Collection Online as of January 17, 2022

John the Baptist being carried to Zacharias

c. 1510

attributed to Francesco Granacci

(Italian, 1469-1543)

Italy, 16th century

Tempera and oil with gold on wood

Unframed: 76.2 x 33 cm (30 x 13 in.)

The Elisabeth Severance Prentiss Collection 1944.91

Location

not on view

Fun Fact

The artist used gold to paint fine details of embroidery and individual strands of hair.

Description

Did Michelangelo paint some of this work?

This panel formed part of a series depicting the life of John the Baptist, with other panels located in New York City and Liverpool. Scholars believe that as many as five artists may have participated in creating the series and disagree about who painted this panel. Michelangelo Buonarotti, a lifelong friend of Francesco Granacci’s, may have contributed to one of the two panels in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Compare the sculptural quality of the maidservant’s white drapery in the CMA’s picture with figures from the Met’s panels attributed to Michelangelo (below left) and Granacci (below right). Which one do you think it more closely resembles?

Provenance

-between 1830-1837

Marchese Giovanni Gerini, Palazzo Gerini, Florence, Italy, sold to Reverend John Sanford

by 1837

Reverend John Sanford [1777-1855], Florence, Italy and London, United Kingdom purchased from Marchese Gerini between 1830 and 1837;

1844

Lord Frederick Paul Methuen [1818-1891] (married John Sanford's daughter, Anna Horatia Caroline Sanford [1824-1899], by inheritance to the Methuen Family, Corsham Court, Chippenham, England

1899

(Christies, London, England, sale May 13, 1899, no. 85)

-1911

Mrs. Murray Guthrie [1872-1945] (sale: Christie's, London, March 11, 1911, no. 25, sold to S.W. Partridge)

1911-1917

(Partridge and Co., London, England, sold to Duveen Brothers)

1917

(Duveen Brothers, 1917)

-1944

Mrs. Francis F. Prentiss [1865-1944], Cleveland, OH, The Elisabeth Severance Prentiss Collection.

1944-

The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

Citations

Marle, Raimond van, and Charlotte van Marle. The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting. The Hague, Netherlands: M. Nijhoff, 1923. Reproduced: p. 410, vol. xii

Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: A List of the Principal Artists and Their Works, with an Index of Places. Oxford, United Kingdom : The Clarendon Press, 1932. Reproduced: p. 491

Catalogue of the Elisabeth Severance Prentiss Collection : Bequest of Elisabeth Severance Prentiss, 1944. [Cleveland]: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1944. Reproduced: p. [14], Plate IV, cat. no. 13; Mentioned: p. 27-28, cat. no. 13 archive.org

Catalogue of the Elisabeth Severance Prentiss Collection; Bequest of Elisabeth Severance Prentiss, 1944. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1944. Mentioned: p. 10, 27; Reproduced: no. 13, pl. iv

Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: A List of the Principal Artists and Their Works, with an Index of Places : Florentine School. London, United Kingdom: Phaidon Press, 1963. Reproduced: 1, 189

Pillsbury, Edmund P. Florence and the Arts; Five Centuries of Patronage. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1971. Reproduced: cat. no. 12

Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.), and Federico Zeri. Italian Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, NY: Distributed by New York Graphic Society, 1971. Mentioned and reproduced: 181-183

Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972. Mentioned: p. 130, 545, 574

Holst, Christian von. Francesco Granacci. München, Germany: Bruckmann, 1974. Mentioned: p. 18, 24, 136-137, vol. II

Fahy, Everett. Some Followers of Domenico Ghirlandajo. New York, NY: Garland, 1976. Reproduced: p. 189

Walker Art Gallery (Liverpool). Foreign Catalogue. Liverpool, United Kingdom: Merseyside County Council, 1977. Reproduced: p. 86

Berti, Luciano. Firenze e la Toscana dei Medici nell'Europa del Cinquecento: Il primato del disegno : [mostra, Palazzo Strozzi]. Milano, Italy: Electa, 1980. Mentioned: p. 124

The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Catalogue of Paintings, Part 3: European Paintings of the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1982. Mentioned: p. 351-354; Reproduced: p. 352

Barriault, Anne B. Spalliera Paintings of Renaissance Tuscany: Fables of Poets for Patrician Homes. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994. Mentioned: p. 156-157; pl. 16a

Ingendaay Rodio, Martina. I migliori pennelli: i marchesi Gerini mecenati e collezionisti nella Firenze barocca : il palazzo e la galleria, 1600-1825. Milano, Italy : Biblion, 2013. Mentioned: p. 75; Reproduced: fig. 35

DePrano, Maria. Art Patronage, Family, and Gender in Renaissance Florence: The Tornabuoni. Cambridge, United Kingdom; NY: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Reproduced: p. 197, fig. 9.1

Exhibition history

London, British Institution (1855). Cat. no. 55.

Winter Exhibition of Old Masters. Royal Academy, Burlington House, London, U.K. (1877). Cat. no. 172.

Florence and the Arts: Five Centuries of Patronage. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 29, 1971-January 2, 1972).

Stories From Storage. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 7-May 16, 2021).