Saint John the Baptist
c. 1480
Artist, Florentine, 1441/1442 - 1493
Jacopo del Sellaio
Attributed to
West Building Main Floor, Gallery 7
Artwork overview
-
Medium
oil on poplar panel
-
Credit Line
-
Dimensions
overall: 52 x 32.8 cm (20 1/2 x 12 15/16 in.)
framed: 67.3 x 48.3 x 7.6 cm (26 1/2 x 19 x 3 in.) -
Accession Number
1939.1.283
Artwork history & notes
Provenance
Marquis Pietro Francesco Rinuccini, Florence, by 1852; (his sale, Palazzo Rinuccini Fondacci di Santo Spirito, Florence, 1 May 1852, no. 128, as by Botticelli, possibly bought in); by inheritance to Marianna Rinuccini, who in 1855 married Marquis Giorgio Trivulzio [d. 1856], Milan;[1] Trivulzio family, Milan, until at least 1931.[2] (Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Florence); sold October 1937 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[3] gift 1939 to NGA.
[1] Ellis Waterhouse (note of 22 July 1980 in NGA curatorial files) provided the reference to the sale catalogue and supplied further information about the marriage of Marianna Rinuccini and Giorgio Trivulzio. A letter of 8 September 1986 from the Getty Provenance Index (in NGA curatorial files) notes Waterhouse's identification of the NGA painting with a painting that Otto Mündler describes in the Trivulzio collection in 1856: "Botticelli: S. John the Baptist, as a youth of 12 or 14 years in a landscape, with Florence in the background" ("The Travel Diaries of Otto Mündler, 1855-1858," ed. Carol Togneri Dowd, Walpole Society 51 [1985]: 92, 265).
[2] The painting is cited as being in the Trivulzio collection by Raimond van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, 19 vols., The Hague, 1931: 12:387-390, fig. 256. The Contini Bonacossi bill of sale (see note 3) states that the painting was "Formerly in the Collection of Principe Trivulzio, Milan," and refers to van Marle's publication.
[3] The bill of sale was for ten paintings (copy in NGA curatorial files). See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/1857.
Associated Names
Bibliography
1905
Reinach, Salomon. Répertoire de peintures du moyen âge et de la Renaissance (1280-1580). 6 vols. Paris, 1905-1923: 2(1907): 546, repro.
1909
Berenson, Bernard. The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance, 3rd ed. London, 1909: 183.
1912
Berenson, Bernard. Florentine Painters of the Renaissance, 3rd rev. ed. London, 1912: 184.
1923
Marle, Raimond van. The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting. 19 vols. The Hague, 1923-1938: 12(1931): 387, fig. 256.
1941
Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 181-182, no. 394.
1942
Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 247, repro. 187.
1945
Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1945 (reprinted 1947, 1949): 56, repro.
1946
Friedmann, Herbert. The Symbolic Goldfinch. Its History and Significance in European Devotional Art. Washington, DC, 1946: 73, 150, pls. 69, 69a.
1955
Lavin, Marilyn Aronberg. "Giovannino Battista: A Study in Renaissance Religious Symbolism." The Art Bulletin, 37 (June 1955): 92 note 40.
1959
Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 70, repro.
1963
Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Florentine School. 2 vols. London, 1963: 1:199. 2:pls. 1109, 1478.
1965
Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 122.
1966
Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XIII-XV Century. London, 1966: 133, fig. 368.
1968
National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 109, repro.
1972
Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, MA, 1972: 187.
1974
Fanelli, Giovanni. Firenze architettura e città. 2 vols. Florence, 1974: 2:70, fig. 400.
1975
European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 324, repro.
1976
Tomory, Peter. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings before 1800. Sarasota, FL, 1976: 41.
1977
Padoa Rizzo, Anna. "Proposte per l'attivita giovanile di Iacopo del Sellaio." In Maria Grazia Ciardi Dupre Dal Poggetto and Paolo Dal Poggetto, eds., Scritti di storia dell'arte in onore di Ugo Procacci, 2 vols. Milan, 1977: 1:278, fig. 267.
1979
Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: 1:425; 2:pl. 304.
1980
Fanelli, Giovanni. Firenze. Bari, 1980: 87, fig. 37.
1984
Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 100, no. 69, color repro.
1985
European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 371, repro.
Mündler, Otto. "The Travel Diaries of Otto Mündler." Ed. Carol Togneri Dowd. Walpole Society 51 (1985): 92, 265.
