(active in Lucca between 1476 and 1505)
The Lamentation of Christ,
oil and tempera on panel, 45.2 x 101 cm, framed

Provenance:
Collection of René Maulde de la Clavière (1848–1902);
Private collection, France;
sale, Palais d’Orsay, Paris, 6 April 1978, lot 13 (as School of Botticelli)

Vincenzo Frediani is one of the best-documented painters from Lucca during the last quarter of the 15th century. His prestigious commissions of altarpieces and frescoes for churches in Lucca demonstrate that he was one of the most renowned painters of his native town. At first, Richard Offner and Everett Fahy compiled the artist’s work under the name of the ‘Master of the Lucchese Immaculate Conception’. Subsequently Maurizia Tazartes succeeded in identifying the master as Vincenzo Frediani in 1984 and 1987, thanks to newly discovered documents. There is proof that the artist was commissioned with the name-giving retable of the Immaculate Conception in 1502 (today in the Museo Nazionale, Villa Guinigi, Lucca; see. M. Tazartes, Anagrafe lucchese I, Vincenzo di Antonio Frediani ‘pictor de Lucca’, il Maestro dell’ Immacolata Concezione?, in: Ricerche di storia dell’arte, vol. XXVI, 1985, pp. 4–6). From the mid-1480s on, Frediani was influenced by Domenico Ghirlandaio and Filippino Lippi, whose presence in Lucca while working for San Martino and San Michele in Foro around 1480 and 1481/83 respectively is attested to by documents. The Lamentation of Christ is not yet entirely free from these stylistic inspirations, so that a date of execution towards the early 1480s may be assumed.

Another work by Frediani that can be compared to the present panel is the artist’s early Throne of Mercy in the cathedral of Lucca (see ill.). Our panel’s format of a lunette suggests that it once formed the upper part of an altarpiece. The prominent role taken by Saint Mary Magdalene implies that this Lamentation was made for an altar consecrated to her. Everett Fahy was the first to identify this painting as a work by Frediani when he examined it in the original at Wildenstein’s, New York, in 1982.

We are grateful to Professor Andrea de March for confirming the attribution of the present painting.

additional picture:
Vincenzo d‘Antonio Frediani, Sacra Conversazione, S. Bartolomeo, Ruota di Campannori, Lucca