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Filippino Lippi

Tobias and the Angel, c. 1475/1480

Not on View

Medium

oil and tempera on poplar panel

Dimensions

painted surface: 32.7 x 23.5 cm (12 7/8 x 9 1/4 in.)
overall: 34.45 x 25.4 cm (13 9/16 x 10 in.)

framed: 47.6 x 38.1 x 5.7 cm (18 3/4 x 15 x 2 1/4 in.)

Credit Line

Samuel H. Kress Collection

Accession Number

1939.1.229

Artists / Makers

Filippino Lippi (painter) Florentine, 1457 - 1504

Image Use

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Provenance

Alexander Barker [c. 1797-1873], London, by 1868;[1] (his sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 19-21 June 1879, 3rd day, no. 498, as by A. Pollaiuolo); (Thomas Agnew & Sons, Ltd., London); presumably Colonel William Cornwallis-West; (his sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 23 April 1887, no. 78, as by Antonio Pollaiuolo);[2] purchased by (P. & D. Colnaghi & Co., London and New York) for Robert Henry [1850-1929] and Evelyn Holford [1856-1943] Benson, London and Buckhurst Park, Sussex; sold 1927 with the Benson collection to (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London and New York);[3] sold May 1936 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[4] gift 1939 to NGA.

[1] The painting is listed as the property of Alexander Barker in the catalogue of the National Exhibition in Leeds, held in 1868. Since, on the other hand, it is not mentioned by Gustav Waagen in his descriptions of the Barker collection (Treasures of Art in Great Britain, 3 vols, London, 1854: 2:125; Galleries and Cabinets of Art in Great Britain, London, 1857: 71-79), it may have been acquired only after 1857. On Alexander Barker, see John Fleming, "Art Dealing in the Risorgimento. Part 2," The Burlington Magazine 121, no. 917 (August 1979): 505-506.

[2] Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, 2 vols., Washington, D.C., 1979: 1:259 n. 4. The Getty Provenance Index provides the information that the seller, unidentified in the sale catalogue, was presumably Cornwallis-West. Robert Henry Benson's notes on the painting's history (transcript provided in 1976 by his grandson, Peter Wake, and in NGA curatorial files) read: "Bought at Christie's for about 275 Pounds -in the same sale was a Signorelli 'Christ in the House of Simon' (?). I wanted both, but Henry Doyle, then director of the Irish National Gallery came up and proposed that we should not oppose each other and if I would give up bidding for the Signorelli, he would not oppose me for the Filippino - I was miserable at losing the Signorelli until Fairfax Murray got me the 'Madonna of the Casa Tommassi' on a gold ground from Cortona."

[3] The sale of this well-known collection caused an enormous stir; see for example Tancred Borenius, "The Benson Collection," Apollo 6 (1927): 65-70; Frank E. Washburn Freund, "Die Sammlung Benson," Der Cicerone 19 (1927): 495-502.

[4] The Duveen Brothers letter confirming the sale of thirteen paintings and one sculpture, including NGA 1939.1.229, is dated 18 May 1936; the provenance is given as "Benson Coll'n" (copy in NGA curatorial files; Box 474, Folder 5, Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/2369.

Associated Names

Agnew & Sons, Ltd., Thomas
Barker, Alexander
Benson, Robert Henry and Evelyn Holford
Christie, Manson & Woods, Ltd.
Colnaghi & Co., Ltd., P. & D.
Cornwallis-West, William Cornwallis
Kress Foundation, Samuel H.

Exhibition History

1868: National Exhibition of Works of Art, Leeds, 1868, no. 25, as by Antonio Pollaiuolo.

1894: Exhibition of Works by the Old Masters. Winter Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1894, no. 156.

1910: Exhibition of Works by the Old Masters. Winter Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1910, no. 19.

1919: Exhibition of Florentine Painting before 1500, Burlington Fine Arts Club, London, 1919, no. 25 (no. 25 and pl. XXV in illustrated catalogue published 1920).

1927: Loan Exhibition of the Benson Collection of Old Italian Masters, City of Manchester Art Gallery, 1927, no. 110.

1932: Exhibition of Italian Renaissance Art, Wadsworth Atheneum and Morgan Memorial, Hartford, 1932, no. 3.

1979: Berenson and the Connoisseurship of Italian Painting, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1979, no. 98.

2013: Florenz!, Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn, 2013-2014, no. 95, repro.

Bibliography

1914: Benson, Robert Henry. Catalogue of Italian Pictures at 16 South Street, Park Lane, London and Buckhurst in Sussex. London, privately printed, 1914: no. 32.

1941: Duveen Brothers. Duveen Pictures in Public Collections of America. New York, 1941: no. 107, repro.

1941: Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 106, no. 340.

1941: "World Masterpieces Lend Supreme Distinction to National Gallery of Art." The Washington Star (16 March 1941): F6.

1942: Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 246, repro. 129.

1945: Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1945 (reprinted 1947, 1949): 57, repro.

1951: Einstein, Lewis. Looking at Italian Pictures in the National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1951: 44-47, repro.

1952: Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds., Great Paintings from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1952: 30, color repro.

1959: Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 71, repro.

1963: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 300, repro.

1965: Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 75.

1966: Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds. A Pageant of Painting from the National Gallery of Art. 2 vols. New York, 1966: 1:52, color repro.

1966: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XIII-XV Century. London, 1966: 135, fig. 369.

1968: National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 66, repro.

1973: Finley, David Edward. A Standard of Excellence: Andrew W. Mellon Founds the National Gallery of Art at Washington. Washington, 1973: 79.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 194, repro.

1979: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: 1:258-259; 2:pl. 175.

1984: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 97, no. 57, color repro.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 228, repro.

1998: Gibson, Sarah S. and Alicia Craig Faxon. "Journey/Flight." In Encyclopedia of Comparative Iconography: Themes Depicted in Works of Art, edited by Helene E. Roberts. 2 vols. Chicago, 1998: 1:445.

2003: Boskovits, Miklós, and David Alan Brown, et al. Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 2003: 383-387, color repro.

2004: Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 19, no. 13, color repros.

2009: Philpot, Elizabeth. "Old Testament Apocryphal Images in European Art." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Gothenburg, 2009: 148-149, color pl. 4.