Lot number 32 - Auction 165
MADONNA UND KIND MIT KIND UND KLEINEM JOHANNES

ATTRIBUTED TO GIOVANNI DI LORENZO LARCIANI ("Maestro dei Paesaggi Kress") 1484 Florence - 1527 ibid. MADONNA AND CHILD WITH THE INFANT SAINT JOHN Oil on poplar panel. 74,5 x 58 cm (R. 85 x 71 cm). Verso: on the panel old collection 'Nr.230'. Part. old rest., old retouching, fine age-related craquelure. Frame. Accompanied by a restoration report by conservator Staffanie Wagner (1996) with photographic documentation. Also accompanied by extensive correspondence with Prof. Dr Cristian von Holst, October/December 2007. Furthermore accompanied by an expert opinion by Prof. Dr Christian Holst dated 29 September 2007, attributing the painting to Giovanni Larciani, Master of the Kress Landscapes. Prof. Dr Holst writes in his report: "A group of Florentine paintings of the early Cinquecento, some of which had also been attributed to Francesco Granacci (1469-1543), whose insufficiently defined oeuvre before 1974 had long encouraged the grouping of a miscellany of difficult-to-classify works under his name, was convincingly assigned by Federico Zeri in 1962 to an artist he created and named after a key work, the 'Maestro dei Paesaggi Kress'. Ten years ago, Louis Alexander Waldman succeeded in identifying this necessarily still somewhat elusive master and introduced him both in The Burlington Magazine and in a Tuscan regional journal. The artist was Giovanni di Lorenzo Larciani, born in Florence in 1484 and deceased there in 1527, like several members of his family, during the plague." Provenance: Kunsthandel Kramer & Flory, Wiesbaden, before 1965.