 1959, lot 707, as Francesco Squarcione.

We are grateful to Professor Miklòs Boskovits for advancing the attribution to Benozzo Gozzoli on the basis of photographs. The attribution has also been recognised independently by Anchise Tempestini. We are also grateful to Professor Diane Cole Ahl for tentatively confirming the attribution to Benozzo Gozzoli on the basis of photographs (private correspondence, 26 May 2005).

Gozzoli was a prolific painter of frescoes, executed mainly in Tuscany and Umbria, but he also produced a number of panel paintings, the present example being a typical late work. Professor Ahl places the picture in the period of circa 1485-1490, noting that the attribution of the late works by Benozzo Gozzoli are problematic on the grounds of the increasing role of the workshop, which included two of the artist's sons. She relates the present picture to that of the Calci Madonna and Child (D. Cole Ahl, Benozzo Gozzoli, New Haven and London, 1996, pp. 209-10, no. 6, pl. 269), observing the similarities between palette, the linear facture of the faces, the foreshortening of the hand and the bejewelled necklines. She also relates the present picture to the Castelnuovo Tabernacle (Madonna della Tosse) (ibid., pp. 212-13, no. 9, pls. 271-5), dated 24 December 1484, and to the Pisa Blessing Christ, (ibid., pp. 246-7, no. 58, pl. 303).

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer's premium.