Italian, Florence, probably 16th century

Sotheby's, London, 8 December 2006, lot 45;

Where acquired by the present owner.

This composition, of which there are versions in the Louvre and Victoria & Albert Museums, was believed to be based on a lost marble relief by Lorenzo Ghiberti dating to the 1420s. Recent scholarship has, however, re-attributed the model to Donatello when he was working in Ghiberti's workshop. A comparison can be made between the present relief and another attributed to a follower of Ghiberti, illustrated in Barr et al. (op. cit.).

RELATED LITERATURE

J. Pope-Hennessy (ed.), Italian Renaissance Sculpture in the Time of Donatello, exh. cat., Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, 1985–86, nos. 8–9; J. Barr, S. Barnet and A. Boström (eds.), The Arts of Renaissance Florence: A Catalogue of the Sculpture Collection, London, Victoria and Albert Museum, 2007, no. 49.