Introduzione

This panel has a traditional attribution to the 'Master of the Ashmolean Predella', who was active in Florence between 1360 and 1390. The artist was named by Richard Offner1 after a predella panel depicting The Birth of the Virgin in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.2  He is generally thought to have worked in the Orcagna workshop and then that of Jacopo di Cione before entering independent practice.3 On the basis of photographs Everett Fahy supports the traditional attribution to the 'Master of the Ashmolean Predella'. He compares it to another anconetta in the Museo Stibbert in Florence4and another, unpublished work, a Madonna and Child with eight saints, sold Paris, Drouot, 5 December 1973, lot 36. Prof. Miklós Boskovits, however, is more inclined to see this panel as closer to the work of Niccolò di Pietro Gerini (active in Florence 1366 - circa 1414/15) than to the Cione workshops. An attribution to the young Lorenzo di Bicci (c.1350-1427) has also been suggested.

1. R. Offner, A Critical and Historical Corpus of Florentine Painting: The Fourteenth Century, Section IV, vol. III, 1965, p. 77.
2. R. Lloyd, A catalogue of the earlier Italian Paintings in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford 1977, pp. 137-9, reproduced plate 96.
3. For the fullest list of his works see M. Boskovits, Pittura Fiorentina alla viglia del Rinascimiento, 1370-1400, Florence 1975, pp. 372-6.
4. See Boskovits, op. cit, p. 373.

fonte: www.sothebys.com