Whitfield Fine Art Opens Exceptional Old Master Exhibition

GBP7.5 Million Renaissance Panel and GBP1.1 Million Anthony Van Dyck, That Belonged to King Charles I, go on Display in London

- Old Masters in a Modern Light

Whitfield Fine Art's forthcoming Old Master exhibition has an exceptional group of paintings from the Florentine High Renaissance and 17th century Baroque.

The leading highlight will be the comparison between three newly cleaned Italian Renaissance masterpieces byAndrea del Sarto (1486-1530) (priced at GBP7.5 million) and his two pupils Jacopo Pontormo (1494-1556) (GBP3 million) and Rosso Fiorentino (1494-1540) (GBP675,000) each painted nearly 500 years ago in Florence in 1513. Each panel resurfaced in America over the last 20 years.

The Andrea del Sarto's "Madonna and Child with St. John" was rediscovered ten years ago, but only in late 2008 was it cleaned and parts of the painting revealed to be completely overpainted in the 18th century. It has now has it been fully restored and infrared reflectograms have uncovered fascinating underdrawing present on the panel under the paint surface. It is priced at GBP7.25 million

Jacopo Pontormo's " Madonna and Child with St John", was painted as he was in Andrea del Sarto's studio but as he was beginning to take his first commissions as an artist in his own right. It is priced at GBP3 million.

Rosso Fiorentino - so named for his red hair - who also painted the most entrancing Madonnas, and it is fascinating to have his "Holy Family with Saints Joseph, Anne and John the Baptist" as a foil to the Del Sarto and Pontormo. It is priced at GBP675,000.

To be able to hang these three Renaissance works together, nearly five hundred years after they had such a close connection, is a fascinating and unique comparison.

Among the other major works in the show is Sir Anthony Van Dyck's Head of an Old Man that probably belonged to King Charles I and was recorded in a painting by David Teniers the Younger in Munich in 1660. It has hardly been seen in the last generation, having been in a private collection in Belgium for the last 40 years. It is GBP1.1 Million

Edward Clark
WHITFIELD FINE ART LIMITED,
23 Dering Street, London W1S 1AW
Tel: +44(0)20-7355-0040