Benedetto Buglioni (Florence 1459 - 1521), Italian, Florence, first quarter 16th century

Stanley Mortimer, Roslyn, New York;

Thence by inheritance to John R. Gaines;

His sale, New York, Sotheby's, 17 November 1986;

New York, Christie's, 2 June 1993, lot 132;

London, Sotheby's, 7 July 1994, lot 21;

London, Christie's, 2 December 1997, lot 37;

Milan, Sotheby's, 9 June 2009, lot 129;

Milan, Sotheby's, 15 December 2009;

Where acquired.

San Diego, Timken Museum, June 2017 - September 2017.

A. Marquand, Della Robbias in America, Princeton 1912, pp. 167-168, no. 71;

A. Marquand, Benedetto and Santi Buglioni, Princeton 1921, pp. 82-83, no. 94.

The art historian Alan Marquand first attributed the present bust to an anonymous master, who is now identified as Benedetto Buglioni, and whose oeuvre includes the Morgan Altarpiece of the Virgin and Child with saints, in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (accession number: BK-16978), as well a near-identical unglazed bust in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore (accession number: 27.553). At that time Marquand described the sculptor as a "dominating personality" and remarked that "whether he is to be identified with Benedetto Buglioni or one of Andrea's [della Robbia] many sons we must leave for future discussion."¹

Buglioni was a pupil of Andrea Verrocchio and became the director of the only other workshop outside of the Della Robbia's to produce glazed terracotta sculpture of a similar class in Florence in the 16th century.  According to Giorgio Vasari, in his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, Buglioni discovered the secret of producing glazed terracottas from a woman in the household of Andrea della Robbia.² Although this claim cannot be substantiated, it does support the idea that Buglioni was a rival of the Della Robbia family, rather than a pupil.

¹Alan Marquand, Della Robbias in America, Princeton 1912, pp. 167-168, no. 71.

² Alan Marquand, Della Robbias in America, Princeton 1912, p. 13.