Bartolomeo Caporali, attributed to (fl.1442-1503) - photo 1
Bartolomeo Caporali, attributed to (fl.1442-1503) - photo 2
Bartolomeo Caporali, attributed to (fl.1442-1503) - photo 3

Bartolomeo Caporali, attributed to (fl.1442-1503)

Lot 13
13.07.2022 10:30UTC +00:00
Classic
Sold
£ 37 800
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 794467
Lot 13 | Bartolomeo Caporali, attributed to (fl.1442-1503)
Estimate value
£ 20 000 – 30 000
Bartolomeo Caporali, attributed to (fl.1442-1503)

The Flagellation, historiated initial 'D' cut from an illuminated Missal on vellum [Perugia, c.1485-90]

An exceptional, large-scale work by Bartolomeo Caporali (c.1402-1505), painter and illuminator who was appointed chamberlain to the Guild of Illuminators of Perugia in 1478, succeeding his brother Jacopo in this office.



233 x 235mm. The initial 'D' perhaps opening Psalm 22 'Deus, Deus meus, respice in me: quare me dereliquisti?', 'O God, my God, look upon me: why hast thou forsaken me?'; verso with 9 lines of text from Psalm 22: '[...] habitas laus israel' (tiny losses of pigment to the sky and the seated figure, else in excellent condition). Mounted and framed.



Provenance:

(1) Miss E. M. Renshaw, sold by Chas. J. Sawyer in the 1930s.

(2) Christie's, 28 June 1995, lot 5.

(3) Doubtless from the same manuscript as a Coronation of the Virgin sold at Christie's on 30 November - 14 December 2020, lot 18, previously in the collections of Carlo Prayer (1826-1900); Maria Elvira Celia Mendez de Bernasconi (d. c. 2005) and Sir John Pope-Hennessy (see Les Enluminures, BEL, 1996, no 17 and F. Zeileis, Più ridon le carte, 2014, pp.401-402).



Illumination:

In the last half of the 15th century, Bartolomeo Caporali worked as a fresco painter and an illuminator in Perugia, where he transformed Perugian illumination through the lens of the Florentines, specifically Fra Angelico and Benozzo Gozzoli. He collaborated with his brother Giapeco (d.1476). Their style is difficult to distinguish one from the other, and some of their creations have since been reattributed to contemporaries such as Pierantonio di Niccolò di Pocciolo. Freuler agrees with earlier cataloguers that the opulence of the ornamental jewelry and the tangle of colourful foliate and floral decoration in the sister cutting depicting the Coronation of the Virgin is similar to creations by the Caporali workshop and recalls the Missal recently acquired by the Cleveland Museum of Art. The largest group of important miniatures previously attributed to Caporali, the depictions of the gates of Perugia, is now ascribed to Pinturicchio and to a related painter, Tommaso di Mascio Scarfone (to whom Freuler also attributes the Coronation of the Virgin).



It was pointed out in the 1995 Christie's catalogue that our Flagellation is reminiscent of an earlier composition depicting a Crucifixion in a Missal in the Gerli Collection in Milan, painted in 1469 (see D'Ancona and Aeschlimann, Dictionnaire des miniaturistes du moyen age et de la Renaissance, 1969, p.42). The layout of our Flagellation, however, with the foreground figure group set on a tiled pavement juxtaposed against a distant mountainous landscape, is repeated in the 1486 miniature of the Porta S. Angelo, now in the Academy in Vienna, and therefore we may date the Flagellation to the final quarter of the 15th century. Parallels can also be drawn to two cuttings of a similar size, and with very similar acanthus borders, described by Freuler in Italian Miniatures, II, nos 104.1 and 104.2: although dated to the first decades of the 16th century these show the same influences of the leading Perugian painters of the turn of the century: Pinturicchio and Perugino.





Special notice


This lot has been imported from outside of the UK for sale and placed under the Temporary Admission regime. Import VAT is payable at 5% on the hammer price. VAT at 20% will be added to the buyer’s premium but will not be shown separately on our invoice.
Place of origin:Italy, Europe
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