FG FINE ART LTD
Master of Mezzana
Prato, first half of the 14th century
The Master of Mezzana, is recorded working in 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, 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. Both panels are components of a dismantled polyptych formerly in the church of San Pietro a Mezzana in the surroundings of Prato.
Saint Francis
Tempera on panel, 71 x 34 cm
PROVENANCE
Rome, Ettore Sestieri
Florence, private collection
BIBLIOGRAPHY
M. Boskovits, The Painters of the Miniaturist Tendency. A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting, sec. III, vol. IX, Firenze 1984, pp. 25, 167-168
C. Cerretelli, Il Palazzo Comunale di Prato, Prato 2010, p. 35
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. 74-76
Miklós Boskovits proposed to identify the anonymous master with the documented Pratese painter, Bettino di Corsino (recorded between 1288 and 1313). However, it subsequently transpired that the fresco for which this painter was paid on 31 March 1307 is not (as had been assumed) the one on the first floor of Palazzo Pretorio in Prato – now detached and very fragmentary –, depicting the Madonna and Child Enthroned between Saint Stephen and Saint John the Evangelist, stylistically comparable to Offner’s Master of Mezzana group, but rather that on the ground floor, of identical subject but decidedly more archaic in style. This invalidated the hypothesis of the painter’s identity with Bettino di Corsino and led him to be re-consigned to anonymity. As suggested by Angelo Tartuferi, it seems that the substantial homogeneity of the group of works more recently referred to Bettino da Prato can be reconfirmed, and their conformity with the catalogue of Offner’s Master of Mezzana acknowledged.
In the Master of Mezzana’s late phase, datable to the second half of the 1330s, Miklós Boskovits added two panels from dismembered ensembles: a Saint James the Greater, in an unknown location and our Saint Francis, formerly in the Sestieri collection in Rome.
Boskovits noted that our painting directly dependents on the corresponding figure in Daddi’s polyptych now in the Museo di Palazzo Pretorio, Prato . The polyptych, first attributed to Bernardo Daddi by Paul Schubring in 1901, entered the collections of the Municipality of Prato from the Spedale della Misericordia e Dolce in 1858, where it had remained since the time of its execution. Scholars have suggested that the work was originally made for the church of San Barnaba, attached to the hospital, and more recent literature (Romagnoli) has endorsed the hypothesis advanced by Marchini, Mannini and Protesti that the figure of Saint Francis depicted on the left may represent Francesco di Tieri, rector of the institution from 1334. This identification would thus point to him as a probable patron of the polyptych.
The Master of Mezzana’s activity in Prato, by the mid-1330s he must have been of advanced age, particularly by contemporary standards, appears to have been at its height. This is suggested by the likelihood that he was entrusted with a commission of considerable civic importance: the execution of a large fresco on the western end wall of the great hall on the first floor of the Palazzo Pretorio, intended to include, among other figures, Robert of Anjou, holder of the city’s perpetual lordship inherited from his father Charles, together with saints and additional personages.
A full fact sheet is available on request.
