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拍品专文
This hitherto unknown panel is a characteristic mature work by Francesco Granacci. Born at Villamagna, just south of Florence, he entered the workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio, where he coincided with the young Michelangelo, with whom he subsequently studied classical sculptures in the garden of Lorenzo de’ Medici and would have an enduring relationship. Michelangelo’s influence on Granacci’s Rest on the Flight now at Dublin, painted in the mid-1490s, has long been recognised and the success of the composition is attested by a number of autograph versions painted later in his career. After his return to Florence from a brief and evidently unsatisfactory spell helping Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in 1508, Granacci was influenced by the restrained classicism of Fra Bartolommeo, receiving commissions from the Medici and collaborating with Andrea del Sarto, Pontormo and Bacchiacca in the decoration of spalliera panels for the bedchamber of Pierfrancesco Borgherini, about 1515.
This panel, evidently intended as its size implies for a domestic setting, is presumably of about 1520 and is executed with the artist’s characteristic elegance and economy. As Christopher Daly recognised independently on the basis of a photograph, the composition is closely related to that of two other treatments of the subject by Granacci, a fresco in the Villa Blasi Foglietti, at Monte Acuto (near his native Villamagna) dated about 1519 by Christian von Holst (Francesco Granacci, Munich, 1974, no. 31, pl. 55), and the lunette of the Adoration of the Shepherds from the church of S. Girolamo sulla Costa, now in the Accademia, Florence (Holst, no. 41, pls. 68-70). In both compositions, Christ’s arms are stretched out towards the Madonna. Lucinda Hawkins Collinge (The Dictionary of Art, London, 1996, 13, p. 281) commented on the wistful character of the Saint Joseph in these: he is perhaps more alert in this panel, while the serene Madonna is stylistically inseparable from her counterpart in the Accademia. Where this panel is distinguished from its counterparts is in the range and depth of the landscape: the classical ruin in deep perspective on the right and the carefully observed thatched farmhouse on the left, with the Ox and Ass beside it and a stair leading to the living quarters on the upper floor. On the hill behind the shepherds receive the Angel’s message.
This panel, evidently intended as its size implies for a domestic setting, is presumably of about 1520 and is executed with the artist’s characteristic elegance and economy. As Christopher Daly recognised independently on the basis of a photograph, the composition is closely related to that of two other treatments of the subject by Granacci, a fresco in the Villa Blasi Foglietti, at Monte Acuto (near his native Villamagna) dated about 1519 by Christian von Holst (Francesco Granacci, Munich, 1974, no. 31, pl. 55), and the lunette of the Adoration of the Shepherds from the church of S. Girolamo sulla Costa, now in the Accademia, Florence (Holst, no. 41, pls. 68-70). In both compositions, Christ’s arms are stretched out towards the Madonna. Lucinda Hawkins Collinge (The Dictionary of Art, London, 1996, 13, p. 281) commented on the wistful character of the Saint Joseph in these: he is perhaps more alert in this panel, while the serene Madonna is stylistically inseparable from her counterpart in the Accademia. Where this panel is distinguished from its counterparts is in the range and depth of the landscape: the classical ruin in deep perspective on the right and the carefully observed thatched farmhouse on the left, with the Ox and Ass beside it and a stair leading to the living quarters on the upper floor. On the hill behind the shepherds receive the Angel’s message.