The Flight into Egypt; Christ Among the Doctors
Framed: 14 × 32 × 2 inches (35.56 × 81.28 × 5.08 cm)
Exhibition History
Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1951-52, no. 22.
Mostra di Luca Sigiorelli, Palazzo Pretorio, Cortona, May-August 1953; Palazzo Strozzi, September-October 1953, no. 56.
Luca Signorelli “de ingegno et spirto pelegrino”, Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Perugia, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Orvieto, Pinacoteca Comunale, Città di Castello, April 21-August 26, 2012, no. 97.
Signorelli’s masterpieces are his apocalyptic frescoes in the Cathedral of Orvieto, but he was also a prolific painter of altarpieces. This painting is a predella panel, which would have been placed under the main panels of an altarpiece, in this case an Assumption of the Virgin painted for Signorelli’s home town of Cortona.
Possibly Countess Vosdari, Ferrara [1];
With Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi (1878-1955), Rome and Florence, by 1950;
Purchased from Bonacossi by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York, July 17, 1950-1961;
Its gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1961.
NOTES:
[1] There appear to be no records of a Countess Vosdari or her collection in Ferrara. Possibly, this collector was instead a member of the noble Bosdari family, which can be traced to the cities of Ragusa, Ancona, and Bologna. See letter from Lucio Scardino, Liberty House Casa Editrice, Ferrara, October 14, 1993, NAMA curatorial files.
Written attestation by Robert Longhi, March 20, 1950, NAMA Curatorial files, as by Signorelli.
Wilhelm E. Suida, Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection, Acquired by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 1945-1951, exh. cat. (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1951), 66-67, (repro.), as by Signorelli.
Wilhelm E. Suida, Catalogue of The Samuel H. Kress Collection of Italian Paintings and Sculptures: The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1952), 36-37, (repro.), as by Signorelli.
Margherita Lenzini Moriondo, Mostra di Luca Signorelli, exh. cat. (Cortona: Palazzo Pretorio, 1953), 106-07, (repro.), as by Signorelli.
Mario Salmi, “Chiosa Signorelliana,” Commentari 4, no. 2 (April-June 1953): 117-18, (repro.).
R.S. “La mostra del Signorelli,” Bolletino d’Arte 38, no. 4 (July-September 1953): 284-86, as by Signorelli.
William Mostyn-Owen, “Exhibition of Luca Signorelli at Cortona,” Burlington Magazine 95, no. 605 (August 1953): 274.
Mario Salmi, Luca Signorelli (Novara: Istituto Geografico de Agostini, 1953), 65.
Pietro Scarpellini, Luca Signorelli (Milan: Edizioni per il club del libro, 1964), 141, as a collaborative work.
Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance, A List of the Principal Artists and their Works with an Index of Places: Central Italian and North Italian Schools, vol. 1 (London: Phaidon, 1968), 397, 400-01, as by Signorelli.
Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XV-XVI Century (London: Phaidon, 1968), 97, (repro.), as by Signorelli and Assistant.
Burton B. Frederickson and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 187, 276, 589, as by Signorelli.
Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 261, as by Signorelli.
Fern Rusk Shapely, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, vol. 1, Text (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1979), 428, 429, 430n2, as by Signorelli.
Walter Fontana, Scoperte e studi sul Genga pittore (Urbino: Academia Raffaello, 1981), 80, (repro.), as by Signorelli.
Tableaux anciens et du XIXe siècle (Monaco: Sotheby Park-Bernet, December 2-3, 1988), 8.
Laurence B. Kanter, The Late Works of Luca Signorelli and His Followers, 1498-1559 (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International, 1989), 274-75, 286, (repro.), as probably by workshop assistant.
Laurence B. Kanter, “Some Documents, a Drawing, and an Altarpiece by Luca Signorelli,” Master Drawings 30, no. 4 (Winter 1992): 419, (repro), as by Signorelli and workshop.
Donato Levi, “Carlo Lasinio, curator, collector and dealer,” Burlington Magazine 135, no. 1079 (February 1993): 135n23.
Eliot W. Rowlands, The Collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: Italian Paintings 1300-1800, (Kansas City, MO: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1996), 154-58, (repro.), as by Signorelli and assistant.
Tom Henry and Laurence Kanter, Luca Signorelli: the complete paintings (New York: Rizzoli, 2001/2), no. 137, p. 249, (repro.), as by Signorelli.
Fabio De Chirico, et al., Luca Signorelli: "de ingegno et spirto pelegrino," exh. cat. (Milan: Silvana, 2012), 268-69, 339, (repro.), as by Signorelli.
Tom Henry, The Life and Art of Luca Signorelli (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 300-301, (repro.).
