Bernardino Fungai, Virgin and Child

Galleria Pradelli, Florence; John R. Van Derlip (1860–1935), Minneapolis, 1922–35; Minneapolis Institute of Arts, to 1957; Julius H. Weitzner (1895–1986), New York; Edwin L. Weisl, Jr. (1929–2005), New York, before 1978; Angela Jane Weisl, New York, 2005; sale, Christie’s, New York, April 6, 2006, lot 34 (bought in)

The panel support, of a vertical wood grain, has been thinned to a depth of 8 millimeters and cradled. The engaged frame moldings, 12 millimeters deep, are original, but those at the top and bottom have been detached, repaired, and reattached to the panel by screws through the back. Splits in both these moldings and the miters at their corners have been regilt, as has much of the engaged molding on the left edge of the panel. The gold ground is worn overall and locally repaired. The paint surface is very well preserved, although at present it is covered by a dull, opaque varnish. Minor retouching is confined to small losses in the face of the Virgin, in her blue cloak and red dress, and along several partial splits provoked by the cradle.

This delicate panel has been considered a work by Benvenuto di Giovanni throughout the brief literature referring to it, with the exception of Bernard Berenson, who thought it a collaboration with the artist’s son, Girolamo di Benvenuto.¹ Maria Cristina Bandera initially said of it only that it showed no evidence of intervention by Girolamo,² adding subsequently that it is likely to be one of Benvenuto’s earliest surviving works, datable between 1466 and 1470.³ This assessment may have been based, in part, on the evident spatial ambitions of the painting, coupled with their incompletely successful realization. The cushion on which the Child is seated, for example, rests convincingly on a faux-marble ledge in front of the Virgin but does not continue beyond the Child’s right leg, nor indeed is the Child’s left leg anywhere in evidence. The ledge itself appears as a varicolored band at the right of the composition rather than a convincing architectural device, the Child’s left arm disappears inexplicably behind His mother’s head, and His right foot and the hands of both figures are inexpressive and flat. Such indecisive details, paired with the great delicacy of the Virgin’s face, may have led the scholar to conclude that the artist’s talents at this stage in his career were immature. If so, the assessment was accurate but the attribution incorrect. The work by Benvenuto di Giovanni most closely related to this panel is the fresco of the Virgin of the Misericordia in the Sala della Torre of the seat of the Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the Rocca Salimbeni, dated by inscription to 1481. This, too, is a work entirely executed by an assistant, and there is reason to believe that the assistant in question was Bernardino Fungai, who is documented as working alongside Benvenuto the following year, in 1482, on a commission to decorate the drum of the cupola in Siena Cathedral with frescoes of forty-two Old Testament patriarchs and prophets.

The identification of Bernardino Fungai as an artist proceeds from a single signed and dated (1512) painting, an altarpiece of the Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints Sebastian, Jerome, Nicholas of Bari, and Anthony of Padua (fig. 1), formerly in San Niccolò al Carmine in Siena and now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale there. Securely attributed and firmly datable works advance the beginnings of his career only as far as 1496–97—the altarpiece of the Stigmatization of Saint Catherine of Siena (fig. 2) in the Oratorio di Santa Caterina in Fontebranda—and 1498–1501—the majestic Coronation of the Virgin (fig. 3) on the high altar in Santa Maria dei Servi in Siena. A number of private devotional works, chiefly small panels of the Virgin and Child with saints or angels, undoubtedly predate these but offer no fixed points for reconstructing a chronological development. Earlier still is a small group of Virgin and Child compositions that is widely understood to have been painted either by Benvenuto di Giovanni or Girolamo di Benvenuto but that must instead have been executed by Fungai in Benvenuto’s shop, probably over Benvenuto’s designs and possibly with the intention of passing for his work. These include, in addition to the present panel, a Virgin and Child with Saints John the Evangelist and James Major in San Sebastiano in Valle Piatta, Siena; a Virgin and Child in San Paolo fuori le Mura, Rome; and a Virgin and Child with Saints Jerome and Bernardino in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.⁴ This opening phase of Fungai’s career includes other paintings confused with Benvenuto’s studio output, such as the two small panels, probably pilaster bases from an altarpiece, showing Saints Dominic, Sebastian, Anthony Abbott, and the Blessed Ambrogio Sansedoni in the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena (fig. 4). Determining the full extent of this phase, either in quantity of works or in the span of time they cover, and whether it unfolded under the aegis of Benvenuto’s studio or as Fungai’s initial efforts as an independent master, depends on a clearly defined catalogue and sequence of the artist’s subsequent work, from the mid-1480s through the mid-1490s. Such a project has not yet been undertaken. —LK

1. Berenson 1968, 1:40. ↩︎

2. Bandera 1977, 312. ↩︎

3. Bandera 1999, 52. ↩︎

4. Inv. no. 1942.9.3; Laurence Kanter, cited by Miklós Boskovits, in Boskovits and Brown 2003, 112, 114n21. The more linear style of the Washington, D.C., painting suggested a different attribution to Andrea De Marchi (as cited by Boskovits in the same publication), an unnamed artist still in the immediate orbit of Bernardino Fungai. This may be correct, but the panels in San Paolo fuori le Mura and San Sebastiano in Valle Piatta, as well as the Yale panel, fit more comfortably with Fungai’s autograph production. ↩︎