(Florence circa 1495–1564)
The Nativity,
oil and tempera on panel, 66 x 44.5 cm, unframed

Provenance:
Private European collection

We are grateful to Andrea G. De Marchi for suggesting the attribution after examining the present painting in the original and for his help in cataloguing this lot. He has suggested dating this work to 1520–1525.

We are also grateful to Alessandro Tomei for independently confirming the attribution after examining the present painting in the original.

The present painting can be compared to another Nativity also by Lunetti (see Fototeca Zeri no. 34547) and a further painting, an altarpiece with the same subject which is also documented in the Fototeca Zeri (no. 34546), but which is now lost, also shares a similar composition and stylistic similarities.

The artist’s preparatory underdrawing can be seen with the aid of infrared light. This is especially clear in parts of the drapery and in the figures’ features and is distinctively Florentine in style.

Vasari states that Lunetti was a pupil of Lorenzo di Credi in Florence, but he was most probably trained in the studio of his father Stefano. Lunetti’s career is documented from around 1510–11 when he is recorded as collaborating in the decoration of the façade of Santa Maria de’ Servi in Florence. In two niches he painted a now lost Annunciation. The only work cited by Vasari identifiable today is the Nativity for Villa Capponi in Arcetri, now conserved in the Cariprato collection, Prato (see A. Tamborino, in: Palazzo degli Alberti. Le collezioni d’arte della Cariprato, ed. by A. Paolucci, Prato 2004, pp. 57–59, cat. no. 4).

Lunetti’s painterly style can be compared to his master’s Lorenzo di Credi, who used diffused light to model figures and executed compositions with great attention to detail. His landscape backgrounds reveal a more fluid handling of paint which appears to derive from the work of Fra Bartolomeo.