RAFFAELLINO DEL GARBO

The present panel dates from the latter part of the artist’s career. The composition adheres to a late 15th century Florentine formula, with seemingly two-dimensional figures arranged symmetrically across an architectural setting, with a distant landscape extending into the background beyond the arched portico.

Raffaellino del Garbo’s paintings are characterized by a certain eclecticism, combining the influences of his master, Filippino Lippi with those of Perugino and Piero di Cosimo.

Although the young man’s face is illuminated, his plain brown dress, dark, shoulder-length hair, and black cap merge with the background. Accordingly, the outline of his figure does not stand out incisively from the background but blends with it. Few Quattrocento paintings can match this portrait in terms of its formal austerity and limited palette. It was most likely made in Florence, where portraits with dark,atmospheric backgrounds had been appearing since the 1470s, largely owing to the influence of Netherlandish pictures such as Memling’s portraits. Florentine examples are by Piero del Pollaiolo, Domenico Ghirlandaio, and Sandro Botticelli. All examples show similar contrast between lit face and dark background.

Documented altarpieces by Raffaellino are characterised by a repetition of artistic models rather than by originality. However, his distinctive synthesis of Filippino Lippi’s eccentric manner of introducing movement into his compositions with elements of the staid, formal vocabulary of Perugino’s Florentine works that accounts for the charm of his relatively small oeuvre.

This painting bears the hallmarks of Raffaellino’s figures: the soft, rounded cheeks and chin; the small curved nose; the broad, smooth forehead and thinly drawn brows. The artist favoured whimsical costumes and drapery as much in his treatment of sacred subjects as he did in his secular paintings.

Raffaellino’s highly considered yet relatively small body of work neatly links the art of the Quattrocento with that of the High Renaissance in Florence. Conceived very much in the classical idiom prevalent in the art of Florence circa 1500, the present tondo is reminiscent not just of his teacher, Filippino Lippi, but also of Botticelli and Piero di Cosimo. The composition is clearly linked to one that originated in the Botticelli studio, and of which innumerable versions exist. However, the background landscape with Sts Jerome and Francis seen in profile and framing the composition as a whole, is unique.