The farewell tour

Mark Ostow

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Desiderio da Settignano and Neri di Bicci
Virgin and Child
Ca. 1460–65
Polychromed stucco
Purchased with a gift from Nina Griggs

Neri di Bicci 
God the Father with Adoring Angels (painted frame)
1472
Tempera on panel

One day, our chief curator Larry Kanter came to me and said, “Jock, there’s a Christie’s sale on—a day sale of nineteenth-century European works. And two are fifteenth-century Italian works. One is a stucco by Donatello. And the other one is a stucco by Desiderio da Settignano and Neri di Bicci. We need to buy them.” And so we bought these—for very little money in terms of normal art prices. If you look at this you can see incredible detail. It’s just amazing painting. 

Now, Larry always gets asked to vet Old Master paintings for dealers and fairs and other events. And about a year or so later, he went down to the Wildenstein Galleries, and they took him downstairs to see some frames, and he found this one. He said, “There’s one frame here I think is very interesting. I want to study it some more. Can you send this one up to Yale?” Afterward, he talked to them and told them what they had. He had known instantly that this was the frame made for this work by di Bicci. And we bought it.