The main panel consists of five boards, presumably of poplar, joined vertically. It has retained its original thickness (2.3–2.5 cm); the marks from the original tooling are visible on the back. The three horizontal, tapering inset battens on the back were probably made in the nineteenth century, but they may be replacements for damaged originals. Sixteen butterfly keys have been set into the panel (four along each join), although two of these have been removed or have fallen out. Some of these fit less well than others, so they may be replacements (of a more recent date). The dark coat of paint on the back of the panel, covering the butterfly keys, is of a composition indicating that it does not date from before the nineteenth century; ¹ it must have been applied earlier than 1929, since it does not cover a large additional butterfly key, towards the top of the second join from the left, added by William Morrill at that time (but not inset into the panel). Marks left by modern sawing tools suggest that the panel has been trimmed along both vertical edges.

The lunette panel consists of four boards, presumably of poplar, joined horizontally. Their widths are 31.6, 32.7, 33 and 3.5 cm, respectively, starting with the lowest. This panel too has preserved its original thickness (2–2.5cm), as is evident from the original tooling marks on the back. The three vertical battens on the back were probably inserted in the nineteenth century. Each join has four inset butterfly keys, which are similar in size and shape to those on the main panel. The tooling marks on the panel appear to continue on to one of the butterfly keys, so the latter may be original. Marks left by modern sawing tools along the edge of the arched top suggest that it has been trimmed. The lower edge has also been trimmed. The back has been coated with dark paint similar to that on the back of the main panel.

Along the top and bottom edges of the main panel, through the paint of the border and penetrating the support, there are circular holes – a total of seven at the upper edge and four at the lower; X‐radiography suggests the presence of more, which were filled and are therefore not visible. These holes pass through wood that was originally unpainted and are probably evidence that a frame moulding was attached by pegs or nails.

The panels were prepared with a gesso ground,² which is pitted in places on account of the presence of numerous minute air bubbles. There is no priming over the ground. Infrared reflectography reveals underdrawing for the figures in both panels in a liquid medium (fig. 1); the simple outline seems likely to follow a transferred cartoon. Apart from slight adjustments to some of the contours, no changes were made to the figures in the main panel. In the lunette the only change is in the drapery of the angel on the right, near the right wrist and where it billows out on the right. In the main panel there is underdrawing for some trees, a hut and some posts in the lake, but there is no indication of the town (fig. 2).

The blue pigment in the sky, the distant landscape and the thinly painted river in the main panel is ultramarine, which was also used for the drapery of the angel on the left in the lunette. The foliage of the foreground trees in the main panel is painted with lead‐tin yellow, yellow earth and verdigris, the rocks with a mixture of lead white, lead‐tin yellow, yellow ochre and haematite (crystalline red‐iron oxide, with a distinctive deep mulberry tone). Haematite was also used for the marble of the tomb in the lunette, and for Saint Elizabeth’s purple‐red drapery, where it was combined with lead white, some red lake and a little black. Analysis of the red lake pigment in John the Baptist’s drapery identified a single lake pigment containing principally dyestuff extracted from the kermes insect but with some traces of madder, which suggests that it was prepared from textile shearings dyed with both.³

The green robe of the angel on the left in the main panel was painted with mixtures of verdigris and lead white; the cangiante effect created by the orange‐brown colour of the highlights is in fact the product of discoloured varnish overlaid on the pale green paint. In the drapery of the angel on the left in the lunette, verdigris was again used, but not mixed with white, and combined with red‐lake glazes. The shadows of the cangiante drapery of the angel on the right are also painted with red lake, while the highlights are of yellow arsenic sulphide (most probably orpiment). The drapery of the angel with the lute in the main panel, although more yellow, with red only in the very deepest shadows, was painted with a similar combination of pigments.

The haloes of Christ and the Virgin Mary in the main panel are rendered in a distinctive and unusual manner: raised dots of greyish‐white paint (lead‐tin yellow mixed with lead white, a little red earth and black) are superimposed on an ellipse. Comparable raised dots are also present on the borders of garments. Such dots are also employed at a few points on the surface of the water. There are numerous fingerprints visible in the surface paint.

