(Florence 1531–1571)
Pietà with two angels,
oil on canvas, 111.5 x 127 cm, framed

Provenance:
Henry Farrer collection, London (1798–1866);
his sale, Christie’s, London, 15-16 June 1866, sold for £357;
where acquired by Joseph Boord;
his sale, Christie’s, London, 1 July 1876, sold for £362;
where acquired by Messrs. Agnew;
sale, Christie’s, 1878 (according to literature);
where acquired by Samuel Jones-Loyd, Lord Overstone (1796–1883);
thence by descent to his daughter Harriet Loyd-Lindsay, Lady Wantage (1837–1920);
sale, Sotheby’s, London, 13 March 1957, lot 83 (according to the Fototeca Zeri);
sale, Casa delle Aste, Bologna, 30 May 1957, lot 94 (as Andrea del Sarto);
Donini collection, Bologna and Rome;
and thence by descent to the present owner

Literature:
H. Guinness, Andrea del Sarto, London 1901, p. 67 (as a copy);
R. J. Loyd-Lindsay Wantage, Catalogue of pictures forming the collection of Lord and Lady Wantage at 2 Carlton Gardens, London, Locking House, Berks, and Overstone Park and Ardington House, London 1905, p. 25, cat. no. 205 (as Andrea del Sarto);
J. A. Crowe, G. B. Cavalcaselle, A history of painting in Italy: Umbria, Florence and Siena from the second to the sixteenth Century, London 1914, vol. VI, pp. 180–181, footnote 5, p. 201 (as Follower of del Sarto);
S. J. Freedberg, Andrea del Sarto: catalogue raisonneé, Cambridge 1963, pp. 90–91, cited under cat. no. 44, copy no. 1 (under ‘copies’);
J. K. G. Shearman, Andrea del Sarto, Oxford 1965, pp. 245–246, cat. no. 56 (iii), not illustrated (as a copy, with incorrect provenance)

The present painting is registered in the Fototeca Zeri under no. 36839 (as Anonymous 16th Century).

We are grateful to Louis Waldman for suggesting the attribution on the basis of a photograph.

The present composition relates to the work by Andrea del Sarto in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (inv. no. 201; see fig. 1). Another version, after Andrea del Sarto, is in the Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida (inv. no. SN105).

According to Waldman, Maso da San Friano referred to del Sarto’s work on several occasions, reinterpreting the master’s canon and adapting it to the artistic trends of his own time. In the present painting there are details that point to Maso’s authorship: the hands of the Madonna are reconceived with the structural formulas Maso used; their drawing and modeling are strongly reminiscent of those of the younger figure in Maso’s Double Portrait in the Capodimonte Museum, Naples. Many similar details show the artist imposing his own style of brushwork.

Maso’s style varied extensively across his career, and he often executed his paintings with a loose draftsmanship and a reliance on certain stylistic references that he developed for his figure types. In the present composition Maso has made the drapery slightly more detailed and crisper, adding fine folds that are not apparent in the original work, and the modeling of the drapery has an almost ‘Bronzinoesque’ smoothness which is closer to the descriptive clarity of many Florentine painters of the generation that followed Andrea del Sarto.

According to Giorgio Vasari, Maso studied with Pierfrancesco Foschi (1502–1567), which accounts for the simplicity and precision of his style as seen in this painting. Maso created compositions of a post-Tridentine simplicity. During his career he painted for both public and private patrons; he was also commissioned by Francesco I de’ Medici for the decoration of his Studiolo at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, a room created under the supervision of Vasari and Borghini.

The present painting once belonged to Samuel Jones Loyd (1796–1883), later Lord Overstone. His celebrated collection of Old Master paintings included works by Murillo, Dolci, Sassoferato and was described by G. F. Waagen in his The Treasures of Art in Great Britain (1857, pp. 130–147). This painting was inherited by his daughter Lady Wantage (see fig. 2).