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Neri di Bicci
Florence, 1418/1420 - 1492
These two paintings depicting Saint Sebastian and Saint Apollonia once were on the sides of a larger panel depicting The Meeting of Saints Zanobi and Ambrose. The physical traits of the two saints, both baring an inscription with their names at their feet and here depicted with the symbol of their own martyrdom, the arrow for Saint Sebastian and the pincer with a tooth for Saint Apollonia, are typical of the hand of Neri di Bicci, a Florentine artist at the head of a very active workshop, whose production extends throughout the entire second half of the XV century.
Saint Sebastian
Saint Apollonia
1457
Tempera on panel, 118.5 x 47.5 cm each
Provenance
Florence, commissioned by Zanobi di Manno, 1457
Florence, Giuseppe Volterra collection
Florence, Galleria Luigi Bellini
Richard M. Hurd, purchased from the above, 1925
New York, Kende Galleries, 29 October 1945, lot 12
New York, A. and E. Silberman Gallery, circa 1950
Southampton, Norman G. Hickman, by 1973
New York, Sotheby’s, 26 January 2006, lot 270
San Francisco, Senator Dianne Feinstein
Exhibitions
New York, Newhouse Galleries, Inc., The Collection of Richard M. Hurd, Esq., May 1937
Southampton, New York, Parrish Art Museum, Art from Southampton Collections, 1973
Bibliography
Galleria degli Uffizi, Biblioteca degli Uffizi, Manoscritti, 2, Ricordanze di Neri di Bicci dipintore, 1453-1475, fol. 32v
MS Catalogue, R. M. Hurd Collection, lent by Mr. Hurd, 1926, p. 12
B. Berenson, The Italian Pictures of the Renaissance, 1932, p. 388
Newhouse Galleries, The Collection of Richard M. Hurd, Esq., New York 1937, no. 13
G. Kaftal, Iconography of the Saints in Tuscan Painting, Florence 1952, pl. 1162
B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance, Florentine School, vol. 1, London, 1963, p. 156
N. di Bicci, Le Ricordanze (10 Marzo 1453 - 24 Aprile 1475), edited by B. Santi, Pisa 1976, pp. 75-76, no. 148
M. Riordan, Michigan’s Masterpieces. Art from Public Collections, Detroit 1985, p. 39
Grand Rapids Art Museum: Selections from the Permanent Collection, Grand Rapids, 1984, p. 57
P. Nutall, Cosimo Rosselli. Painter of the Sistine Chapel, Winter Park 2001, p. 167-168
D. G. Wilkins, S. E. Reiss, Beyond Isabella Secular Women Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy, Kirksville 2001, p. 71 n. 50
Neri di Bicci studied in his father’s workshop, Bicci di Lorenzo, also the son of well-known artist, Lorenzo di Bicci. His personality only becomes clearly distinguished from the father around the late 1440s, the period to which we can date panels such as the triptych with the Ascension (Florence, Galleria dell’Accademia) or the Sacre Conversazioni in the Pinacoteca di Fabriano and in the Galleria Nazionale in Parma (from the church of San Romolo in Florence).
In 1452, the year of his father’s death and the moment in which he inherited his father’s workshop, Neri would have already been an expert painter as confirmed by our panels, dated 1457. Born in 1419, it is reasonable to believe that he pursued the profession, almost certainly because of his collaboration with his father, having already started at the beginning of the fifth decade of the Quattrocento.
To unravel the chronology, and therefore the stylistic development of this master, we are fortunate to have his mentioned diary, Ricordanze; a sort of autobiography documenting the richness of the particular activities of the painter from 10 March 1453 to 24 April 1475.
Thanks to this manuscript, we can look into the social, economic and religious elements of the time, and greatly reconstruct the activity of its author, including commissions, works and their destinations, and collaborations with other artists including Giuliano da Maiano, Luca della Robbia, and Filippo Lippi.
According to the Ricordanze Neri di Bicci received a private commission in 1457, from Zanobi di Manno, a barrel merchant living in piazza dei Nerli in Florence, to paint an altarpiece depicting the meeting of the two holy bishops Saint Zanobi and Saint Friano standing between our saints Sebastian and Apollonia.
As we can read from his memoirs, today at Biblioteca degli Uffizi in Florence, the commission and dating of this panel is one of the few private ones of the time known with certainty:
I recall that on the said day I, Neri di Bicci, the painter, took a commission from Zanobi di Manno, a cooper, in the Piazza de’ Nerli, for an altarpiece to be painted, in the ancient style, with a predella and side pillars and above a large altarpiece 3 arms wide, approximately 3 arms high; inside are Saint Zanobi and Saint Friano when they visited each other and two other figures, one on each side, and a blue chaplet of Magnia and a large altarpiece of Saints and ornaments of fine gold and the frame of gilded silver; in the footstool, the Pietas, the Virgin Mary and Saint John, at my own expense and to be given ten f., that is f. 10 and so on from a work made in a workshop f. 10 his the above mentioned day. […].
I had the table on the 30th of April 1457.
1. Neri di Bicci, The Meeting of Saints Zanobi and Ambrose, around 1925
2. Neri di Bicci, The Meeting of Saints Zanobi and Ambrose, around 1937
The painting remained intact, as described by Neri di Bicci, until after Richard M. Hurd’s 1925 acquisition at the Bellini gallery in Florence (fig. 1), but when it was exhibited in 1937, the panel appears to have been altered into the form of a triptych, with our two saints becoming its lateral parts (fig. 2). The central section depicting Saints Zanobi and Ambrose was donated to the Grand Rapids Museum, Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1946 by the Herpolscheimer Company and remains in their collection, while the two saints from that moment passed through other hands until arriving, in 2006, in the collection of Senator Dianne Feinstein[3].
As widely recognised, in spite of the sometimes-archaic language, the altarpieces painted by Neri di Bicci are almost always realised as “antique picture altarpieces”. This means that they were no longer in the form of a Gothic altarpiece, but with a linear silhouette, very common starting from the 1430’s and becoming typical of Renaissance paintings, as for the altarpiece of which our saints were originally part that fulfils this kind of structure but with dimensions that confirms its final destination for private devotion[4]. This was mainly due to the fact that his patrons were predominantly merchants and wealthy people of the time who, bound to the more ‘classical’ styles, were less accustomed to the new Florentine trend of the time. However, this does not mean that Neri di Bicci did not work for the city’s most important families that also include names belonging to the economic and political class of the city, such as the Spini, the Soderini, the Rucellai, the Davanzati, the Salviati, the Vettori, the Nerli and the Signoria itself.
A full fact sheet is available on request.