Raffaellino del Garbo and His World: Commissions, Patrons, Associates

Abstract

This essay establishes new contexts for the career of the Florentine painter Raffaellino del Garbo (d. c. 1527-1528), through new documentary research. A contract drawn up on in 1502 reveals that Piero Corbinelli commissioned Raffaellino to paint an double-sided tabernacle near his villa at San Felice a Ema (lost). The original contract for Raffaellino's Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes reveals the identity of the individual who commissioned the painting on behalf of the convent, Don Innocenzo Riccialbani. Two unpublished sinopie for the Multiplication cast doubt on the recent attribution to Raffaellino of the St. Bernard with the Crucified Christ (Santa Maria Maddalena dei Pazzi), here identified as the work of Sperandio di Giovanni. Another contract records that in 1516 a friar of Santo Spirito, Fra' Raffaello da Fivizzano, commissioned Raffaellino to paint an Assumption of the Virgin with Sts. Anthony, John the Baptist, James, and Sigismund. This iconography, and clues in the contract itself, suggest that Raffaellino's Assumption was intended for the Augustinian church of San Giovanni Battista, Fivizzano (destroyed, with much of its art, by an earthquake in 1920). The new documentation furnishes new details about Raffaellino's use of varying names at different periods in his life - a practice that long led scholars to believe his works were actually painted by several different artists.