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Artist or Maker: Sano di Pietro (Siena 1406-1481)
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Provenance: Dan Fellows Platt, Englewood, New Jersey.
with A. and E. Silberman Galleries, New York, 1942, by whom given to the present owner.
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Exhibited: Muskegon, Hackley Art Gallery, and Indianapolis, John Herron Museum of Art, October-December 1941.
Columbus, Columbus Museum of Arts and Crafts, December 1966.
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Literature: E. Gaillard, Sano di Pietro, Chambéry, 1923, pp. 176-7, no. 203, illustrated.
B. Berenson, Pitture italiane del Rinascimento, Milan, 1936, p. 429.
B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Central Italian and North Italian Schools, London, 1968, I, p. 375.
E. M. Zafran, European Art in the High Museum, Atlanta, 1984, p. 31, illustrated, as 'Workshop of Sano di Pietro'.
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Notes: PROPERTY FROM THE HIGH MUSEUM OF ART, ATLANTA, SOLD TO BENEFIT THE ACQUISITIONS FUND*
Sano di Pietro was the most consistently productive Sienese master of the mid-fifteenth century, remaining faithful to local tradition and yet influential on painters of the following generation. In 1428 he was listed in the guild of painters in Siena just before Sassetta, with whom he probably trained. From the 1440s Sano's career is copiously documented, and many of his works are dated, in particular his masterpiece, the Gesuati Polyptych, dated 1444 (Siena, Pinacoteca Nazionale). From the early 1450s he produced many large-scale works and made extensive use of assistants.
The present work formed part of the collection of Dan Fellows Platt (1873-1938). Platt, a member of Princeton class of 1895, became an important collector of Italian art. Upon his death the Ferargil Galleries in New York valued his estate on 6 May 1938 at $88,636. It included books, coins, decorative arts, and predominantly fourteenth to eighteenth century Italian Old Master drawings and paintings. Platt donated a vast collection of drawings and paintings to the Art Museum, Princeton University, in 1937. Among them are the Mystic Crucifixion by Vecchietta, a Madonna and Child by Ugolino di Nerio and a large Madonna and Child by Domenico di Bartolo.
We are grateful to Dr. Laurence Kanter for confirming the attribution to Sano di Pietro after inspecting the original (verbal communication, 1 November 2004).
Tax exempt