Christopher Daly | The Metropolitan Museum of Art (original) (raw)

Articles by Christopher Daly

Departing from a large tondo at the Walters Art Museum, the essay reconsiders the body of work at... more Departing from a large tondo at the Walters Art Museum, the essay reconsiders the body of work attributed to the Master of the Fiesole Epiphany. It extracts from his corpus the oeuvre of second painter, here called the Master of 1493. This second painter is more likely to be Filippo di Giuliano, the workshop partner of Jacopo del Sellaio, leaving open the identity of the Master of the Fiesole Epiphany. In a second section, the essay offers some reflections on the tondo format, highlighting some little-known and unconventional examples. https://journal.thewalters.org/volume/77/essay/tondo/

An investigation of the art-historical context and possible collecting history of the little-know... more An investigation of the art-historical context and possible collecting history of the little-known "Adoration of the Child" by the Ghirlandaio workshop rediscovered in 2000 in the episcopal collections at Zhytomyr, Ukraine.

This article suggests new attributions for three painters active in Central Italy around 1500. It... more This article suggests new attributions for three painters active in Central Italy around 1500. It begins with three predella panels previously assigned to the Lucchese painter Michelangelo di Pietro Membrini but here linked to a documented altarpiece by the important Romagnol artist Giovanni Battista Bertucci il Vecchio. It then deletes from Bertucci’s oeuvre a painting instead by a Lucchese painter: Vincenzo d’Antonio Frediani. It concludes by returning to Membrini and presenting three unpublished paintings by him. These new attributions, oscillating between the two distinct contexts of Lucca and Faenza, attest to the ongoing difficulties in properly attributing works by artists traditionally cast as ‘provincial eclectics’ whose careers deserve further attention.

The Musée des Beaux-Arts in Libourne possesses three panels that originally formed part of a pred... more The Musée des Beaux-Arts in Libourne possesses three panels that originally formed part of a predella by the important Lucchese painter Michelangelo di Pietro Membrini (ca 1461/64-1525). Two of the panels have been in Libourne since 2004, while the third came to light only in 2020, when it appeared at an auction in Florence. This study introduces the new panel alongside its two companions, proposes a reconstruction of the original predella, and offers hypotheses regarding the patron and provenance of the altarpiece to which the predella belonged. It also calls attention to an overlooked Lucchese painting at another French museum, perhaps made for the same network of patrons. In elaborating on the Dominican context of these works and highlighting their response to the art of Fra Bartolomeo (1472-1513), this study throws light on Membrini’s last years of activity and more broadly suggests how the Lucchese painters’ stylistic choices might have been driven by the tastes and demands of their clientele.

This article expands the corpus of panels by Domenico Ghirlandaio and his workshop and followers ... more This article expands the corpus of panels by Domenico Ghirlandaio and his workshop and followers by discussing several paintings largely ignored in the literature. It begins by reconstructing a small panel of the Entombment with Saints, the three extant pieces of which are divided between the Perkins Collection, Assisi, and Brooklyn Museum, New York. Datable to the 1480s, they are here attributed to Domenico’s brother and closest collaborator, David, and tentatively linked to the convent of S. Marco, Florence, for which the brothers worked earlier in the decade. The article then proposes a new fragment of the altarpiece commissioned from the brothers by the Franciscans in Prato in 1490. Lastly, it presents an unpublished altarpiece by Bastiano Mainardi, one of the bottega’s most important associates, illustrating how Domenico’s pupils adjusted their styles as the workshop passed into the hands of Domenico’s son and successor, Ridolfo.

The article proposes the corpus of a previously unrecognized late fifteenth-century Florentine pa... more The article proposes the corpus of a previously unrecognized late fifteenth-century Florentine painter, here called the Master of the Samaritan Woman -- after a large panel of Christ and the Samaritan Woman -- and very tentatively identified as Niccolò Cartoni, described by Vasari in his 'Life' of Filippino Lippi. The article also presents an unpublished tondo by Raffaellino del Garbo. https://www.paperturn-view.com/uk/colnaghi/cf-studies-journal-11?pid=Mjc277867&p=11&v=3.1

The essay delineates the artistic profile of the Master of the Gothic Buildings, an anonymous Bot... more The essay delineates the artistic profile of the Master of the Gothic Buildings, an anonymous Botticelli collaborator whose oeuvre was first proposed by Sirén (1920) and later refined and amplified by Fahy (2005). In addition to expanding the artist's corpus, the essay outlines his career and collaborations, noting correspondences with the historical profile of Jacopo di Domenico di Papi da San Gaggio, also known as Jacopo Foschi, documented as Botticelli's pupil and close associate. An identification with Foschi is thus tentatively proposed.

