The Raising of Lazarus

The Raising of Lazarus was painted by Benozzo Gozzoli in 1490. Its documented ownership history begins with the Florentine collector Cav. Gualtiero Kennedy Laurie, who possessed the painting by 1859 and lent it to an 1861 exhibition in Florence.

It subsequently passed to William Blundell Spence in Florence, though the exact date of this transfer is not recorded.

The work was later consigned to the London firm Thomas Agnew & Sons (stock number 7907), handled through Charles Fairfax Murray and Haskard and Co. in Florence. Peter A.B. Widener purchased the painting on 15 August 1897, and it entered his collection at Lynnewood Hall in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. After Widener's death, the painting passed by inheritance through the power of appointment of Joseph E. Widener, who gifted it to the National Gallery of Art in 1942.

The Raising of Lazarus is part of the National Gallery of Art’s collection in Washington, D.C. The work entered the museum in 1942 as a gift from the estate of Peter A. B. Widener, following the inheritance of his son Joseph E. Widener. Its accession is recorded as a 1942 gift, with no separate inventory number cited in the available documentation. Provenance traces from Cavaliere Gualtiero Kennedy Laurie in Florence to William Blundell Spence, then to Thomas Agnew & Sons, and finally to Peter A. B. Widener before donation. No exhibition history for the painting is documented in the sources consulted.

Benozzo Gozzoli, a Florentine painter active in the late fifteenth century, is known for devotional works that combine narrative clarity with decorative detail; The Raising of Lazarus, dated around 1490, exemplifies this phase of his career and reflects the religious climate of Renaissance Italy. Scholars have traced its provenance through Spence’s collection, an 1861 Florentine exhibition (Fleming 1979), and the Widener family records, highlighting its documented history and scholarly attention (Levi 1985; Getty Provenance Index). The painting’s classification as religious art and its presence in the National Gallery of Art underscore its significance within Gozzoli’s oeuvre and the broader study of Renaissance devotional painting.

Benozzo Gozzoli, a Florentine Renaissance painter who trained with Fra Angelico, completed The Raising of Lazarus around 1494. This painting, likely executed in oil on canvas, showcases his characteristic synthesis of Renaissance naturalism with elements of the International Gothic style, evident in its detailed figures and landscape settings.