A St Francis by Botticelli in the National Gallery

Apollo, July, 2003 by Sally Korman

A small panel in the National Gallery shows St Francis full-length against a gold background, flanked by music-making angels (Fig. 1). The panel entered the collection in 1858 as a work by Filippino Lippi, but was reassigned to an anonymous follower of Botticelli in Martin Davies's Catalogue of the Earlier Italian Schools, first published in 1951. (1) It was formerly thought to date from 1492 or shortly afterwards, since this date was included in an inscription that appeared on the fictive stone ledge in the foreground. During cleaning in 1940, this inscription was found not to be original to the painting and was removed (I shall further discuss both the inscription and its removal). Nevertheless, the St Francis continued to be considered as a work in the style of Botticelli dating from the last decade of the fifteenth century.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

The painting was first published with the attribution to Filippino in the National Gallery catalogue of 1859. (2) Crowe and Cavalcaselle also listed it as by Filippino, adding the somewhat reserved judgement, 'a genuine picture not free from the defects and affectation of the master's later style'. (3) The attribution was subsequently questioned by Frizzoni, (4) and then by Richter, who seems to have been the first to ascribe it to the school of Botticelli. (5) Jacobsen suggested that it might be by Raffaellino del Garbo. (6) Van Marle included it in his list of works attributed to Filippino's school, while Bodmer believed it to be an autograph work by Filippino. (7) Scharf gives the work to Botticini, a conclusion cited approvingly by Borenius in his review of Scharf's monograph. (8) Berenson, intriguingly, identified the painting as a copy of a lost early work by Botticelli. (9) Davies, writing after the removal of the inscription, also believed that it had 'some similarities to [Botticelli's] early work'. He concluded, however, that it was not by the artist but 'an inferior man, painting under the influence of [his] early style'. (10)

Filippino scholars after Scharf have either rejected the attribution of the St Francis to Filippino's school, or altogether failed to discuss it. (11) More surprisingly, perhaps, the painting has received little notice in the scholarly literature on Botticelli. It appears neither in Lightbown's 1978 catalogue, nor in those of Caneva and Thiebaut. (12) Mandel attributes it tentatively to Botticelli, while Pons includes it in her section devoted to works of uncertain attribution: both describe it as being extensively repainted. (13) The painting is illustrated and briefly discussed as by a follower of Botticelli in the exhibition catalogue Maestri e Botteghi: pittura a Firenze alla fine del Quattrocento, where its gold background is understood as part of a deliberately archaic pictorial vocabulary introduced during the 1490s in response to the preaching of Fra Girolamo Savonarola. (14)

For most of its recent history, the painting has been displayed in the Gallery's reserve collection, in a frame that did little to enhance its appearance. Although in good condition overall, its quality had been obscured by clumsy repairs and discoloured retouchings (Fig. 3). In 2002, the panel was examined in connection with the Gallery's programme of re-cataloguing the collection. This initial examination, and the cleaning and restoration that followed it, yielded some surprising results. Firstly, the execution of the St Francis was revealed to be of a far higher quality than had previously been suspected. Second, although elements of the painting were found to be directly comparable to works by Botticelli, it differed considerably in style and technique from those painted in the latter part of his career. These observations led to two main conclusions, namely that the St Francis is an autograph work by Botticelli, and that it dates not from the final decade of the fifteenth century', but from the second half of the 1470s.

[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]

Prior to its acquisition by the National Gallery, the St Francis was in the Costabile collection in Ferrara, before which no provenance is known. The collection was formed by Count Giovanni Battista Costabile (1756-1841) around a core of paintings inherited in 1778 front his maternal uncle, Francesco Containi (1717-78). With the help of a local antiquarian, Ubaldo Sgherbi (1788-1872), Costabile added to this nucleus; by 1835, the collection had expanded to number five hundred and ninety-one works. (15) The catalogue published between 1838 and 1841 by the law professor and connoisseur, Count Camillo Laderchi (1800-67), lists six hundred and twenty-four paintings: three of its four volumes are dedicated to the Ferrarese school. The St Francis is first mentioned in print in the fourth volume, where it is attributed to the Sienese painter Matteo di Giovanni. (16) Following Costabile's death in 1841, his nephew, Count Giovanni Costabile, inherited the collection. No further acquisitions are recorded after this date. By the 1850s, growing financial pressures forced the younger Costabile to consider selling his uncle's pictures, together with his library of some ten thousand volumes. Costabile's reluctance to sell emerges from his correspondence, in which he repeatedly expresses anxiety over the breaking up of the collection. (17)