(active in Treviso and Faenza between 1509 and 1539) The Virgin and Child, with Saint Joseph and Saint Catherine of Alexandria, oil on panel, 56.5 x 75.5 cm, unframed

Provenance: North Italian private collection Certificate: Prof. Ugo Ruggeri, Venice Professor Ruggeri confirms the present painting to be an autograph work by Luca Antonio Busati, an artist that used to be known as “Il maestro veneto dell’ Incredulità di San Tommaso”, named after a painting in the church of San Nicolò in Treviso. Anchise Tempestini managed to reconstruct the life and work of this painter (comp. A. Tempestini, “Il maestro veneto dell’incredulità di San Tommaso”, in: Antichità Viva, 1974, no. 2, pp. 11–17, also comp. A. Tempestini, “I Fratelli Busati e il Mastro veneto dell’incredulità di San Tommaso”, in: Studi di Storia dell’Arte, 1993, 4, pp. 27–68). The painter’s identification was confirmed by Federico Zeri (in: Italian Paintings in the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore 1976, p. 267). Morphological and stylistic correspondences between our painting and the altarpiece in Treviso and other works by Busati listed by Tempestine are so substantial that the former can be assigned to Busati’s small oeuvre without reservation. Ruggeri compares it to the Virgin and Child with the Saints Catherine, Francis, and Jerome in the Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo in Brescia, as well as the Virgin and Child with the Saints Peter, John, and Jerome in the Galleria Giorgio Franchetti at the Ca’ d’Oro in Venice. All of these paintings reveal Busati as a subtle interpreter of the contemporary Venetian idiom who drew his inspirations from Giovanni Bellini, but also from Cima da Conegliano, Lorenzo Lotto, and Palma Vecchio. Ruggeri on the significance and dating of our work: “L’opera costituisce un importante aggiunta al raro catalogo dell’artista. Una sua collocazione intorno al 1510, o poco dopo, mi sembra del tutto plausibile...”