Lot 18: Cosimo Rosselli (Florence 1439-1507)

The Madonna and Child with adoring angels and Saint John the Baptist
tempera on panel, a tondo
23 1/8 in. (59 cm.) diameter

G. Pudelko, 'Per la datazione delle opere di Fra Filippo Lippi', Rivista d'arte, 18, 1936, p. 51.
B.B. Fredericksen and F. Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections, Cambridge, MA, 1972, pp. 178, 344 and 597.
A.R. Blumenthal, ed., Cosimo Rosselli: Painter of the Sistine Chapel, Winter Park, 2001, p. 251.

Camillo Castiglioni, Vienna; Frederick Muller, Amsterdam, 17-20 November 1925, lot 12, as 'School of Ghirlandaio'.
Egen Miller von Aichholz, Vienna.
with A.S. Drey, Munich, 1926, from whom purchased by Mrs. Seigfried Peierls.
Acquired in 1954 by the Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey; Sotheby's, New York, 8 October 1993, lot 98, as 'Attributed to Cosimo Rosselli' ($45,000 to the present owner).

PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF BERNARD C. SOLOMON

The present tondo is an autograph replica of a painting in the Palazzo Corsini, Florence (see B. Berenson, The Florentine painters of the Renaissance, New York and London, 1909, p. 178).

Cosimo Rosselli was born in Florence in 1439, and trained in the workshop of Neri di Bicci between May 1453 and October 1456. He apparently left this apprenticeship in order to go to Rome, where he may have worked with Benozzo Gozzoli, and is thought to have also studied the designs of Fra Angelico. Cosimo's particularly adaptive style also allowed him to incorporate elements from the work of Domenico Veneziano, Baldovinetti, Pollaiuolo and Verrocchio in his earlier works, and Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Filippino Lippi and Perugino during the latter part of his career.

Cosimo's earliest known independent commission, an altarpiece for the Scali Chapel in Santa Trinita, is now lost, but a Santa Barbara altarpiece of 1468-9 (Galleria dell' Accademia, Florence) is representative of his early style, with its accomplished draftsmanship. Cosimo's middle years are considered to be his strongest, and this is clearly demonstrated in a fresco of The Vocation of Saint Philip Benizzi, painted for the church of the Santissima Annunziata in Florence. His work is most impressive in its precise perspectival construction and the innovative depiction of architectural motifs, and the view of Florence also appears frequently in the work of the Pollaiuolo and of Botticini.
Between 1481 and 1482, Cosimo was in Rome, commissioned to participate in the decoration of the Sistine Chapel walls, and upon his return to Florence, he painted what is generally regarded as his finest work: a fresco representing The Display of the Miraculous Relic for the church of Sant'Ambrogio.

In the final years of his career, Cosimo focused his attention once again on altarpieces, merging his ongoing interest in architecture with a melancholy air that recalls the work of Filippino Lippi or Perugino.
We are grateful to Mr. Everett Fahy for confirming the attribution of the present work to Rosselli (written communication, 31 March 2005).