Tuscan School, early 15th Century

Spinello di Luca Spinelli, called Spinello Aretino
(Arezzo 1350/52–1410) and Workshop (?)
The Madonna and Child enthroned,
detached fresco, rounded top, 108.5 x 81.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Florence;
with Alfredo Moretti, Florence (1989);
where acquired by the father of the present owner

Exhibited:
Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, 16ª Biennale Mostra Mercato Internazionale dell’Antiquariato, 23 September – 9 October 1989

Literature:
16ª Biennale Mostra Mercato Internazionale dell’Antiquariato, exhibition catalogue, Calenzano 1989, pp. 176-177 (as ‘Spinello Aretino e aiuti’);
S. Weppelmann, Spinello Aretino e la pittura del Trecento in Toscana, Florence 2011, p. 365, A 132 (under ‘Rejected attributions’, as Giovanni d’Agnolo di Balduccio?)

The Madonna enthroned is represented in this fresco: she holds the Christ child on her knee, who standing, reaches out to grasp the roses she holds.

The elegant style of this work is typical of early Quattrocento painting in Tuscany, and especially of painting in Arezzo. The rounded form of the upper edge of this detached fresco is an indication of its original location in a votive tabernacle, either in the open, or in an aedicula within a public building. The large scale of this work would probably preclude the possibility that it was used for private devotion.

The image of the ‘Madonna of the Rose’ was popular in Arezzo, where it had been painted in a fresco, already given to Spinello Aretino by Vasari, in the Oratorio di Santo Stefano which was a part of the old city cathedral. In 1561 the oratory was demolished and the fresco detached and moved to the church of Santa Maria Maddalena (from which it received its name of Oratorio della Madonna del Duomo); this work is currently in a private collection.

On account of its representational grace, its giottesque composition and its late-gothic elegance of design, the present painting is close to the production of Spinello Aretino, who along with his studio, was active in many parts of Tuscany between the close of the Trecento and the beginning of the Quattrocento. The artist trained in his native city where one of his earliest works was the fresco with the Madonna and Child enthroned with two saints now in the Museo Diocesano of the city. He subsequently moved for a time to Lucca where he produced many polyptychs. From the start of the 1380s he began receiving prestigious commissions from Florence where he executed the frescoes with Stories of Saint Benedict in the sacristy of the church of San Miniato al Monte, the Stories of Saint Catherine of Alexandria in the Oratorio di Santa Caterina all’Antella and frescoes with the Stories of Saint John the Baptist for the church of Santa Maria del Carmine, of which only fragments have survived. At the beginning of the 1390s he worked at the Camposanto, Pisa, where he executed the Stories of Saints Efisio and Potito. Subsequently Spinello divided the activity of his ever flowering studio between Florence and Arezzo, while from 1404 he initiated an important collaboration with Siena, first with the Opera del Duomo, and then with the Comune for which he produced, assisted by his son Parri, the decoration of the Sala di Balia in the Palazzo Pubblico and then for the Duomo, the frescoes in the chapel of Sant’Ansano in Siena Cathedral.