1987
Thiébaut, Dominique. Ajaccio, Musée Fesch. Les primitifs italiens. Paris, 1987: 126.
1992
Semenzato, Camillo. Genio e botteghe: L'arte nell'Europa tra medio evo ed etá Moderna. Milan, 1992: 19, color repro.
Stapleford, Richard. The Age of Lorenzo de' Medici: Patronage and the Arts in Renaissance Florence. A Walking Tour of Italian Painting and Sculpture in the National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1992: 17-18.
Pons, Nicoletta. “Una bottega fiorentina di pittura nella seconda metà del XV secolo: Jacopo del Sellaio e compagni.” Ph.D. diss. Università degli studi di Roma “La Sapienza,” 1992: 337, cat. 90, fig. 29.
1993
Savelli, Dino. Firenze nella pittura dal XIV al XVI secolo. Florence, 1993: 154, figs. 63, 63a.
1994
Blasio, Silvia and Mina Gregori. Firenze nella pittura e nel disegno dal Trecento al Settecento. Milan, 1994: 62, figs. 56, 57.
Dalli Regoli, Gigetta. "Iam securis ad radicem arborum posita est: Le scure di San Giovanni, un attributo e un indizio." Artista 6 (1994): 69-70.
Pons, Nicoletta. "Una provenienza per Jacopo del Sellaio." Antichità Viva 33, no. 6 (1994): 18.
1996
Barolsky, Paul. “Savonarola and the Beauty of Florence.” Source 15, no. 2 (1996): 11, fig. 1.
1998
Callmann, Ellen. "Jacopo del Sellaio, the Orpheus myth, and painting for the private citizen." Folia historiae artium, vol. 4 (1998): 158, fig. 12.
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: 632-636, color repro.
Eagleston, Alisa. “The Virgin, Child, & Saint John: Resolving the Contested Attribution of a Renaissance Panel Painting through Information Obtained during the Conservation Process.” Cantor Arts Center Journal 3 (2002-2003): 29.
2008
Zuccari, Alessandro. “Roma, Firenze, Gerusalemme nella Cappella Niccolina.” In Alessandro Zuccari, ed. Angelicus pictor. Ricerche e interpretazioni sul Beato Angelico. Milan, 2008: 147, fig. 94.
2009
Miziołek, Jerzy. "Orpheus and Eurydice: Three Spalliera Panels by Jacopo del Sellaio." I Tatti Studes in the Italian Renaissance 12 (2009): 122.
2011
Land, Norman E. "Interviewing the Art of Jacopo del Sellaio." SECAC Review 16, no. 1 (2011): 6 fig. 5, 7.
Thiébaut, Dominique, et al. Ajaccio, Palais-Fesch-Musée des beaux-arts: catalogues raisonnés des collections. III: Peintures italiennes XIVe-XVIe siècles. Paris, 2011: 82.
2013
Macneil, Georgina Sybella. “San Giovannino: The Boy Baptist in Quattrocento Italian Art.” Ph.D. diss., University of Sydney, 2013: 122-127, 156, fig. 4.4.
2015
Daly, Christopher. "Jacopo del Sellaio's Altarpieces for the Florentine Oltrarno." M.A. thesis, Ohio University, Athens, OH, 2015: 26, 41, fig. 10.
2017
Schumacher, Andreas, ed. Florentiner Malerei. Alte Pinakothek: Die Gemälde des 14. bis 16. Jahrhunderts. Munich, 2017: 332.
Brilliant, Virginia. Italian, Spanish, and French Paintings in the Ringling Museum of Art. Sarasota, FL, and New York, 2017: 299.
De Simone, Gerardo. Il Beato Angelico a Roma 1445-1455. Rinascita delle arti e Umanesimo cristiano nell'Urbe di Niccolo V e Leon Battista Alberti. Florence, 2017: 167 n. 258.
2018
Miziołek, Jerzy. Renaissance Weddings and the Antique: Italian Domestic Paintings from the Lanckoroński Collection. Rome, 2018: 227.
2020
Civettini, Davide. "La 'primavera' di Jacopo del Sellaio." M.A. thesis, Università degli Studi di Firenze, 2020: 100-101, fig. 154.
Inscriptions
on the banderole around the saint's reed cross: [ECCE] ANIVS DEI QVI T[OLLIT PECCATUM MUNDI]
Wikidata ID
Q20174367