For more on this painting, see Jacopo del Sellaio, The Metamorphosis of Actaeon.
James Jackson Jarves (1818–1888), Florence, by 1859
The panel support, of a horizontal grain, is comprised of two planks with a seam 22.5 centimeters from the top edge. It was cut vertically into two fragments, rejoined, thinned to a depth of 2.0 centimeters, and cradled. The left fragment is 41 centimeters wide and ranges in height between 43.8 and 44.3 centimeters, excluding a modern wood insert at the top, approximately 11 centimeters wide. The right fragment ranges in width from 74.6 to 76.0 centimeters. Its top edge is much consumed by insect damage and includes a modern wood insert measuring 2.2 by 38.5 centimeters and 9 millimeters thick, approximately 19.5 centimeters from the right edge. A drastic cleaning by Andrew Petryn between 1955 and 1960 abraded the thinly painted surface and exposed all the losses currently visible in photograph, including selective scraping of pigments in the trees around the two figures running at the center of the composition, in the water of the river at the left and the pond in the center foreground, and in Actaeon’s dark tunic.
Published References
Jarves, James Jackson. Descriptive Catalogue of “Old Masters” Collected by James J. Jarves to Illustrate the History of Painting from A.D. 1200 to the Best Periods of Italian Art. Cambridge, Mass.: H. O. Houghton, 1860., 52; Sturgis, Russell, Jr. Manual of the Jarves Collection of Early Italian Pictures. New Haven: Yale College, 1868., 72–73; W. F. Brown, Boston. Catalogue of the Jarves Collection of Early Italian Pictures. Sale cat. November 9, 1871., no. 82; Rankin, William. “Some Early Italian Pictures in the Jarves Collection of the Yale School of Fine Arts at New Haven.” American Journal of Archaeology 10, no. 2 (April–June 1895): 137–51., 146; Rankin, William. Notes on the Collections of Old Masters at Yale University, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Fogg Museum of Harvard University. Wellesley, Mass.: Department of Art, Wellesley College, 1905., 13, no. 82; Mather, Frank Jewett, Jr. “Cassone-Fronts in American Collections—III: Three Panels by Jacopo del Sellaio.” Burlington Magazine 10, no. 45 (December 1906): 204–6., 205; Berenson, Bernard. The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance with an Index to Their Works. 3rd. ed. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1909., 184; Schubring, Paul. Cassoni: Truhen und Truhenbilder der italienischen Frührenaissance. Leipzig, Germany: K. W. Hiersemann, 1915., 305, no. 362; Sirén, Osvald. A Descriptive Catalogue of the Pictures in the Jarves Collection Belonging to Yale University. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1916., 131–33, no. 48; Mather, Frank Jewett, Jr. “Actaeon’s Misadventure as Depicted by Sellaio.” Antiques 12, no. 4 (October 1927): 298–99., 298–99; Offner, Richard. Italian Primitives at Yale University: Comments and Revisions. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1927., 7, 35; van Marle. Raimond. The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting. Vol. 12. The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1931., 406–7, fig. 270; Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: A List of the Principal Artists and Their Works with an Index of Places. Oxford: Clarendon, 1932., 527; “Pagan Imagery in Renaissance Art: An Exhibition and Five Lectures.” Bulletin of the Associates in Fine Arts at Yale University 11, no. 1 (February 1942): 1–3. , 2; “Picture Book Number One: Italian Painting.” Special issue, Bulletin of the Associates in Fine Arts at Yale University 15, nos. 1–3 (October 1946): n.p., fig. 14; Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance, A List of the Principal Artists and Their Works with an Index of Places: Florentine School. 2 vols. London: Phaidon, 1963., 1:198; Bacci, Mina. Piero di Cosimo. Milan: Bramante, 1966., 123; Seymour, Charles, Jr. Early Italian Paintings in the Yale University Art Gallery. New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1970., 179–81, no. 130; Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972., 599, 601; Horne, Herbert P. Alessandro Filipepi, Commonly Called Sandro Botticelli, Painter of Florence. Appendix 3, Catalogue of the Works of Sandro Botticelli, and of His Disciples and Imitators, Together with Notices of Those Erroneously Attributed to Him in the Public and Private Collections of Europe and America. Ed. Caterina Caneva. Florence: S.P.E.S., 1987., 2; Pons, Nicoletta. “Una bottega Fiorentina di pittura nella seconda metà del XV secolo.” Ph.D. diss., Università degli Studi di Roma, La Sapienza, 1992., pl. 54; Branca, Vittore. “L’Atteone del Boccaccio fra allegoria Cristiana, eumerismo trasfigurante, narrativa esemplare, visualizzazione rinascimentale.” In Filologia umanistica per Gianvito Resta, ed. Vincenzo Fera and Giacomo Ferraú, 1:223–39. Padua: Antenore, 1997., 239; Callmann, Ellen. “Jacopo del Sellaio, the Orpheus Myth, and Painting for the Private Citizen.” Folia historiae artium, n.s., 4 (1998): 143–58., 156; Lurati, Patrizia. Doni nuziali del Rinascimento nelle collezioni svizzere. Lucerne, Switzerland: Armando Dadò, 2007., 155