Commissioned for the Monastery of the Franciscan Friars Minor Recollect, Corbara, Corsica, circa 1480;

Auguste Fiot, 15 Rue Cassette, Paris (according to an inscription on the verso);

With Heim Gallery, Paris, late 1950s;

"Comtesse X";

By whose trustees sold, Paris, Galerie Charpentier, 16 March 1♓959, lot 77 (as Scho🐬ol of Vivarini);

Where acquired by John and Johanna Bass, 𝄹New York;

By whom bequeathed to the Bass Museum of Ar༺t, Miami Beach, in 1963 (inv.💃 no. 63.17).

A.M. Folli, "Giovanni Mazone: pittore genovese del Quattrocento," in Studi Genuensi 7 (1970-1971), pp. 168, 170-172, rep👍r🌊oduced fig. 6 (as Mazone);

B. Fredericksen and F. Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth: Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections, Cambridge 1972, pp. 123, 595 (as Mazone);

The John and Johanna Bass Collection at Miami Beach, Florida, Miami 1973, p. 11, cat. no. 17 (as Mazone);

M. Boskovits, "Nicolò Corso e gli altri, Spigolature di pittura lombardo-ligure di secondo Quattrocento," in Arte Cristiana 75, no. 723 (November-December 1987), pp. 362, 382 note 47, rep🍨roduced fig. 24 (as Mazone);

P.L. Roberts, in Paintings and Textiles of the Bass Museum of Art: Selections from the Collection, M.A. Russell ꦦ(ed.), Miami 1990, pp. 8-9, reproduced (as Giovanni Barbagelata);

G. Algeri and A. de Floriani, La pittura in Liguria: Il Quattrocento, Genoa 1991, p. 300, reprodu🔴ced fig. 267 (as Ligurian artist, active in the 1480s);

D. Benati, in Da Ambrogio Lorenzetti a Sandro Botticelli, exhibition catalogue💜, Florence 2003, pp. 178, 180 note 3, 182, 185 note 3 (as Mazone);

G. Zanelli, "'Costumò Mazone di spendere il tempo tra il suo Monferrato a la nostra Liguria': pittori da Alessandri a Genova nel Rinascimento," in Uno spazio storico, Committenze, istituzioni e luoghi nel Piemonte meridionale, G. Spinoe and A. Torre (eds.), Utet 2007, p. 16 note 44 (﷽as Mazone);

P.L. Roberts, Corpus of Early Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections, The South, Athens, Geo♑rgia 2009, vol. II, p. 514, reproducไed (as Mazone);

A. Galli, "Una commissione dei Doria per Giovanni Mazone (e una precisazione su Vincezo Foppa a Genova)," in Prospettiva 101 (January 2001), p. 78 note 23 (as Mazone);

L. Nieddu, "Influssi del Ponente ligure nei polittici del Quattro-Cinquecento in Corsica: riletture e inediti," in Arte Cristiana 917 😼(2020), pp. 130-131, 133 note 12, reproduced fig. 4 (as Workshop of Mazone).

Miami, Bass Museum of Art, Highlights of the John and Johanna Bass Collection, 3 November - 9 December 1990;

Miami, Bass Museum of Art, Framing the Altarpiece: The Birth of the Modern Painting Out of the Spirit of the Gothic Cathedral, 27 June - 13 September 2009;

Miami, Bass Museum of Art, Human Rites, 25 June - 3 October 2010;

Miami, Bass Museum of Art, An Invitation to LOOK, 1 April - 3 July 2011.

The Genoese painter Giovanni Mazone produced this remarkable polyptych circa 1480 for the Monastery of the Franciscan Friars Minor Recollect in Corbara, Corsica (at the time a Genoese dependency). First attributed to Mazone by Roberto Longhi, the altarpiece belongs to the artist’s mature period, when he adeptly combined archaicizing Gothic conventions with Renaissance artistic trends.¹ Very likely retaining its original, richly carved and gilded frame, the polyptyc🐟h is a testament to Mazone’s ability to integrate seemingly disparate stylistic influences wꩲithin a single pictorial ensemble.

Near life-size figures—all depictions of important Franciscan saints—populate the monumental altarpiece’s lower tier, which centers on the Madonna and Christ Child accompanied by four music-playing angels. The lower tier’s gold-leaf backgrounds and elaborate use of pastiglia in the halos and saintly attributes, for instance, contrasts with the upper tier’s perspectivally rendered landscape and architectural settings. Likewise, the throne—which recalls a similar structure in Mazone’s Saint Benedict Enthroned between Saints Catherine of Alexandria, John the Baptist, Paul, and Giustina, today in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool²—is rendered with an acute sense of volume.

¹ Longhi's letter of expertise cited in The John and Johanna Bass Collection at Miami Beach, p. 11.