(Florence 1444/45–1497) The Adoration of the Child, with Saint John the Baptist, Saint Joseph, an Augustinian and a Benedictine monk, and three angels in a wide river landscape, bears inscription and date: A. D. M. CCCCXII F. Filippi lippi. opus, oil and tempera on panel, 52.6 x 37.3 cm, framed

Provenance:
formerly private collection, Milan

Literature:
W. Angelelli and A. G. De Marchi, La Pittura dal Duecento al primo Cinquecento nelle fotografie di Girolamo Bombelli, Milano 1991, no. 288 (as Gherardo di Giovanni dal Fora);
A. G. De Marchi, Falsi primitivi, Prospettive critiche e metodi di esecuzioni, Torino 2001, p. 106 (under the wrong number), fig. 34 (as Gherardo di Giovanni del Fora).

The identification established by Andrea G. De Marchi in his two publications has been confirmed by Everett Fahy (orally) to the previous owner.

The present panel represents one of the rare paintings of Gherado di Giovanni del Fora, who was active along with his younger brother Monte as a miniaturist in the second half of the 15th Century and figures as one of the important protagonists of that genre in Renaissance Florence. Vasari mentions many expensively furnished luxurious volumes for the hospital church of S. Egidio, the Duomo of Florence and Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary and also notes some murals and panel paintings executed for important convents in Florence and Bologna. As a spirit of many interests, he obtained his humanistic training by Poliziano, and moved in the courtly circles of Lorenzo de’ Medici as he frequented the workshop of Leonardo.

Books illuminated by Fora typically show both antique elements and motifs derived from contemporary Netherlandish art, for example, borders decorated with grotesque ornamet all’antice and mythological figures.

Andrea G. De Marchi believes that Lippi’s signature and the date were added in the early 20th Century.