(Florence 1474–1515)
Madonna and Child beside a window, a landscape beyond,
tempera on panel, 59.5 x 47 cm, framed

Provenance:
Richard Bingham Collection, Great Britain;
his sale, Phillips Son and Neale, London, 11 July 1849;
Frederick Spencer (1798–1857) Collection, Althorpe House, by 1851;
by descent to his son John Poyntz Spencer (1835–1910), Althorp House;
his heirs;
sale, Christie’s, New York, 18 January 1983, lot 31;
Private collection, Great Britain

Literature:
Catalogue of the pictures at Althorp House, in the county of Northampton, Althorp 1851, no.33 (as Fra Bartolomeo);
K. Garlick, A Catalogue of Pictures at Althorp, in The Walpole Society, 1974-1976, vol. 45, Glasgow 1976, no. 614 (as Giovanni Antonio Sogliani).

The present painting is registered in the Fototeca Zeri (no. 33610) as Bartolomeo della Porta (fra’ Batolomeo).

The present painting was once part of the celebrated collection of the Earls Spencer at Althorp House, Northamptonshire where it was considered a work by Fra Bartolommeo. In fact, Mariotto Albertinelli trained under Cosimo Rosselli alongside Fra Bartolommeo, and they set up a workshop together in the 1490s. Albertinelli and Fra Bartolommeo therefore worked alongside one another and collaborated on some commissions which can make it difficult to differentiate the work of one from the other. They appear to have operated under an equal partnership, dividing proceeds from their commissions in half.

In Albertinelli’s independent works he appears to have favoured more subtle chromatic shifts, as evidenced in the present painting. The soft contours of the flesh are formed with an almost sfumato effect, different the stronger chiaroscuro preferred by Fra Bartolommeo. The transitions of colour in the drapery, with diffused highlights, have not yet taken on the Peruginesque quality that we see in Albertinelli’s later works. The artist has taken great care in the representation of the draped curtain: cross-hatched lines along the main fold at left denote the sheen of precious metal threads in the cloth-of-gold lining, and the embroidery is finely painted in raised lines, creating a tactile surface. The landscape shown through the window at right is painted with a remarkable looseness. The trees, some fine and long limbed, others made full with layered rows of browning leaves, are reminiscent of those in the background of Fra Bartolommeo’s Noli Me Tangere, now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (inv. no. 39).