Cremona school circa 1450, BEMBO workshop ( Ambrogio Bembo ? - Lot 63

Cremona school circa 1450, BEMBO workshop ( Ambrogio Bembo ?) Offering scene; Shepherd interceding for a dead soldier; child and monk interceding for a a halt to the fighting Three softwood panels, lined with oak, parqueted One 26 x 24.5cm; the other two 36 x 27.3cm (Old restorations and cracks) In a single frame with three compartments. These three small panels can be linked to the artistic environment of Northern Italy in the mid 15th century, when this type of production was widespread. They are linked in particular to a famous cycle of 29 ceiling tablets depicting the stories of Genesis (Cremona, Museo Civico, 40x30 cm) from the former Casa Meli in Cremona, of which our three panels were probably originally part. From a stylistic point of view, our tablets feature the same characteristic three-lobed frame, which is then repeated profiles, decorations and the two colonnettes with bases and capitals that close in on the sides of the scene the sides of the scene, in a purely graphic style characterized by a design with busy, expressive profiles. expressive profiles. As far as the Meli tablets are concerned, it was Toesca (1912) who first identified the realism of the works in the Lombard style of the mid-15th century. Later, Longhi (1928), to his credit, reconstructed the painter's artistic personality the painter's artistic personality, and associates the works with the Cremonese environment and in particular with Bonifacio's activity of Bonifacio Bembo, proposing a date around 1445-1450. The attribution to Bonifacio was later later confirmed by Puerari (1951) and included in the catalog of the 1958 Milan exhibition Arte lombarda dai Visconti agli Sforza. The general tendency of critics has been to consider the tablets as a typical product of the workshop of Bonifacio Bembo's workshop, but without ever attributing them specifically to one hand, given the chaotic reconstruction of the workshop's activity. In 1988, Miklos Boskovits proposed to identify the hand of Ambrogio Bembo, Bonifacio's brother, on the basis of his on the basis of his documented activity as an illuminator, a proposal accepted by subsequent critics (1). (1) Mario Marussi La PINACOTECA ala Ponzone Dal duecentnto al Quattrocento, Milan 2004, pp. 142-159 no. 40. Expert: Cabinet Turquin