Trained as a goldsmith, Francesco Francia took up painting relatively late in his career, around 1485, and quickly became one of the most successful artists in Bologna during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Though his early style owed much to the Ferrarese School, he later modified and softened his approach under the influence of Lorenzo Costa and then Perugino, producing delicate and profoundly moving devotional works for churches in and around his native city.

The present work, although sharing compositional traits with other devotional panels by Francesco Francia (see E. Negro and N. Roio. Francesco Francia e la sua scuola, Modena, 1998, cats. 38-55, pp. 167-179), is seemingly an original and unique creation. Giacomo Francia and his brother, Giulio (1487-1540), assisted their father in his burgeoninig studio, before they assumed responsibility for the family business in Bologna after Francesco’s death in 1517. The atmospheric quality of the landscape, which was achieved through the soft rendering and blending of forms and gradual tonal changes, allows us to date the panel prior to Francesco's death.

We are grateful to Emilio Negro and Nicosetta Roio for proposing the attribution on the basis of photographs.

A NOTE ON THE PROVENANCE:

Sir Roy Strong, C.H., F.R.S.L. (b. 1935) is an English art historian, former museum curator, writer, broadcaster, and garden designer. He was made Director of the National Portrait Gallery aged 32, and at 38 Director of the Victoria & Albert Museum, where he stayed until 1987. Sir Roy has published extensively, and is particularly renowned for his knowledge of Elizabethan portraiture, and gardens. In 1971 he married the theatre-designer Julia Trevelyan Oman (1930-2003), and together they created the celebrated gardens at The Laskett, Much Birch, Herefordshire, which Sir Roy has recently gifted to Perennial, the Gardeners' Royal Benevolent Society.