LOT DETAILS

Materials:

tempera, gilt and silver on panel

Size Notes:

dodecagonal; diameter (including rim); recto, diameter of painted surface: 59.1 cm.; verso, diameter of painted surface: 62.9 cm.

Markings:

insribed with a date on the lower edge of the recto, QUESTO SI FE A DI XXV DAPRILE NEL MILLE QUATTROCENTO VENTOTTO (This was made on the 25th of April, 1428); and inscribed on the verso, FACCIA IDDIO SANA OGNI DONNA CHFFIGLIA EPADRI LORO... RO... ERNATO SIA SANZA NOIA ORICHDIA ISONO UNBANBOLIN CHESULI... A DIMORO FO LAPISCIA DARIENTO EDORO (May God give health to every woman who gives birth and to the child's father... may [the child] be born without fatigue or danger. I am a baby who lives on a [rock]... and I make urine of silver and gold)

Exhibited:

New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, on loan from the New York Historical Society, New York, from 1979 (inv. no. L.1979.II.2a, b); New York, Metropolitan Musuem of Art, Painting and Illumination in Early Renaissance Florence, 1300-1450, 17 November 1994 - 26 February 1995, no. 43, removed from the show early for sale on 12 January 1995; New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Forth Worth, Texas, Kimbell Art Museum, Art and Love in Renaissance Italy, 11 November 2008 - 14 June 2009, no.69; New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, on loan from the present collector since 1995 (inv. no. L.1995.17).

Literature:

