Tommaso di Mascio Scarafone (c.1455 - after 1521) - photo 1

Tommaso di Mascio Scarafone (c.1455 - after 1521)

Lot 35
12.07.2023 00:00UTC +00:00
Classic
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£ 37 800
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 993312
Lot 35 | Tommaso di Mascio Scarafone (c.1455 - after 1521)
Estimate value
£ 30 000 – 50 000
Tommaso di Mascio Scarafone (c.1455 - after 1521)

Citizens of the Porta Santa Susanna, miniature from an illuminated Matricola manuscript on vellum, Perugia, 1486.

A miniature from the Matricola of the charitable Ospedale della Misericordia in Perugia, painted in rich colours by Tommaso di Mascio Scarafone. A fine example of Umbrian manuscript painting of the Quattrocento: firmly datable and localisable, with the artist named in the payment records of the confraternity.



288 x 203mm. Full-page miniature depicting the Virgin and Child in a mandorla, flanked by Sts Susanna and Francis, with orphans, their carers and four religious and lay officials of the Ospedale della Misericordia kneeling in prayer beneath an arch inscribed 'Porta Sanctae Susannae Auguste Perusie’ and two medallions enclosing the arms of the city of Perugia (Griffin rampant wearing the mural crown of Perugia) and the arms of the Graziani family (partially erased); verso blank.



Provenance:

(1) The miniature originally introduced a list of confraternity members of the Ospedale Santa Maria della Misericordia from the Porta Santa Susanna district of Perugia in a manuscript Matricola (or register) for the charitable organisation, which was founded in the city at the beginning of the 14th century to care for the poor and the ill. Commissioned by the prior of the Ospedale, Antonio degli Acerbi, in 1485, the manuscript was completed under his brother and successor Ludovico degli Acerbi in 1488: Ludovico is a likely candidate for the bald man depicted kneeling in the foreground, while the man on the right, wearing a gold chain and pointed cap, is Amico Graziani, lay prior of the Ospedale from 1488-1502, humanist and patron of Perugino's frescos in the Collegio del Cambio. The Matricola was originally furnished with five full-page miniatures, one for each of the districts named after the city gates: the parent manuscript remains in Perugia (Archivio di Stato, CC.OSMM, Miscellanea 5), but all five miniatures have been dispersed. One is held in Vienna (Akademie der bildenden Künste, Inv. No. 1095, depicting the Porta Sant’Angelo), the Porta Sole and the Porta Eburnea are in a private collection in Switzerland, and the Porta San Pietro is in an Italian private collection (for a more detailed discussion of the manuscript and illustrations of the sister leaves, see J. G. Alexander, ‘The City Gates of Perugia and Umbrian Manuscript Illumination of the Fifteenth Century’, The Medieval Book, 2010, pp.109-116).



(2) Graziani family of Perugia: their coat of arms azur a mound of seven coupeaux or arranged 4, 2 and 1, surmounted by a crown of the same between two cypresses proper; the Matricola was in the possession of the descendants of Amico Graziani by 1784 (see B. Orsini, Guida al forestiere per l'augusta città di Perugia, 1784, p.347) and until at least 1837, by which time it had passed by inheritance to:



(3) Giovanni Battista Vermiglioli (1769-1848), archaeologist and author; see Memorie di Bernardino Pinturicchio, 1837, pp.6-18. At some point, the five miniatures were dispersed, with the present miniature bought in Italy, possibly Florence, in the years just before or after WWI by:



(4) Mrs Kitty Ionides (1874-1960), a relative of the Greek poet C. P. Cavafy; given by her to the father of the present owner, who deposited the miniature on long-term loan at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge in 1982.



Illumination:

Our miniature – along with the Porta Sole and Porta Eburnea miniatures – was painted by the Perugian illuminator Tommaso di Mascio Scarafone: his name was discovered amongst the payment records for his work on the Matricola in 1486 (see A. Sartore, 'La cultura umanistica al tempo di Perugino: Il programma di Amico Graziani e Francesco Maturanzio', in Perugino il divin pittore, V. Garibaldi and F. F. Mancini (eds), exh. cat., 2004, pp.589-601). Tommaso’s artistic identity was once thought to be synonymous with the Perugian illuminator, panel painter and frescoist Bartolomeo Caporali (c.1420-c.1505), in whose workshop he was active and to whom the three Matricola miniatures were previously attributed; as an illuminator, Caporali is best known for a splendid Missal he completed in 1469 for the Franciscan convent of San Francesco, Montone, near Perugia (Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art 2006.154; see Stephen N Fliegel, The Caporali Missal: A Masterpiece of Renaissance Illumination, 2013). Although far less is known about Tommaso than Caporali – famed for the works he executed for the religious houses and municipality of Perugia – he would have formed part of a talented generation of Umbrian artists active in the latter half of the 15th century, counting as contemporaries Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, Perugino and Pinturicchio, to whom the final two Matricola miniatures – for the Porta Sant’Angelo and Porta San Pietro – have been cautiously attributed by Maria Rita Silvestrelli. Tommaso’s hand has been tentatively identified in another manuscript, a miniature Book of Hours, use of Rome, formerly in the Dyson Perrins collection (Sotheby’s, 5 July 1965, lot 204; most recently with Les Enluminures); Gaudenz Freuler also suggests that he could have painted ‘one of the most brilliant examples of Renaissance illumination in Perugia’, a grand initial from an Antiphonal depicting the Coronation of the Virgin (Koller, 18 September 2015, lot 168).





Literature

A Catalogue of Western Book Illumination in the Fitzwilliam Museum and the Cambridge Colleges. Part II: Italy and the Iberian Peninsula, volume 2, Stella Panayotova, Nigel J. Morgan, Suzanne Reynolds (eds), 2011, pp.153-4, no 283.



Diana Bullen Presciutti, Visual Cultures of Foundling Care in Renaissance Italy, 2017, pp.viii, 30 (ill.) and 63.



Exhibited

Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Splendours of Italian Illumination: Romanesque - Gothic - Renaissance, 1989-1990, no 113.
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