A shared eye.
A distant century. A remarkable collection. A personal choice.
- Artist
- Lorenzo di Bicci
- Work
- Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints
- Date
- c. 1380
The story before the collection.
Andrea’s perspectiveThe attraction of these two Lorenzo di Bicci panels begins in the same place: a rare encounter with the late-Gothic world, and a history of collecting that makes me want to look more closely. Here, that history leads to Vincigliata. The possibility that this painting was chosen by John Temple Leader adds something personal to the documented connection with the castle.
I like the idea of a shared eye across time. Not that another collector’s choice should become mine automatically, but that the same work might speak to both of us, in different lives and different centuries. The gold ground belongs to its own world. The desire to keep looking at it does not feel distant at all.
Colour, gold and the exchange of looks.
The supplied study identifies the panel as the centre of a tabernacle whose wings are lost. The Virgin and Child are accompanied by Catherine of Alexandria, John the Baptist, Anthony Abbot and a young bishop, tentatively identified as Louis of Toulouse.
An image of devotion.
The study relates its frontal, iconic presentation to the Orcagna tradition and discusses the refinement of its colour in relation to developments in Florentine painting towards the end of the fourteenth century.
“The same work might speak to both of us, in different lives and different centuries.”
Vincigliata.
The connection with the Castello di Vincigliata near Fiesole is documented: Hans Dietrich Gronau recorded the painting there in 1933. The castle had been restored and furnished by John Temple Leader, and passed to the Westbury family after his death in 1903. The study considers the painting’s inclusion in Leader’s own collection highly probable, but not documented with certainty. That distinction matters. Vincigliata is an established provenance; personal ownership by Leader remains a strongly supported possibility in the study.
Artwork
& sources.
Identity
- Artist
- Lorenzo di Bicci
- Title
- Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints Louis of Toulouse (?), Catherine of Alexandria, Anthony Abbot and John the Baptist
- Date
- c. 1380
- Medium
- Tempera on panel, gold ground
- Dimensions
- 107 × 55 cm
Provenance
Castello di Vincigliata, Fiesole — documented by Gronau in 1933
Private collection
Literature
H. D. Gronau, Lorenzo di Bicci. Ein Rekonstruktionsversuch, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, IV, 1932/34, 2/3, pp. 107–108, fig. 4.
G. Sinibaldi, Note su Lorenzo di Bicci, Rivista d’arte, XXVI, 1950, p. 202.
M. Boskovits, Pittura fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento, Florence, 1975, p. 334.
H. B. J. Maginnis, R. Offner, A Legacy of Attributions, New York, 1981, p. 43, fig. 88.
Fondazione Federico Zeri, photographic record no. 4718.
Sources & attribution notes
The three-page Salamon study supplied by the collector is the source for this record. It distinguishes the established Vincigliata provenance from the highly probable, but not certain, association with John Temple Leader’s own collection.