When the Philadelphia lawyer John G. Johnson began to collect art in the late nineteenth century, he made Italian paintings from the early Renaissance a specialty. Eventually Johnson donated his distinguished collection to the City of Philadelphia, and it is now housed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Although there have been several catalogues of these paintings, including one by Bernard Berenson in 1913, Carl Brandon Strehlke has prepared the first complete scholarly examination. His discussion of such art historical questions as attribution, iconography, and patronage is complemented by the technical study of the paintings he conducted with Mark S. Tucker, the museum’s vice chairman of conservation and senior conservator of paintings.
Strehlke’s introduction sheds new light on Johnson’s collecting and traces the history of the acquisition, conservation, and installation of the John G. Johnson and Philadelphia Museum of Art paintings. Subsequent entries situate detailed discussions of the pictures within the context of the artists’ biographies. All the paintings are furnished with a full description, technical report, provenance, art-historical commentary, discussion of related works, comparative illustrations, and bibliography. This extensively illustrated book also provides an appendix of punch marks and a bibliography of some 2,500 entries.