When the pictures were acquired by the National Gallery in 1924, their condition was defined as good, although minor damage was repaired on both. A split in the main panel was treated in 1929 by Morrill. Both paintings have a history of flaking paint, which has been consolidated on several occasions. In 1961 the main panel was treated against woodworm and in 1988 worm‐eaten wood was consolidated.

An ochre‐coloured border (2.0–2.5 cm wide) that covers the unpainted but gessoed edges of both panels is a later addition (there is no border along the bottom edge of the lunette, which has been trimmed and has original paint up to the edge of the panel). Across the top of the main panel, there is a strip about 5 cm wide, which now looks darker than the rest of the painting. This is an extension of the painted surface that was applied over part of the ochre‐coloured border and contains cobalt blue, a pigment not available until the nineteenth century. A similar band of darkened repaint is also present along the lower edge.

On the main panel there are scratches in the paint, most noticeably across the cheek and chest of the hovering child, the neck of the child wearing a crown of flowers and the hand of Saint Elizabeth (the eldest of the female witnesses). There are numerous flake losses. The greens have suffered badly from such losses, particularly in the area of landscape behind Christ, but also in the green tunic worn by the flower‐crowned child and in the crown itself. Darkened retouchings are especially disfiguring on the flesh of Saint Elizabeth.

The green drapery of the angel in the lunette, which contains verdigris, has almost certainly darkened, and the foliage on the main panel may also have discoloured a little, causing the leaves of the trees to be browner than originally intended. The yellow draperies appear very worn, most probably due to degradation of the yellow arsenic‐sulphide pigment and subsequent abrasion of the friable paint.⁴

The appearance of both paintings is considerably altered by the discoloured and desaturated varnish.

The landscape setting, the voluminous and complex draperies, the loose articulation of the bodies (especially that of the Baptist) and facial features recall the inventions of German artists such as Joachim Patinier (1480–1524), Albrecht Dürer and Albrecht Altdorfer. Although the painting is dated 1514, work on it may have begun in the previous year. Saint John the Baptist is very similar to the same figure in the altarpiece painted by Francesco for the Celestinians in Bologna in 1513. As first noted by Cecil Gould, and mentioned above, the angel holding the cloth recalls the one holding a scroll in his Immaculate Conception and Saints, also dating from 1513 (Pinacoteca Comunale, Forlì).¹⁷ The figure of Christ, with his carefully studied anatomy and loincloth tied at the hip, is reminiscent of the Saint Sebastian in the Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, likely to date from about the same time.¹⁸

The beautiful Virgin and Child now in the collection of the Banca Popolare dell’Emilia Romagna, Modena (fig. 6) is very close in palette.¹⁹ Here too we find the same type of pudding‐stone, the brown matrix of which contains harder pebbles and boulders exposed in eroded hollows and sedimentary layers (on the left a cave, presumably Christ’s tomb, has been cut into the rock). ²⁰ The same kind of foliage, the scale of which is hard to judge, masks the transition to the middle distance; the distant town is also very similar.²¹

Francesco painted the subject of the Dead Christ supported by Angels on other occasions: in the lunette of the altarpiece for the Minor Observants dating from 1499, the panel in Villa Albani, Rome, dating from 1509, and the panel now in the Brera (fig. 7), which may have been painted around the same time as NG 3892.2, and features a similar foreshortening of Christ’s feet and creasing of his belly, as well as a similar breccia marble to either side of the angels.²²

According to Camillo Laderchi, a professor of law as well as an art historian and connoisseur, both parts of NG 3892 were removed from the chapel established by his ancestors in S. Domenico in Faenza ‘at the end of the 18^th century’, when it was being restored, and were taken to the Laderchi palace, where he often saw them.²³ The transfer from church to palace may in fact date from the rebuilding of the church (formerly S. Andrea in Vineis) between 1761 and 1767, rather than at the end of the century. In a monographic study on Faentine architecture published in 1973 it was argued that the Baptism of Christ cannot have been commissioned by the Laderchi, as they acquired the patronage of the chapel dedicated to the Visitation only after the Dominican church was rebuilt.²⁴ However, documents recently found in the Archivio di Stato in Faenza by Giorgia Mancini prove that members of the Laderchi family were associated with the Dominicans as early as the late fifteenth century, and one of them paid for a chapel to be erected in S. Andrea.

