Due estremi per il Vecchietta intagliatore

Abstract

The objective of this article is twofold. On the one hand, it promotes the reattribution to Vecchietta of a wooden statue of the Risen Christ in the Chigi Zondadari collection – currently attributed to Domenico di Niccolò dei Cori –, connecting it to a documented commission from 1442. On the other hand, it suggests a change in chronology for the artist’s wooden Pietà, usually dated to the end of the 1440s but more convincingly placed in the artist’s late period, after 1472. As a result, Vecchietta’s entire career as a wood sculptor ought to be reconsidered with strong repercussions on the history of fifteenth-century Sienese wood sculpture as a whole. New evidence about Vecchietta’s work for the Martinozzi family and his Roman stay of 1460 is also presented here for the first time.