(Florence active 1385–1415)
The Madonna and Child,
tempera on gold ground panel, 101.5 x 52.5 cm, integral frame

Provenance:
with Colnaghi, London (according to a label on the reverse);
Private collection, Florence;
where acquired by the present owner

Literature:
M. Boskovits, Pittura Fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento, Florence 1975, fig. 437 (as Maestro del 1399)

The present painting is registered in the Fototeca Zeri under no. 4094 as Maestro del 1399 (Giovanni di Tano Fei).

In an article published in the Bulletin of Art in 1964, Federico Zeri identified a group of panel paintings by an, at that time, anonymous artist working in Florence in the late 14th, early 15th century with a polyptych in the Metropolitan Museum, New York and named the artist the Master of the Altarpiece of the Metropolitan Museum (no. 50.229.2). Miklos Boskovits renamed the artist as the Master of 1399 taking the date from that on the Madonna and Child enthroned with six Angels in the Serrestori Hospital in Figline Valdarno.

Among the works assigned to the Master of 1399 was a panel of Santa Brigida. This painting was found to have been documented as being commissioned from Giovanni di Tano Fei for the Monastery of Santa Brigida al Paradiso. The identification of the Master of 1399 with Giovanni di Tano Fei, even in absence of other documentary evidence, appears to be accepted.

Giovanni di Tano Fei was a member of the Physicians and Apothecaries guild from 1386 and is documented until the early fifteenth century (see E. Merciai, The probable Giovanni di Tano Fei: an odd mouthpiece of the international gothic in Florence, in: Arte Cristiania, 1993, pp. 79-91). Initially influenced by the work of Orcagna, as is apparent in the altarpiece of Santa Brigida, Giovanni di Tano Fei also seems to have been influenced by Agnolo Gaddi.