The Italian Soprintendenza considers this lot to be a work of national importance and requires it to remain in Italy; it cannot therefore be exported from Italy.

Literature: J. Cavallucci, E. Molinier, "Les Della Robbia. Leur vie et leur oeuvre", Parigi 1884, p. 246; C. Beni, "Guida illustrata del Casentino", Firenze 1889, p. 198; M. Cruttwell, "Luca & Andrea della Robbia and their successors", Londra 1902, p. 353; C. Beni, "Guida illustrata del Casentino", Firenze 1908; L. Burlamacchi, "Luca della Robbia", Londra 1908, p. 116; Elenco degli Edifici Monumentali, XXXVI, Provincia di Arezzo, Roma 1916, pp. 89, 90; A. Marquand, "Giovanni della Robbia", Princeton 1920, p. 181; C. Beni, "Guida del Casentino", Firenze 1958, p. 199; F. Niccolini, "Nuova guida del Casentino", Arezzo 1968, p. 193; C. Beni, "Guida del Casentino", Firenze 1983, p. 222; A. Batistoni, "Pivieri dell’Alto Casentino, Comunità Montana del Casentino", Stia 1992, p. 130; L. Bencistà, Arte a Pratovecchio, «Corrispondenza», XXI, 1, 39, San Giovanni Valdarno 2001, pp. IV-V; A. Bellandi, "Per un Atlante delle emergenze storico-culturali nel territorio del Parco", Borsa di studio indetta dal parco nazionale delle foreste casentinesi, Monte Falterona e Campigna: Indaginesulle emergenze storico-culturali meritevoli di tutela e attenzione nel territorio del Parco, Anno: 2000/2001 Responsabilità scientifica: Istituto per i Beni artistici, culturali e naturali della RegioneEmilia Romagna, p. 23 (https://www.parcoforestecasentinesi.it/sites/default/files/images/cartella_ricerca/Borsa%20di%20studio%20Bellandi.pdf); Vivere Pratovecchio, Semestrale dell’Amministrazione Comunale di Pratovecchio, Anno I, Numero I, 2002, p. 28; G. Landi, "Pratovecchio. Terra d’illustri memorie", Pratovecchio Stia, Arti Grafiche Cianferoni 2014, p. 208; G. Landi, "Bruciano le stagioni. Storia di una famiglia", s. d. (2019?), s. p. (p. 5, 42?).

The high relief object of this report has a particularly troubled history even if, at the same time, common to many other similar artefacts still present in Casentino but no longer in their original location, or migrated from this valley to other shores.
With over fifty works, the Casentino is presented as the valley where the concentration of glazed sculptures is more extensive than in other areas of Tuscany. The altars made by Andrea della Robbia and by the Verna Convent furnishing workshop and the polychrome terracottas of Santa Maria delle Grazie near Stia modeled by Benedetto Buglioni at the end of the fifteenth century, represent the two most relevant episodes. To these works, which decorate religious buildings, we must add other reliefs, tabernacles and liturgical furnishings widely spread in the Casentino area. [...] since 1884, in the town of Pratovecchio the artistic literature indicates the presence of artefacts by della Robbia: a Madonna and Child by Andrea della Robbia, today in the church of Santa Maria Assunta in Stia, but coming from a chapel along the road between Stia and Pratovecchio which was demolished with the construction of the railway in 1888, the tabernacle of Borgo di Mezzo, today attributed to Marco della Robbia, son of Giovanni, with the Madonna and Child and Saints Sebastian and Saint John the Baptist, still on site, a Eucharistic tabernacle attributed to Giovanni della Robbia in the nearby parish church of Santa Maria a Casalino and the Madonna with Child and San Giovannino, object of our intervention, coming from a tabernacle placed on the facade of Casa Brocchi then transferred to the counter-façade for a long time of the Church of the Most Holy Name of Jesus.
The work depicts the Madonna seated on a slightly molded bench supporting the little Jesus on her right leg. Jesus, who lost his right arm, still evident in the older photos, when the building was transferred from the facade of Palazzo Brocchi to the propositura. he holds a small yellow apple in his left hand. The Madonna wears a large, regal blue cloak lined with green, closed on the chest by a precious clasp composed of a ruby set and surrounded by a string of pearls, over a purple tunic - the red, absent in Della Robbia's palette, is replaced by manganese - surrounded by a sash and edged at the wrists in yellow gold. To the left of the Virgin, San Giovannino, with his hands joined and dressed in a rustic camel skin tunic, alluding to his life as a hermit, looks towards the Child Jesus. His figure also reveals a sophisticated 'old-fashioned' taste made even more explicit in the Roman style of the shoes that the child wears. On either side of the Madonna's head, in the arch furrowed by a sky streaked with thin blue and yellow clouds, two cherubs unfurl, each with three pairs of large blue and purple wings, and above the white Dove of the Holy Spirit from whose mouth emanates a stream of golden light. On the basis of the relief scrolls the inscription, mutilated in the initial part, in black capital letters on a white background, REGINA CELI LETARE ALLELVIA, a famous Marian antiphon which in the liturgy is mainly recited in place of the Angelus, in the Easter season, but also recited daily within the prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours. This same phrase returns to the base of the throne where the Madonna and Child sit in a large altarpiece, recently restored, created by Giovanni della Robbia in the early 1520s for the Dominican convent of Santa Lucia in Camporeggi and transferred following the Napoleonic suppressions of 1808 in the Pulci Berardi Chapel of the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence.
This work can be dated to the early 1520s and proves to be one of the most virtuous and successful examples of Giovanni della Robbia's mature style, as well as presenting many elements that return identical in the pratovecchino relief. Giovanni della Robbia (1469-1529/30), one of Andrea's five sons, together with his brothers Luca the Younger, Girolamo, Marco and Francesco, the latter two later becoming Dominican friars, had embarked on his father's career. Compared to Luca the Younger, who remained close to his father to lead the workshop producing works almost exclusively for religious purposes, Giovanni turned to a wider and more varied public, diversifying the type of production and also experimenting with works intended for profane use or for home furnishings. His works are often characterized by a highly eclectic, decorative and didactic taste, exercised through a lively color scheme and an exuberant wealth of details for which he looks with an attentive eye to the famous pictorial models of the Florentine tradition (Ghirlandaio, Perugino, Lorenzo di Credi) and to the contemporary pictorial proposals from which he then also absorbs all the anxieties deriving from the incipient mannerism. Giovanni della Robbia carried on the family tradition, adding a wider range of colors to the original palette: blue, green, brown and yellow enamels give his creations an unusual chromatic dynamism that must have also passed into the style of his son Marco (1503- 1527). [...] One of the works created in Giovanni's workshop and which is closest to ours is undoubtedly the relief with the Madonna and Child preserved in a road tabernacle in the village of Civitella in Val di Chiana, at the Porta Senese, dated 1522 and commissioned by a local landowner. The work, although with many losses, first of all the figure of the young San Giovanni, probably kneeling at the feet of the Virgin - as in the relief of the museum of Sant'Agata del Mugello - is surrounded by the typical Della Robbia garland with fruits and leaves it is natural to wonder if it was originally present in our sculpture as well.
(For the history of the locations of the work, please refer to the complete file available on request)