BALDASSARRE FRANCESCHINI, called IL VOLTERRANO
(Volterra 1611 – 1690 Florence)

A Guardian Angel and a Child

Fresco on terracotta tile
19 ¾ x 14 ⅜ inches (50.2 x 36.5 cm)

Provenance:

Cornelius Vanderbilt, New York; by whom gifted in 1880 to:

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (80.3.673); deaccessioned and sold:

Christie’s, New York, 12 June 1981, lot 196

With L’Antiquaire, Inc., New York

June Hirsch Jones, New York and Florida; her estate until 2022.

Literature:

George H. Story, Catalogue of Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1901, pp. 30-31, 223, cat. no. 85, as Volterrano, Head of An Angel (republished in later editions: 1902, pp. 30-31, 285; 1904, pp. 30-31, 294).

Catalogue of Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1905, p. 53, cat. no. 25, as Volterrano, Head of An Angel (republished in 1908 and 1911).

Bryson Burroughs, The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Catalogue of Paintings, New York, 1914, p. 277, cat. no. V822, as Volterrano, Head of An Angel (republished in 1916, p. 311, cat. no. V822-1; 1917, p. 318; 1919, p. 331-332; 1920, p. 316, cat. no. V882-1; 1922, p. 326; 1924, p. 352; 1926, p. 373).

Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker, “Baldassare Franchescini,” in Allgemeines Lexikon Der Bildenden Künstler Von Der Antike Bis Zur Gegenwart, vol. 12, Leipzig, 1916, p. 296, “im Metropol. Mus. Zu New York ein al fresco gemalter großer Engelkopf (Kat. 1914 n. 882).”

Harry B. Wehle, The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Catalogue of Paintings, vol. 1, “A Catalogue Italian, Spanish, and Byzantine Paintings,” New York, 1940, pp. 264-265, as Volterrano, An Angel and a Child.

Josephine Allen and Elizabeth Gardner, A Concise Catalogue of the European Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1954, p. 100, as Volterrano, An Angel and a Child.

Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections, Cambridge, 1972, pp. 212, 605 as attributed to Volterrano.

Giuseppe Cantelli, Repertorio della Pittura Fiorentina del Seicento, Fiesole, 1983, p. 86, as by Volterrano, An Angel and Child, incorrectly as a fragment.

Sandro Bellesi, Catalogo dei Pittori Fiorentini del ‘600 e ‘700, Florence, 2009, vol. 1, p. 150, as by Volterrano, A Guardian Angel, incorrectly as a fragment.

Fabbri Capecchi and Maria Cecilia, “Franceschini, Baldassare,” Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon Online, 2021.

This unusual work is a portable fresco—an independent painting carried out in true fresco technique on a terracotta roof tile, called an embrico or a tegola. This rare format was exclusively Florentine and originated in response to collector demand for frescoes that were not permanently part of a building structure. Some 16th-century examples are known, but in the 17th century a particular vogue for them led Giovanni da San Giovanni and Volterrano—both artists working for the Medici Grand Dukes—to specialize in their making.  

 Among the few surviving examples of this type are works by Fra Bartolomeo (Mary Magdalen, Silencing Monk in San Marco), Andrea del Sarto (Self-portrait, Florence, San Marco and Uffizi), as well as a powerful and elegant testa divina (“ideal head”) by an as yet unknown artist who was strongly indebted to Michelangelo. As the terracotta tile support was a standard size, all known examples are of virtually identical dimensions, roughly 20 ½ x 14 ½ inches. A consequence of the technical properties of painting on wet plaster is that this work was necessarily painted in a single day.