By 1483, two major paintings by Filippino Lippi could be found in Lucca. His altarpiece commissio... more By 1483, two major paintings by Filippino Lippi could be found in Lucca. His altarpiece commissioned by Nicolao Bernardi for the church of Santa Maria del Corso, comprising a polychrome wooden sculpture of Saint Anthony Abbot by Benedetto da Maiano (now Lucca, Museo di Villa Guinigi) and painted side panels by Filippino (now Pasadena, Cal., Norton Simon Museum), was completed and installed by September of that year (fig. 4.2, 4.9, 4.10). His multipanelled altarpiece for Francesco Magrini's chapel in San Michele in Foro-of which the central compartment depicting Saints Roch, Sebastian, Jerome and Helena survives in the church-was completed around the same time, if not a year or two earlier (fig. 4.1). In terms of their deeply meditative atmosphere and heightened attention to Netherlandish painting, both paintings are watersheds in Filippino's stylistic development. They are also major turning points in Lucca's local artistic culture, since Lucchese artists responded to the works of Filippino well into the sixteenth century. The precise nature of this response, however, remains ambiguous, and the question of why Filippino was such an important and long-lasting point of reference for the Lucchese remains open. Methodologically speaking, the study of late fifteenth-century Lucchese painting presents an unusual historiographic progression. All of Lucca's painters emerged in scholarship as unnamed masters invented entirely by connoisseurship; as a result, the subsequent attempts to unite these painters and write for them a shared history have relied heavily on the stylistic deductions. For example, the Lucchese are usually described as having worked in an 'eclecticism' that parallels the city's mercantile culture, which they transformed into a 'collective homogeneity' or 'stylistic orthodoxy.'1 Although these characterizations are more reflective of the artists' prolonged historiographic emergence than of their fifteenth-century reality, they have been more or less grafted onto 1 These characterizations derive from the two pioneering studies of late Quattrocento Lucchese painting: M. Ferretti, 'Percorso Lucchese (pittori di fine '400),'

This article proposes that three panels, now in various collections, were once part of five-part ... more This article proposes that three panels, now in various collections, were once part of five-part predella by Jacopo del Sellaio. The iconography of the predella allows the author to suggest a provenance from a Franciscan church, perhaps in the painter’s resident quarter of Florence, the Oltrarno. The article also puts forth some new additions to Sellaio’s catalogue, including what is probably a fourth fragment from his altarpiece for the Compagnia del Poponcino in S. Maria del Carmine, Florence.

This article presents a new reconstruction of the monumental altarpiece painted by Jacopo del Sel... more This article presents a new reconstruction of the monumental altarpiece painted by Jacopo del Sellaio for the chapel of the Compagnia di SS. Maria Assunta e Sebastiano 'del Poponcino' in the church of S. Maria del Carmine, Florence. The addition of a third fragment, proposed here, to the two discovered in 1990 by Nicoletta Pons permits a clearer understanding of the work's original appearance and emphasizes its importance as a rare, late-15th-century addition to the Carmine church. It also provides the occasion to reconsider some of the more elusive aspects of altarpiece's highly unusual iconography. Presented alongside several new attributions to Sellaio and his son Arcangelo, these findings shed new light on the painter and his shop and stress their close relationship with Florence's famous Carmelite church.

Catalogue entries by Christopher Daly

Masterpieces from the Clowes Collection: Paintings, ed. Dylan Remmes Jensen and Annette Schlagenhauff (Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, 2022)

https://paintings.theclowescollection.org/entries/c10058/

Botticelli: Artiste et designer, exh. cat., ed. Ana Debenedetti (Brussels: Fonds Mercator, 2021)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Online Collection, 2021

Alvaro Pirez d’Évora: A Portuguese Painter on the Eve of the Renaissance, ed. Lorenzo Sbaraglio and Joaquim Oliveira Caetano (Lisbon: Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga), 2019

La Collection Alana, chefs-d’œuvre de la peinture italienne, ed. Carlo Falciani and Pierre Curie (Brussels: Fonds Mercator), 2019

Notes d'histoire de l'art sur les oeuvres de la collection xiii e et xiv e siècles SO N IA CH I O... more Notes d'histoire de l'art sur les oeuvres de la collection xiii e et xiv e siècles SO N IA CH I O D O Fragments d'un parcours entre histoire et goût xv e siècle SO N IA CH I O D O De la maniera moderna de Vasari au naturalisme du Seicento xvi e et xvii e siècles

Oeuvre lists by Christopher Daly

Who was 'Tommaso'? According to a subtle and fitting definition by Berenson, he was a sort of 'Do... more Who was 'Tommaso'? According to a subtle and fitting definition by Berenson, he was a sort of 'Doppelgänger' of Lorenzo di Credi. This concise essay attempts to take stock of his personality and the various identifying hypotheses formulated by scholars, as well as offering a list of all the paintings that can be attributed to him.

Pseudo Pier Francesco Fiorentino: Cristo di dolori, 2022

An agile and concise monograph on one of the most prolific Florentine painters of the second half... more An agile and concise monograph on one of the most prolific Florentine painters of the second half of the 15th century. Author of an impressive number of private devotional panels with the Virgin and Child and several altarpieces, the identity of Pseudo Pier Francesco Fiorentino still remains shrouded in mystery: this study therefore aims to rediscover his curious, unpredictable and multifaceted personality.

Conferences by Christopher Daly

This conference is open to the public with no charge. Pre-registration is required to guarantee s... more This conference is open to the public with no charge. Pre-registration is required to guarantee seating: niki@nikiflorence.org

Bibliography (Botticelli/Filippino Lippi) by Christopher Daly