A.-F. Artaud de Montor, Considérations sur l'état de la peinture en Italie, 1811, pp. 106-107, no. 124 (as Paolo Uccello); P.M. Gault de Saint-Germain, Guide des Amateurs de Peinture, 1835, p. 62; A.-F. Artaud de Montor, Peintres primitifs; Collection de tableaux rapportée d'Italie, sous la direction de M. Challamel, 1843, pp. 46-48, no. 124, reproduced pl. 48 (as Paolo Uccello); Bryan Catalogue, 1853, p. 3, no. 18 (as "Ocello"); R. Grant White, Companion to the Bryan Gallery of Christian Art, New York 1853, pp. 12-13, no. 18 (as Paolo Uccello); A. Schmarsow, "Maîtres Italiens; à la galerie d'Altenburg et dans la collection A. de Montor," in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, XX, 1898, pp. 504-505; E. Müntz, "Les plateaux et les coupes d'accouchées aux XVe et XVIe siècles. Nouvelles recherches," in La Revue de l'Art ancien et moderne, 5, 1902, p. 427; W. Rankin, "Cassone Paintings in American Collections," in The Burlington Magazine, vol XI, 1907, p. 131 (as Follower of Starnina); W. Rankin, "Cassone Paintings in American Collections," in The Burlington Magazine, vol. XII, 1907-8, p. 63 (as Follower of Starnina); A. Schiaparelli, La casa fiorentina e i suoi arredi nei secoli XIV e XV, Florence 1908, pp. 278-279; Catalogue of the Gallery of the New York Historical Society, New York 1915, p. 59, no. B-18 (as Paolo Uccello); P. Schubring, Casoni, Lipsia 1915, vol. I, p. 236, no. 78; reproduced vol. II, plate XII (as Florentine School, 1428); R. Offner, "Italian Pictures at the New York Historical Society and Elsewhere, II," in Art in America, vol. III, 1920, pp. 7-8, reproduced figs. 1 and 2 (as Follower of Lorenzo Monaco); H. Comstock, "Primitives from the Bryan Collection," in International Studio, vol. LXXXIV, no. 348, May 1926, pp. 35-36, reproduced; H. Comstock, "Italian Birth and Marriage Salvers," in International Studio, vol. LXXX, no. 352, September 1926, pp. 50, 53, 58; R. van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, vol. IX, 1927, pp. 103, 105 (as Florentine School, dated 1428); B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance, Oxford 1932, p. 196 (as Master of the Bambino Vispo); M. Salmi, "Aggiunte al Tre- e al Quattro-cento fiorentina," in Rivista d'Arte, vol. XVI, 1934, p. 180 (as Master of the Griggs Crucifixion, today known as Giovanni Toscani); B. Berenson, Pitture italiane del Rinascimento, Milan 1936, p. 168; F. Antal, Florentine Painting and its Social Background, London 1948, pp. 355-356, reproduced fig. 145 (as Florentine); L. Collobi Ragghianti, cur., Lorenzo il Magnifico e le arti. Onoranze nationali per il V centenario della nascita di Lorenzo il Magnifico (1449-1949), exh. cat. Palazzo Strozzi, Florence 1949, p. 33; F. Antal, Die Florentinische Malerei und Ihr sozialer Hintergrund, Berlin 1958, p. 288; M. Gregori, cur., Mostra dei tesori segreti delle case fiorentine, exh. cat. Circolo Borghese e della Stampa, Florence 1960, pp. 12-13; M. Levi d'Ancona, "Bartolomeo di Fruosino," in Art Bulletin, vol. XLIII, 1961, pp. 92-93; M. Gregori, Miniatura e miniatori a Firenze dal XIV al XVI secolo. Documenti per la storia della miniatura, Florence 1962, pp. 44-48, reproduced fig. 4; B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance; Florentine School, London 1963, vol. I, p. 219 (as between the Master of Bambino Vispo and Rossello di Jacopo); B. Degenhart and A. Schmitt, Corpus der italienischen Zeichnungen 1300-1450, Berlin 1968, pp. 298-300, under no. 198, reproduced fig. 217a (as follower of Lorenzo Monaco); P. Watson, Virtu and Voluptas in Cassone Painting, Ph.d. dissertation, Yale University 1970, p. 267-269; M. Boscovits, "Su Don Silvestro, Don Simone e la 'scuola degli Angeli'," in Paragone, 23, 1972, p. 58, note 55 (as Florentine School); B. Fredericksen and F. Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Collections, Cambridge, MA 1972, pp. 222, 609 (as Florentine School, 15th Century); P. Watson, "A Desco da Parto by Bartolomeo di Fruosino," in Art Bulletin, 56, March 1974, pp. 4-9, reproduced fig. 1 and 2 (as Bartolomeo di Fruosino); R. Freemantle, Florentine Gothic Painters from Giotto to Masaccio: A Guide to Painting in and near Florence, 1300-1450, London 1975, pp. 614, 630, reproduced fig. 1323 (as Unknown Painter, dated 1428); P. Watson and V. Kirkham, "Amore e Virtù: Two Salvers Depicting Boccaccio's 'Comedia delle Ninfe Fiorentine'," in The Metropolitan Museum Journal, X, 1975, pp. 44, 48-49; E. Callmann, "The Growing Threat to Marital Bliss as seen in Fifteenth-Century Florentine Paintings," in Studies in Iconography, V, 1979, p. 741; A. Jacobson-Schutte, "Trionfo della donna: Tematiche di rovesciamento dei ruoli nella Firenze rinascimentale," in Quaderni Storici, 44, 1980, pp. 480-481, reproduced fig. 4; J. Pope-Hennessy and K. Christiansen, "Secular Painting in 15th-Century Tuscany: Birth Trays, Cassone Panels and Portraits," in Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, XXXVIII, Summer 1980, pp. 6, 8-10, reproduced (as Bartolomeo di Fruosino); A. Schiaparelli, La casa fiorentina e i suoi arredi: nei secoli XIV e XV, Florence 1983, vol. I, p. 279; vol II, pp. 79-80; D. A. Covi, The Inscription in Fifteenth Century Florentine Painting, diss. New York University 1986, pp. 100, 463-464, no. 156, reproduced fig. 81; M. Eisenberg, Lorenzo Monaco, Princeton 1989, pp. 85, 134, 178, reproduced fig. 324 (as Bartolomeo di Fruosino); P. Joannides, Masaccio and Masolino; a Complete Catalogue, London 1993, pp. 277-279, under no. 3 (as anonymous but based on Masaccio's birth salver in Berlin, inv. 58C); L. Kanter, Painting and Illumination in Early Renaissance Florence, 1300-1450, exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1994, pp. 311-314, no. 43, reproduced pp. 312, 313 (as Bartolomeo di Fruosino); C. de Carli, I Deschi da Parto e la Pittura del Primo Rinascimento Toscano, Turin 1997, pp. 98-101, no. 15, reproduced pp. 99 and 101; J.M. Musacchio, "Imaginative Conceptions in Renaissance Italy," in Picturing Women in Renaissance and Baroque Italy, G. Johnston and S. Matthews, eds., Cambridge 1997, p. 45, reproduced figs. 2.2 and 2.4; J.M. Musacchio, The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy, New Haven and London 1999 (adapted from diss. Princeton University 1995), p. 1, reproduced figs. 1-2; R.J.M. Olson, The Florentine Tondo, Oxford 2000, pp. 22, 27, reproduced fig. 1.16; H. Borggrefe, "Tizians sogenannte Himmlische und Irdische Liebe -- Der Beistand der Venus im Hochzeitsbild der Laura Bagarotto," in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 64, 2001, p. 342, reproduced fig. 7; C. Däubler-Hauschke, Geburt und Memoria. Zum italienischen Bildtyp der deschi da parto, Munich and Berlin 2003, pp. 170-175, no. 1, reproduced pp. 171, 172, figs. 51-52; J.M. Musacchio in Art and Love in Renaissance Italy, exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 2008, pp. 152-154, no. 69, reproduced p. 153, recto only.

Provenance:

Possibly commissioned by Tommaso di Paolo Montauri (documented 1437-1469), Siena, on the occasion of the birth of his son Paolo di Tommaso Montauri; Alexis-François Artaud de Montor (1772-1849), Paris, by 1843; His sale, Paris, Place des Bourses, 16-17 January 1851, lot 124, as Paolo Uccello; Where acquired by Thomas Jefferson Bryan (1802-1870), New York; By whom given to the New York Historical Society, New York, in 1867 (inv. no. 1867.18); By whom sold, (The Property of the New York Historical Society), New York, Sotheby's, 12 January 1995, lot 161; Where acquired by the present collector.