(Florence active 1351–1376)
Madonna and Child with Saints and angels,
tempera on panel, gold ground, shaped top, overall: 80 x 39 cm, painted surface: 44.5 x 24 cm (central panel), 6 x 6 cm (Christ Blessing in roundel above), integral frame

Provenance:
sale, Dorotheum Vienna, 22 March 2001, lot 43 (as Giovanni Bonzi, sold for 1,400,000 ATS - € 101,700);
Private European collection

The present painting has been traditionally attributed to Giovanni Bonsi and the attribution has been confirmed by scholars including Filippo Todini.

The artist was influential in Florentine painting around the 1350s and his oeuvre is stylistically close to the works of Maso di Banco and the Master of San Lucchese, Allegretto Nuzi and Andrea di Bonaiuto.

The present painting can be compared to a large five-pointed polyptych in the Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome, which is signed and dated 1371 and in the polyptych, Bonsi masterfully anticipates the late-Gothic accents that characterize his oeuvre. The painter seems to have been well respected and as he was listed in the Libro dell’Estimo 1351-52 among the one hundred richest Florentines of his neighbourhood. In 1366, he was invited to become part - together with Taddeo Gaddi, Orcagna and Andrea di Bonaiuto - of a commission appointed to form an opinion regarding the construction of the new cathedral. Several paintings in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Prato, in the church of San Miniato al Monte and in Orsanmichele in Florence are also attributed to Bonsi.