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Master of Mezzana
Prato, first half of the 14h century
The painter, though mainly working in the territory of Prato from roughly 1315/1320 onwards, nonetheless demonstrates that he was well informed about the latest developments in painting in nearby Florence. His conventional name was given to him, and a provisional reconstruction of his career attempted, by Richard Offner (1956), who was the first to gather a small nucleus of paintings around the Madonna and Child and Saint Peter, now in the Museo Diocesano in Prato.
Madonna and Child enthroned between Saints Louis of Toulouse and Francis (central panel); Crucifixion below the Angel of the Annunciation (left shutter); Madonna della Misericordia below the Virgin Annunciate (right shutter)
Tempera on panel, 39.1 x 48.9 cm (open)
Provenance
Rome, Ettore Sestieri, by early 1950s
Florence, Carlo de Carlo
His sale, Florence, Finarte Semenzato, 11 June 2003, lot 18 (as Bettino di Corsino da Prato)
Private collection
London, Christie's, 7 December 2006, lot 41
Delaware, Alana collection
New York, Sotheby’s, 20 May 2021, lot 13
Bibliography
R. Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting. Close Following of the S. Cecilia Master, sec. III, vol. VI, New York 1956, pp. 62-3, pl. XVII
M. Boskovits, The Painters of the Miniaturist Tendency. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, sec. III, vol. IX, Florence 1984, pp. 25-6
G. Raggionieri, in L. Bellosi, A. Angelini and G. Raggionieri, Le arti figurative, Florence 1991, p. 952, note 1
A. Tartuferi, in The Alana Collection: Italian Paintings from the 14th to 16th Century, vol. III, ed. S. Chiodo and S. Padovani, Rome 2014, pp. 175-78, cat. no. 24
A. Tartuferi, Per il Maestro di Mezzana e alcuni appunti sulla pittura del Trecento a Prato, in "Studi di Storia dell'Arte", 27, 2016, pp. 65, 67, 70, 81, 82
The tabernacle was published by Offner (1956) with an attribution to the Mezzana Master. As already recalled above, the anonymous master was later identified by Boskovits (1984) with the Pratese painter Bettino di Corsino (an identification later discarded). He considered Bettino “one of the many artists who, while sharing the artistic aspirations of the Saint. Cecilia Master ... loaded their style with popular idioms”. He also underlined the executive quality of the tabernacle formerly in the Sestieri collection.
In more recent years the tabernacle became the property of the well-known Florentine dealer and collector Carlo De Carlo. It was so ld by his heirs at a Semenzato auction in 2003, again with an attribution to Bettino da Prato; this was in spite of the fact that Cerretell, over a decade earlier, had correctly identified the fresco for which Bettino was paid in 1307 as that on the ground floor of Palazzo Pretorio in Prato, thus invalidating the hypothesis.
The triptych reappeared at a Christie’s sale in London as the property of a private collector in 2006, this time with an attribution to Offner’s Mezzana Master, as suggested by Boskovits.
The tabernacle, perhaps datable to the end of the second decade of the 14th century, belongs to the earliest phase of the career of the anonymous artist and testifies to the genuine interest he showed in pursuing an unconventional interpretation of the Florentine Giottesque tradition.
This charming tabernacle for private devotion, undoubtedly among the qualitatively highest of the group of works referred to the anonymous painter, has come down to us in a satisfactory condition. Some significant damage is only detectable in the lower part of the Madonna della Misericordia in the right shutter, while some small areas of flaked pigment can be seen along the lower margins of the other two panels and round the hinges. The painted surface was restored at the time the triptych was owned by Carlo De Carlo and the over paintings removed from the group of devotees in the Madonna della Misericordia (where the photo published by Richard Offner in 1956 shows that the conspicuous gap in the group to the right had been integrated with figures of kneeling women) and in the Virgin Annunciate. The whole painting is covered by a uniform craquelure (especially evident in the gold ground). The presence of Saint Louis of Toulouse (in a fleurs-de-lys spangled cope) in the central compartment provides us with a useful terminus post quem of 1317, the year of the saint’s canonisation, for the execution of the work; the co-presence of Saint Francis of Assisi strongly suggests that this was a work of Franciscan patronage.
A full fact sheet is available on request.