On the occasion of TEFAF Maastricht Flavio Gianassi will present a selection of Italian artworks ranging from the 14th to the 16th century, thus covering three centuries of art history, most of them connected with other panels currently in Museums or commissioned by prominent people as Eleonora di Toledo, wife of Cosimo I de’ Medici.

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The oldest painting  by Cecco di Pietro (Pisa, 1330 c. - before 1402), dating back to 1378, is composed of four panels depicting the Saints Simon, Rainerius, Ambrose and Peter who, together with the Madonna and Child now in the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen, made up the altarpiece of San Ranieri for the church of Saint Francis in Pisa, commissioned by the testamentary wishes of Raniero Sancasciani, a Pisan banker, who in 1348 left four hundred Pisan lire, an extremely high amount for the time, for the creation of a “painted panel”.

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Among the various works presented, a predella stands out for its interest. Made by Cenni di Francesco di Ser Cenni  (Florence, active 1369 - 1415), depicts Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata. This extraordinary detailed, and sophistically-painted image of Saint Francis shows the Saint in a kneeling position within the confined space between two rocky formations. This small panel, originating from an unidentified polyptych, constitutes one of the sections belonging to the same predella along with three other scenes: the Beheading of the Baptist, in an unknown location, the Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence and the Temptation of Saint Anthony housed in Florence at the Museo Stibbert.

 

A small predella by Cosimo Rosselli (Florence, 1439 - 1507) depicting  Two Franciscan friars and a king wearing a Franciscan habit, unknown to scholars until now, has two other matching panels, identical in size and composition, preserved in the Pinacoteca Vaticana.

 

An inedit glazed terracotta bust “all’antica”, portrait of the poet Homer, by the Florentine artist Santi Buglioni (Florence, 1494 - 1576) was probably commissioned in 1542 by the very sophisticated Duchess of Florence Eleonora di Toledo, consort of Cosimo I de’ Medici, as a gift to her father, the powerful don Pedro de Toledo, first Viceroy of Naples, probably destined to adorn the loggias of the elegant palace built in Pozzuoli between 1539 and 1541. The artistic bond between Eleonora di Toledo, a powerful woman and wise patron of the arts, and Santi Buglioni, one of her favourite artists, was very strong: amongst the many commissions to him we can name the flooring of the Grotticina in Boboli, in addition to that of the Sala di Leone X in Palazzo Vecchio.