The baptism of Christ

Copy, on the same verso, of a niello attributed to Maso Finiguerra, owned by Marchese Jacopo Durazzo. Only one paper impression is known (kept at the Louvre, Rothschild collection, inv. 137 Ni, in counterpart to this one), probably pulled not from the silver plaque, but from a lost sulfur cast, as is shown by the thick, dark lines, caused by cracks in the sulfur,  that run diagonally across the top of the image, as noted by Hind.

The silver plaque owned by Durazzo was sold (Durazzo sale, 1872, n. 2876) to the Eugène Félix collection in Leipzig and later to the collection of Albert Figdor in Vienna.

The nielli of the Durazzo collection were reproduced in prints by owner’s will, between the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, in Venice - as also specified by Malaspina in his catalog of 1824 - constituting a series that was circulated and collected by the amateurs.

Bartsch describes these niello prints in his volume published in 1811, a date that therefore constitutes the terminus ante quem for the execution.

For the attribution to Maso Finiguerra, disputed by some scholars, see Zucker in The Illustrated Bartsch, 2401.002.