Lot 239: PIETRO BUONO

THE MADONNA AND CHILD ENTHRONED WITH THE CRUCIFIXION AND SAINTS PETER, ANDREW AND PAUL, TOGETHER WITH THE INSIGNIA OF MONTE OLIVETO MAGGIORE

35 1/4 by 24 3/4 in.; 89.5 by 62.8 cm.

gold ground, tempera on panel, arched top

Richard Offner (1889-1965), Florence;
Anonymous sale, New York, Sotheby's, January 26, 2006, lot 40.

We are grateful to Everett Fahy who, based on firsthand inspection, confirms this painting to be by Pietro Buono.

From 1492 to 1512 Pietro Buono is recorded as working in and around Naples with his brother Alessandro. Amongst the works given to him is a Coronation of the Virgin in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie.

The inclusion of the insignia of Monte Oliveto Maggiore (three mounds with a cross and olive branches) would suggest that this was an Olivetan commission. The Olivetan Order was founded in 1313 by three Sienese noblemen - Bernardo Tolomei, Patrizio Patrizi and Ambrogio Piccolomini - who retired to Monte Oliveto, about thirty kilometers outside Siena. The monastery was built there six years later and their following increased in number in the ensuing decades, particularly after the plague of 1348. The Order expanded dramatically in the Quattrocento - those belonging to it exceeded 900 and lived in fifty-three different monasteries - and in the following century a further thirty monasteries were built.

The present painting was formerly in the collection of Richard Offner (see Provenance), the famed American art historian and author of the fourteen-volume Corpus of Florentine Painting. Although born in Vienna in 1889, Offner spent the majority of his life studying and working in the United States.