Lot 114: BERNARDO DADDI

BERNARDO DADDI ACTIVE IN FLORENCE CIRCA 1320 TO 1348 THE CRUCIFIXION WITH THE MADONNA AND SAINTS MARY MAGDALENE AND JOHN THE EVANGELIST, CHRIST THE REDEEMER ABOVE tempera on panel, gold ground, shaped top 23 3/4 by 13 in. (including frame); 60.3 by 33 cm.

R. Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. The Fourteenth Century, Section II, Vol. VIII, New York 1958, pp. 148-49, reproduced plate XXXIX.

Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, January 29, 1954, lot 133;
Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, February 22, 1956, lot 81 (as 'Daddi'), for £440 to Buttery;
With Horace Buttery, from whom purchased by a private collector and his wife;
By whom offered anonymously ('The Property of a Lady and a Gentleman'), London, Christie's, April 15, 1992, lot 42.

The overall composition repeats that of a larger panel, dated 1343, formerly from the Convent of Santa Maria del Carmine and now in the Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence.(1) The positioning of the principal figures is exactly the same in each panel, though here the artist has omitted the angels collecting Christ's blood from His wounds. The painting in the Accademia was probably the central panel of a polyptych of tabernacle and the same is likely for this panel which, being on a smaller scale, might have been the central panel of a portable tabernacle.( )

Both Offner and Dr. Klara Steinweg (whose opinion is quoted by Offner) regarded this panel as the work of the "Assistant of Daddi." The paintings grouped under this name have since been recognised by Prof. Miklòs Boskovits as late productions by Daddi himself. On the basis of photographs Prof. Boskovits endorsed the attribution to Daddi at the time of the painting's last appearance on the market in 1992 and he proposed a date of execution of circa 1345-48.

1. Inv. 8570; 125 by 58 cm.; see R. Offner, The Fourteenth Century. Bernardo Daddi and his Circle, Section III, vol. V, ed. M. Boskovits, Florence 2001, pp. 193-98, reproduced plate XV.