Workshop of Filippino Lippi

(Prato 1457-1504 Florence)

The Crucifixion

Footnotes

Provenance
Collection Eugen Miller Von Aicholz, (1835-1919), Vienna
Collection Camillo Castiglioni, (1879-1957), Vienna
Their sale, Hermann Ball and Paul Graupe, Berlin, 28 November 1930, lot 3, where purchased by
Dr Alfred Scharf (1900-1965), by whom sold
Art market, London, 1934
With Colnaghi, London, 1951-2
Sale, Sotheby's, London, 24 February 1971, lot 71, where purchased by
Collection of Mrs Alfred Scharf and thence by descent to the present owner

Literature
B Berenson, The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance, New York and London, 1909, p.149
A Venturi, Storia dell' Arte Italiana,, Milan, 1911, vol. VII, part 1, p.677
R van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, XII, The Hague, 1931, p.360
A. Scharf, Filippino Lippi, Vienna, 1935, pp.57, 107, no. 27a, ill., fig. 94
K. Neilson, Filippino Lippi: A Critical Study, Cambridge, Mass., 1938, p. 149 (as attributed to)
A. Scharf, Filippino Lippi, Vienna, 1950, pp. 33, 55, under no. 97
L. Berti and U. Boldini, Filippino Lippi, Florence, 1957, p.98, no. 6 (as attributed to)
L. Berti and U. Boldini, Filippino Lippi, Florence, 1991, p.235 (as attributed to)
J.K. Nelson, The Later Works of Filippino Lippi: From His Roman Sojourn Until His Death (ca. 1489 - 1504), New York, PhD diss., 1992, p. 322
J.K. Nelson in P. Zambrano & J.K. Nelson, Filippino Lippi, Milan, 2004, p.566 note 20 and p. 599, cat. no. 55.1, ill. p. 407, fig. 328

Lippi and his studio collaborators returned to this composition more than once: two other versions exist in the collections at New Haven, Yale University Art Museum (acc. no., 1871.56) and Prato, Palazzo Pretorio Museum, all three being of similar size. The subject is derived from the central portion of Lippi's altarpiece of 1498-1500 commissioned by Niccolò Valori for the chapel that bears his family name in San Procolo, Florence which showed Christ on the cross flanked by the Virgin and Saint Francis, Saints John the Baptist and Mary Magdalen. When Tuscany was briefly annexed to France under Napoleon the altarpiece was broken up and some years later the central part was acquired by the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum in Berlin, but was destroyed during a bombardment in 1945. Jonathan Nelson believes that these smaller Crucifixion panels that emanate from Lippi's workshop were intended as devotional works in their own right, rather than simply being smaller-scale repetitions of the Valori composition.

There is a related silverpoint drawing in the Gabinetto dei Disegni e Stampe, Palazzo degli Uffizi, Florence (inv. 159. E).

Dr Alfred Scharf was an art historian, collector and art dealer who emigrated from Berlin to London in 1933, where he remained for the rest of his life. He acquired the panel in the early part of the 20th century but sold it just after he moved to England. Some years after he died his wife came upon it again in a Sotheby's sale in 1971 and bought it back again, and it has since remained within the family.