Filippino Lippi (Prato 1457-1504 Florence)

This small panel is one of three versions of this composition by Filippino Lippi. The other two (England, private collection; and New Haven, Yale University Art Museum) are close in size but are more compromised in condition. In them Lippi repeats the figure of Christ from the central panel of his Valori altarpiece (previously Berlin, Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, destroyed). The altarpiece The Crucifixion with the Madonna and Saint Francis; Saint John the Baptist and Mary Magdalene was commissioned by Niccolò Valori circa 1498-1500 for a family chapel in San Procolo, Florence. The altarpiece was removed, dismembered and sold under Napoleon in 1808; the central panel was acquired by the Museum in Berlin in 1821, where it was later destroyed.

Jonathan Katz Nelson considers these small paintings to be autograph, independent works by the artist and close collaborators, not merely a series of reduced studio versions of the altarpiece.

We are grateful to Everett Fahy for confirming the attribution to Filippino Lippi, on the basis of photographs (private communication,
30 October 2009).