Incoronazione della Vergine e Santi. Smalti policromi... Lot n° 7

42x26 cm and 42x42 cm (open) Wooden tabernacle with ivory inlay, not contemporary, The complex and articulated composition, enclosed within an inlaid and painted wooden tabernacle made in the 19th century in the manner of the late Gothic portable altarpieces, includes a large central plaque with the crowning of the Virgin surmounted by representations of the crucifixion and St. Michael the Archangel surrounded by four round plates with representations of saints. The work is accompanied by a critical study by Paolo Torriti, who describes it as follows: "The general composition of the central slab of our artefact, including some round plates of the doors, is identical in a triptych conserved in the Louvre Museum in Paris (fig.5), attributed, in the relative catalogue, to an anonymous enameller from Limoges active at the beginning of the 16th century (Baratte 2000. pp.48-49). The Louvre triptych had already been attributed in 1980 to the "Master of the Triptych of Louis XII"' and even earlier, in 1914, placed at the time of Nardon Penicaud and Jean I Penicaud. In the Louvre Museum there is another enamelled plate with the same central composition, attributed again to a Limousin manufacture of the first half of the 16th century (Baratte 2000. p.50). [...] Thus the extraordinary refinement of the enamel, the elegance of the figures and an evident softness of the drapery (compared to other artefacts of the same genre), often raised and embellished with rapid strokes of gold, would bring the enamels analysed here closer to the Pénicaud workshop, in particular to the atelier of Jean I Penicaud, at the beginning of the 16th century. For all these reasons, we are convinced in attributing our enamelled plates to a Limousin workshop of the second/third decade of the sixteenth century".