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Inscription

on the banderole around the saint's reed cross: [ECCE] ANIVS DEI QVI T[OLLIT PECCATUM MUNDI]

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).

Bibliography
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.
1959
Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 70, repro.
1965
Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 122.
1968
European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1968: 109, repro.
1975
European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 324, repro.
1979
Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: I:425, II:pl. 304
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.
1985
Mündler, Otto. "The Travel Diaries of Otto Mündler." Ed. Carol Togneri Dowd. Walpole Society 51 (1985): 92, 265.
1992
Semenzato, Camillo. Genio e botteghe: L'arte nell'Europa tra medio evo ed etá Moderna. Milan, 1992: 19, color repro.
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.
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.