called MASO DI SAN FRIANO
1536 - San Friano - Florence - 1571
Luisa Vertova in Kunst des Cinquecento in der Toscana Bruckman Kunsthistorischen Institut in Florenz Dritte Folge Vol XVII, 1992 ed. Monika Cämmerer pp.286-7 fig.13
Maso was a pupil of Carlo Portelli da Loro, himself a pupil of Pontormo, and of Pier francesco Foschi. He appears to have stayed in Florence all his life and played an important part in the decoration of the Studiolo where he painted the first two paintings (The Diamond Miners and The Fall of Icarus).
His masterpiece was The Visitation painted as the altarpiece for the church of S. Pier Maggiore in Florence. The painting was sold to Lord Berwick when the church was pulled down in the eighteenth century and is now the property of the Fitzwilliam Museum, in fact on loan as the main altarpiece in Trinity Hall Chapel, Cambridge. His most important pupils were Jacopo da Empoli and Alessandro Fei.
Two larger, but not identical versions of this composition are known, one in Prato Cathedral and the other in the Birmingham City Art Gallery. The handling is comparable to Maso's Coiai alterpiece in the Accademia Florence and can be dated to the mid 1560's. (1)
1. Peter Cannon-Brookes, Madonna and Child by Maso di San Friano, Apollo November 1970, pp.346-9
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