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Jacopo del Sellaio

Saint John the Baptist, c. 1480

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 7

Medium

oil on poplar panel

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.)

Credit Line

Samuel H. Kress Collection

Accession Number

1939.1.283

Artists / Makers

Jacopo del Sellaio (artist) Florentine, 1441/1442 - 1493

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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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). See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/1857.

Associated Names

Contini Bonacossi, Alessandro, Count
Kress Foundation, Samuel H.
Rinuccini, Marianna
Rinuccini, Pietro Francesco
Sale, Florence
Trivulzio collection
Trivulzio, Giorgio, Marquis

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.

1985: 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: 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.

1992: Semenzato, Camillo. Genio e botteghe: L'arte nell'Europa tra medio evo ed etá Moderna. Milan, 1992: 19, color repro.

1992: 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.

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.

1994: 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.

1994: 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.

2003: 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.

2011: 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: Brilliant, Virginia. Italian, Spanish, and French Paintings in the Ringling Museum of Art. Sarasota, FL, and New York, 2017: 299.

2017: 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.

2017: Schumacher, Andreas, ed. Florentiner Malerei. Alte Pinakothek: Die Gemälde des 14. bis 16. Jahrhunderts. Munich, 2017: 332.

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.