Csornay Boldizsár - Dobos Zsuzsa - Varga Ágota - Zakariás János szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 98. (Budapest, 2003)

SALLAY, DÓRA: A Proposal for a Baptism of Christ-Lunette by Guidoccio Cozzarelli

13. Guidoccio Cozzarelli: Three winged putti with coats of arms. Private collection forms present in the works of the early 1480s. Other features that seem to distance this work slightly from the mid-1470s and approximate its date to the production of the 1480s include the change in the physiognomies towards the more heavy-lidded and expressionless type so characteristic of the next decade. The Budapest-Moscow Baptism, where these stylistic elements are not yet dominant, is in all probability still a work that dates from before 1480, unique in its ease, charm, and freshness. The composition shows enough animation to free the scene from the stiffness of the Sinalunga version; the open mouths, not yet the empty formula of the next decade, still convey some liveliness. The influence of Matteo di Giovanni, from whose style Cozzarelli gradually distanced himself from the early 1480s on, is very marked.

26 Some other works that may be connected to the activity of the painter in the midand the later 1470s include, first, a series of Madonnas, which Gaudenz Freuler has rightly grouped around the Paganico altarpiece (one formerly in Siena and three in Atlanta, Amherst and Baltimore

—the latter of which, in my view, is most comparable 26 From the second half of the 1480s the main influence on Cozzarelli becomes Pietro Orioli. a fellow student of Matteo di Giovanni, inducing stylistic changes marked by a melancholy and sentimentality of expression, reduced decoration, softer forms and contours, and a growing interest in luminous effects. These new elements in the style of Cozzarelli exclude the possibility that the Moscow piece (and the one in Budapest) could date from after 1486 (cf. Markova, 2002 [n. 7.J p. 148).