(Spoleto circa 1470/1480–1528)
Madonna and Child,
oil on panel, 40.5 x 28.5 cm, in a tabernacle frame

Provenance:
Collection of Heinrich Freiherr Tucher von Simmelsdorf (1853–1925), Vienna/Nuremberg;
his sale, Paul Cassirer & Hugo Helbing, Berlin, 8 December 1925, lot 65 (as Bernardino Pinturicchio);
possibly with Albert Werner (1884–1928), Vienna;
Collection of August Lederer (1857–1936), Vienna;
Collection of Serena Lederer (1867–1943), Vienna, until 1938;
confiscated in 1938;
returned to Erich Lederer (1896–1985), Geneva, in 1948;
and thence by descent to his heirs;
Private collection, Vienna;
sale, im Kinsky, Vienna, 6 April 2006, lot 473 (as Follower of Giovanni Bellini);
Private collection, Germany;
art market, Germany;
Private collection, Switzerland

Literature:
C. Ricci, Pintoricchio. Sa Vie Son Oeuvre et son Temps, Paris 1903, p. 12, 29 (as Pinturicchio);
F. Wickhoff, Die Sammlung Tucher, in: Münchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst, vol. 1, 1908, pp. 23–24, fig. 4 (as Pinturicchio);
B. Berenson, The Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance, New York 1909, p. 255 (as Lo Spagna);
C. Ricci, Pintoricchio, Perugia 1912, p. 29 (as Pinturicchio);
E. Harter, Sei quadri dello Spagna, in: Rassegna d’arte antica e moderna, no. 1, 1914, illustrated p. 60, p. 61 (as Giovanni di Pietro, called Lo Spagna);
B. Berenson, Italian pictures of the Renaissance. A list of the principal artists and their works with an index of places, Oxford 1932, p. 545 (as Lo Spagna, Lederer collection);
R. van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, vol. 14, The Hague 1933, p. 287 (as Pinturicchio);
E. Carli, Il Pintoricchio, Milan 1960, p. 21, fig. 22 (as one of the first followers of Pinturicchio);
B. Berenson, Italian pictures of the Renaissance. A list of the principal artists and their works with an index of places. Central Italian and North Italian Schools, New York 1968, vol. 1, p. 414 (as Lo Spagna, formerly Tucher collection);
F. Gualdi Sabatini, Giovanni di Pietro detto Lo Spagna, Spoleto 1984, p. 344 (as Giovanni di Pietro, called Lo Spagna; ‘ma si diversifica per una maggiore aderenza dell’artista umbro al linguaggio pintoricchiesco’);
F. Todini, La pittura umbra. Dal Duecento al primo Cinquecento, vol. I, Milan 1989, p. 317 (as Giovanni di Pietro, called Lo Spagna)

The provenance of this private devotional panel has been known since it was in the Tucher von Simmelsdorf collection. Corrado Ricci, director of the Pinacoteca di Brera, published it in his first monograph on Pinturicchio as a work by the master, maintaining this attribution in later publications. Bernard Berenson proposed an alternative attribution to Giovanni di Pietro, called Lo Spagna, an artist possibly of Spanish origin who was among Pinturicchio’s main followers and collaborators. Berenson’s hypothesis has been accepted by more modern critics and the painting was included in the monograph on Lo Spagna by Fausta Gualdi Sabatini, who notes its close resemblance to Pinturicchio’s autograph works. It therefore seems possible to include the painting in a group of works by Lo Spagna that can be dated to the early 16th century, a period in which the artist worked in Perugia and faithfully followed Pinturicchio’s models: the Oration in the Garden in the National Gallery in London, the Penitent Saint Jerome in the Galleria Colonna in Rome and the various versions of the Nativity currently conserved in the Pinacoteca Vaticana, the Louvre and the Staatliche Museen in Berlin.

When Tucher died in 1925, his collection was dispersed at auction in Berlin. The collector, who had worked as a diplomat in Rome, where he resided in the Palazzo Borghese, had acquired many works of art. After holding another diplomatic post in Vienna, transferring his collection to the Palais Mollard-Clary, Tucher finally returned to his family home in Bavaria, to devote himself to the project of restoring the Tucherschloss in Nuremberg, which is now a museum. Among the works that did not find a place in the castle’s collection and were sold at auction was the present Madonna and Child, described and illustrated in the catalogue as a work by Pinturicchio. At the time, the painting was already presented in the elegant tabernacle frame that it still has today, and which is also mentioned in the introductory text to the catalogue as an example of the care taken by Tucher, in choosing antique frames for the works in his collection that were suitable in style and period.

Shortly after the 1925 auction, the present panel was acquired by the Jewish industrialist August Lederer, owner of the Ledererschlössel in Hadersdorf. Lederer and his wife, Serena Pulitzer, were collectors and major patrons of Gustav Klimt: the extraordinary, 34 meters long Beethoven Frieze, created by the artist in 1902 and now conserved in the Vienna Secession, belonged to them. The Lederers also collected numerous other works by contemporary artists, including Egon Schiele; as well as furniture, books, jewellery and old master paintings, bought mainly at auction consigned from the great European aristocratic collections.

August Lederer died in 1936. Starting in 1938, under Nazi persecution, a large part of the collection, including the present Madonna and Child by Lo Spagna, was confiscated by the Gestapo, and some paintings were selected to be part of the Führer’s Museum in Linz. At the end of the Second World War, Erich Lederer, the son of August and Serena, managed to obtain the restitution of some of his family’s artworks, including the present painting, which remained in the possession of his heirs before reappearing on the art market in 2006. Other works from Erich Lederer’s collection were donated to the Metropolitan Museum, New York, the Kunstmuseum, Basel and the Albertina, Vienna.