Carlo di Francesco Verdi

Anonymous sale, Hotel des Ventes d'Avignon, 6 February 2017, lot 63;

Where acquired by the present owner.

Probably conceived as a predella panel, this finely executed painting displays a level of refinement that points to its creation within the Verdi family workshop, and more specifically to the hand of Carlo di Francesco Verdi. The painting demonstrates close familiarity with the pictorial language of Francesco d’Ubertino Verdi, called Bachiacca—Carlo’s father—both in its bright palette, which employs cangiantismo in passages, and in the articulation of figure types, suggesting access to both paintings and drawings retained within the family studio. The high-waisted figures with elongated thighs, in particular, point to Carlo di Francesco’s authorship.

The composition adapts figural motifs from the Flagellation of Christ (Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, inv. no 1952.5.81), while situating the figures within a more expansive setting, thereby lending the scene greater narrative breadth. Such borrowings underscore the collaborative and multigenerational character of what Robert La France has termed the “Verdi studio,” in which successive family members produced works in a shared stylistic idiom. Indeed, the panel may originally have formed part of a predella for an altarpiece by Carlo’s uncle, Bartolomeo (or Baccio) d’Ubertino, highlighting the complex interrelationships between workshop practice, familial transmission, and stylistic continuity in mid-sixteenth-century Florence.

We are grateful to Dr. Robert La France for attributing the work to Carlo di Francesco Verdi and for his assistance cataloguing the picture.