Renaissance, held at the firm’s New York City gallery, is part of the Old Master dealership’s long-running programme bringing top-quality Italian Renaissance works to a US audience.
It was painted in grey originally and set in a lunette above the entrance to the Pieve of San Lorenzo outside Florence. In the 19th century it was sold to Prince Johann II of Liechtenstein and remained there until the family auctioned it off in 2003. By then its attribution had been lost, but in 2014 its provenance and commission were traced by Renaissance scholar Francesco Caglioti.
Offered for a sum in the region of $20m-30m, it joins other top-flight works by esteemed Renaissance names such as Tintorello and Antonio Lombardo in the show, which runs until February 25.
Colnaghi CEO Jorge Coll says that the dealership’s history of bringing Renaissance works to the US “dates back to our early dealings with Isabella Stewart Gardner, Henry Clay Frick and Andrew Mellon, whose Gilded Age collections have become the bedrock of major American museum collections today”.
The international firm stages Renaissance as a precursor to its show in Venice, a collaborative exhibition with Venetian Heritage, set to coincide with the Biennale.