On 19 February 1489 Giacomo di Francesco Laderchi, together with Piero and Giovanni Amatore and Giacomo di Mone, contracted with Piero from Gubbio to build one chapel each in the church of S. Andrea, ‘nella pariete di essa ghiesia da canto del chiostro intrando nel chiostro’ (‘in the wall of the church on the side of the cloister, by the entrance to the same’). The patrons agreed to pay 25 lire each for their respective chapels.²⁵ To accommodate the buildings the convent permitted the demolition of a part of the cloister.²⁶

On 9 April 1504 this same Giacomo dictated a will in which he expressed his wish to be buried in the church of S. Andrea of the Order of the Observant Dominicans. He bequeathed 50 lire to the friars and ordained that, after his death, his brothers Giovanni Battista and Marco should spend 100 lire in adorning the chapel dedicated to the Visitation.²⁷ This document reveals not only the identity of Zaganelli’s patrons but also proves that the chapel was dedicated to the Visitation. Given the prominence of John the Baptist in the painting that was eventually supplied, it seems likely that Giovanni Battista was the brother most closely involved in the commission.

When the church was rebuilt in the eighteenth century, the Laderchi were assigned a new chapel with the same dedication. An unpublished entry for October 1764 in the Libro dei Consigli 1720 –1797 states that the Dominicans had granted to Count Giacomo Laderchi the right to erect a marble altar in the second chapel on the left, by the pulpit, and to create burial vaults there and display his family’s coat of arms.²⁸ The patronage (‘juspatronatus’) of the chapel was transferred to Count Laderchi two years later. ²⁹ A detailed plan of the church, drawn in 1774, records the various chapels and vaults. The second chapel on the left is dedicated to the Visitation and the vault in front of it is identified as belonging to Count Laderchi.³⁰

The painting commissioned for the new family chapel, recently attributed to Giovanni Gottardi (1733–1812) of Faenza, represents the Visitation, with the Baptism in the background.³¹ This unusual subject echoes, although in reverse, the main panel of Zaganelli’s altarpiece, and shows that, although identification of the subject of Zaganelli’s painting eluded art historians of the twentieth century, it was clear enough to someone in the eighteenth.

See above. Painted for the Laderchi chapel in S. Domenico, Faenza. Removed about 1766 to Palazzo Laderchi and taken to Rome in the 1840s, where sold in 1846 or 1847 to Thomas Erskine, in whose family collection the paintings remained until their sale to the National Gallery in 1924.

In 2014 both paintings were given new gilded frames of a late sixteenth‐century style, consisting of a convex frieze carved with a chain of six‐petalled rosettes. Previously the main panel had a bare pine moulding as a temporary protective measure and the lunette was in a plain gilded moulding of the kind named after Salvator Rosa, which originated in eighteenth‐century Rome. The paintings probably both arrived in the Gallery framed in that style.

Members of the Laderchi family had been connected with the Dominican convent of S. Andrea in Vineis since the late fifteenth century. In his will of 1490 Geronimo Laderchi, one of Giacomo’s siblings, bequeathed 200 lire to the convent for the celebration of masses for his soul, and provided Gregorio di Michele Laderchi the means to pay for more.⁴⁴ Gregorio’s sister Onofria, a Dominican tertiary, made a bequest of 200 lire to the convent of S. Andrea in Vineis in her will of 1490.⁴⁵ In the sixteenth century further members of the family stated in their wills that they wished to be buried in the family chapel in S. Andrea. These include Ludovico di Lory,⁴⁶ Giovanni Battista (brother of the above‐mentioned Giacomo) and Giacomo di Carlo Laderchi.⁴⁷ Giovanni Battista’s will states that the family vault was beside the chapel (‘sacellum’) built by his brother Giacomo, with a ‘titulus’ (i.e. dedicated) to the Visitation.⁴⁸

Pietro Gentile Laderchi, son of Giacomo, indicated in his will of 23 July 1529 that he also wanted to be buried in the family chapel in S. Andrea and bequeathed 150 lire to the Dominican convent for building the vaults in the cloister behind the back wall of the chapel dedicated to the Visitation.⁴⁹