THE MASTER OF THE LAZZARONI MADONNA (ACTIVE FLORENCE C. 1375)

Richard Offner first assembled the corpus of paintings by this fourteenth-century Florentine master under the placeholder name `The Master of the Two Madonnas', though he later revised the name, working with Klara Steinweg, to the current pseudonym based on the Madonna and Child with Two Angels formerly in the Lazzaroni collection, Paris (M. Boskovits, Pittura Fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento 1370-1400, Florence, 1975, p. 239, note 169). This distinctive painter was active in the late trecento and is thought to have trained in the workshop of Jacopo di Cione, called Orcagna. He also appears to have drawn inspiration from the works of Andrea Bonaiuti and Cenni di Francesco. In 1393, he completed the allegorical figures for the fresco of the Virtues in the Palazzo Comunale di San Miniato together with the latter of these painters.
The present triptych is characteristic of the Master of the Lazzaroni Madonna’s work, particularly in the idiosyncratic, stylized treatment of the drapery, which can be observed in the triptych of the Madonna and Child enthroned with Saints in the Cini collection, Venice. We are grateful to Laurence Kanter for endorsing the attribution on the basis of photographs.