(Siena 1470–1524)
The Coronation of the Virgin, with Saints Ursula, Bernard of Chiaravalle, Benedict, Onophrius, and John the Baptist,
oil on panel, 76 x 66 cm, framed

Provenance:
Sterbini Collection, Rome;

European private collection

Literature:
A. Venturi, La Galleria Sterbini in Roma. Saggio illustrativo, Rome, 1906, p. 2 (as Bernardino Fungai);
B. Berenson, ‘Quadri senza casa. Il quattrocento senese’, in: Dedalo XI, 1931, pp. 735–767, p. 748 (as Pietro di Domenico)
R. van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, vol. 16, The Hague, 1937, p. 464, n. 1, p. 478 (as a possible later work by Bernardino Fungai);
B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance – Central Italian and North Italian Schools, vol. I, London, 1968, p. 343 (as Pietro di Domenico);
L. Vertova, ‘Il Maestro della Pala Bagatti Valsecchi’, in: Antichità Viva, no. 1, Florence, 1969, pp. 3–14, p. 9, fig. 9 (as Maestro della Pala Bagatti Valsecchi);
F. Zeri, Italian Paintings in the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, 1976, p. 133 (as Girolamo di Benvenuto)

According to Federico Zeri (see literature), the present panel is by Girolamo di Benvenuto. During the course of 20th-century it was attributed to various masters and in 1906, Adolfo Venturi gave the present panel, which had previously been attributed to Giacomo Pacchiarotto, to Bernardino Fungai, comparing it with the Fungai’s compositions of the same subject in the Chiesa dei Servi and in Madonna di Fontegiusta, both in Siena (see literature). Bernard Berenson, rejecting this attribution, published the panel in 1931 as a work by Pietro di Domenico. In his opinion, the panel was of Tuscan origin and painted before 1506, the year when Pietro di Domenico died. Di Domenico was stylistically close to Fungai, and was influenced by the artistic tradition of Benvenuto di Giovanni, and he was also influenced by Umbrian masters. Luisa Vertova identified the panel as a work by the unidentified Maestro della Pala Bagatti Valsecchi (his name derives from a large altarpiece in the Bagatti-Valsecchi Collection in Milan), to whom she had assigned a number of paintings. These works, including the present panel, were finally identified by Federico Zeri as paintings from Girolamo di Benvenuto’s late period. For example, the lute-playing angel is related to the music-making angel in Girolamo di Benvenuto’s Madonna delle Nevi (Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena).

Born in Siena in 1470, Girolamo da Benvenuto was first documented as an independent artist in 1508, when he painted the above-mentioned Madonna delle Nevi, which he signed. It seems that he had earlier collaborated in works signed by his father Benvenuto di Giovanni. Stylistically, father and son are so close that it is difficult to distinguish between Girolamo’s early works and those by his father. Girolamo’s late work was influenced by Luca Signorelli, Perugino, and Sodoma.