Domenico da Gambassi

Public Domain

1525/28

Andrea del Sarto
Italian, 1486-1530

This casually posed and loosely rendered portrait originally made up part of the lower section, or predella, of an altarpiece for a church in Gambassi, near Florence. The images of the patron, Domenico, and his wife, Lucrezia, flanked additional, now-lost paintings. The painted strapwork around the portraits, discovered during recent conservation treatment, once formed part of a decorative pattern that would have extended throughout the predella; it indicates how all the individual paintings were interconnected. Andrea del Sarto added highlights at the bottom of each roundel, mimicking the natural light of the church, to create the illusion of the paintings being set within a three-dimensional frame.

Status: On View, Gallery 205
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Andrea del Sarto
Title: Domenico da Gambassi
Place: Italy (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: Exhibited 1525–1528
Medium: Oil on panel
Dimensions: 22.5 × 15.9 cm (8 7/8 × 6 1/4 in.)
Credit Line: Gift of Mrs. Murray S. Danforth
Reference Number: 1964.1097a
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/154037/manifest.json

S. J. Freedberg, “Andrea and Lucrezia: Two New Documents in Paint for Their Biography,” The Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 1 (1966), pp. 15–27 (ill.).
Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), pp. 8, 510, 515, 571.
Silvia Meloni Trkulja, Omaggio a Leopoldo de’Medici, pt. 2, Ritrattini, exh. cat., Florence Uffizi, 1976, p. 12.
Hugh Brigstocke, Italian and Spanish Paintings in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1978, p. 128, under no. 75, fig. 26.
Everett Fahy, The Legacy of Leonardo: Italian Renaissance Paintings from Leningrad, exh. cat., Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art, 1979, p. 57, figs. 37–38.
Giorgio Vasari, exh. cat., Arezzo, Casa Vasari, 1981, sec. VIII, p. 270, under no. 27.
Raffaele Monti, Andrea del Sarto, 2d ed., Milan, 1981, p. 8.
Alessandro Conti, “Andrea del Sarto e Becuccio bicchieraio,” Prospettiva 33–36 (1983–84), pp. 161–65 (ill.).
Andrea del Sarto, 1486–1530: Dipinti e disegni a Firenze, exh. cat., Florence, Palazzo Piti, 1986, pp. 18, 134, 149.
Serena Padovani, Andrea del Sarto, Florence, 1986, p. 59.
Antonio Natale and Alessandro Cecchi, Andrea del Sarto: Catalogo completo dei dipinti, Florence, 1989, pp. 112–113, no. 52, p. 123.
Christopher Lloyd, Italian Paintings before 1600 in The Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, 1993), pp. 215–219, ill.
Antonio Natali, Andrea del Sarto, Maestro della “maniera moderna,” Milan, 1998, pp. 171, 205, figs 167–168.
Roberto J. M. Olson, The Florentine Tondo, Oxford, 2000, pp. 127, 167, fig. 5.22.
David Franklin, Painting in Renaisance Florence 1500-1550, New Haven and London, 2001, p. 145.
Jutta-Annette Page, Beyond Venice: Glass in Venetian Style, 1500-1750 (Corning, New York, 2004), pp. 17, 308 n. 9.
Serena Padovani, I dipinti della Galleria Palatina e degli appartamenti reali, vol. 1: Le scuole dell’Italia centrale, 1450-1530 (Firenze: Giunti: Firenze musei, 2014), 80.
Steven J. Cody, Andrea del Sarto: Splendor and Renewal in the Renaissance Altarpiece, Brill Studies on Art, Art History, and Intellectual History, 47 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2020), 240-4, fig. 70.

Florence, Palazzo Vecchio, Palazzo Vecchio: Committenza e collezionismo medicei, 1980, nos. 360–61.

Probably incorporated into the Gambassi altarpiece, Church of Santi Lorenzo e Onofrio, Benedictine Convent of the Romite, Gambassi (near Volterra), by 1525/28 to no later than 1637 [see Lloyd 1993]. Probably Medici Collection, Palazzo Pitti, Florence, by 1637 [see Conti 1983–84, pp. 162–63]. Possibly Leopold de’Medici (died 1675), Villa del Poggio Imperiale, Florence, by 1655 [Trkulja 1976, p. 12 suggested that they could be identified with entries in the inventories of 1655 and 1692: Due quadretti in tavola, alti s. 7 lari 1/4 dipintovj in tondo di mano d’Andrea del Sarto, in uno il Suo rit., e nell’altro il ritr. della Sua Moglie” (Two small pictures on panel, 7 soldi high by 1/4 [braccio] wide painted in roundels by Andrea del Sarto, in one His portrait, and in the other portrait of His Wife); the measurements (approx. 8 x 6 inches) correspond closely; that the portraits were, by the seventeenth century, thought to be del Sarto and his wife does not necessarily invalidate the argument for their inclusion in the Gambassi altarpiece]. New York art market, 1963; Mrs. Murray S. Danforth, Providence, Rhode Island, 1963–64 [according to Freedberg 1966, p. 35, n. 1]; given to Art Institute, 1964.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

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