NEU-Internet Kat. 2 Englisch Version2

PAINTINGS AND SCULPUTRES
Catalogue by Anne Auber
with articles from
Anne Auber
Costanza Barbieri
Carlos O. Boerner
Jürg Meyer zur Capellen
Carolyn C. Wilson
Alessandro Vezzosi
INDEX
DONATELLO……………………………………………………………………………1
GIAMBOLOGNO…………………………………………………………………….13-15
GIOVANNI BELLINI……………………………………………………………………9
GIROLAMOGENGA……………………………………………………………………..8
LEONARDO DAVINCI……………….….……………………...………………………3
OTTAVIO VANNINI……………………………………………………………………12
PAOLO FARINATI……………………………………………………………………..11
PESELLINO………………………………………………………………………………2
RAFFAEL SANZIO……………………………………………………………………5-7
RAFFAELLINO DEL GARBO.…………………………………………………………4
SEBASTIANO DEL PIOMBO…………………………………………………………10
Introduction
In this country, apart from German art, it is mainly Dutch art, especially painting, that has been
traditionally the object of private collecting and also, to a large degree, of museums' collecting
activities. By contrast, Italian painting is scarcely comprehensively represented in private galleries,
nor at auctions. The current exhibition at the Galerie Matthias Hans may therefore make an all the
more greater claim on public interest since here, apart from an abundance of drawings, a selection of
paintings is also to be seen which can be grouped around the creative work and influence of the artist,
Raffael. A particular attraction is the fact that some works illustrate the situation in Florence before
and during Raffael's time and that works follow which can be brought into an immediate connection
with him, ending finally with some paintings which represent the sustained influence of his art.
At the beginning there is the fragment of a fresco showing two angel's heads (cat. no. 2) by Pesellino
(Florence circa 1422-1457) which was probably further developed by Fra Filippo Lippi. In the midfifteenth century, Pesellino enjoyed a substantial reputation for his small, brilliantly executed
devotional paintings. Although the present fragment, as a fresco, represents another medium, in his
small painting the form built upon a careful drawing can be recognized. Moreover, with the naked
eye one can see in the contours the needle perforations with whose aid the preparatory cartoon was
transferred to the painting's grounding. — The Adoration of the Child (cat. no. 4) is given in a tondo,
a form of painting very popular in the fifteenth century for private devotional paintings. In the
present case we see the underlying drawing whose numerous pentimenti point to the fact that the
artist applied his composition directly to be subjectile without any preparatory cartoon and thus
chose a direct artistic procedure. The work was probably done by Raffaellino del Garbo (Florence
circa 1466-1524) whose teacher was Filippino Lippi, the son of Fra Filippo Lippi. Like Pesellino,
Raffaellino, too, represents Florentine quattrocento painting, even though, in his advanced years, he
endeavoured to combine it with the softer, Umbrian way of painting. For this, Pietro Perugino was
doubtless his great model who, as is well-known, had a second studio in Florence in the late fifteenth
and early sixteenth centuries. — As the third artist personality, Girolamo Genga (Urbino 1476-1551)
embodies Umbrian painting. Genga, who had his initial training with Luca Signorelli, worked during
his long artistic career in several different places in middle Italy as a painter and architect, and
oriented himself in his advanced years noticeably toward Raffael's art. The present small work is the
middle painting of a predella probably done already around 1500 in which scenes from the life of St
Januarius are portrayed (cat. no. 8). In the figures' poses, the connection with Signorelli, with whom
the young Raffael also engaged, is more than apparent. The softly formed landscape, by contrast, is
characteristic for the Umbrian painting of this period, whereby Genga, with his quite broad
brushwork, emphasizes the painterly aspects more than, say, Perugino.
The small panel with the two embracing and kissing children who can be identified with Christ and St
John (cat. no. 3) repeats a composition of Leonardo's (Anchiano near Vinci 1452-1519 Amboise) from
the 1480s and probably comes from his studio. In Florentine religious culture of the fifteenth
century, the childhood of St John based on the Apocrypha played a great role and found here an
abundant reflection in paintings. For the mythical meeting of the two children, Leonardo invented a
new kind of pictorial expression in his composition. Thus, the close entanglement of the two
children's bodies which virtually merge into a unity, has a connection with Leonardo's artistic aims.
According to these aims, through complex intertwining of figures he sought to achieve concentrated
compositions and, at the same time, to express a deeper content. In the present case, the two
children, who are united by a future sacrificial death, provide a symbol for God's unconditional love.
Even in its state today, the painting allows the brilliant drawing for the painting’s concept to be
recognized as well as the fine transitions of the modulation. To this is added the carefully executed
plants in the foreground which reveal a degree of the study of nature unusual for the Italian
situation, depicting the mostly complex symbolic contents. Leonardo, who did not leave behind any
monumental, finally executed painting in Florence, nevertheless, through his creative work, had a
sustained influence on the development of Florentine art since the seventies of the fifteenth century.
A counterpoint in this exhibition is formed by Christ Blessing (cat. no. 9) by Giovanni Bellini (Venice
circa 1530-1516). He was roughly a contemporary of Leonardo but, as a painter, represented another
position. Even though he, too, prepared his paintings with drawings, painting itself played the
central role, a characteristic through which the later Venetian painting distinguished itself from the
Florentine-influenced painting of middle Italy. The present painting, one of the few paintings by the
artist owned privately, comes from his late period and is distinguished not only by its powerful
chromatic contrasts, but also by fine painterly nuances. If one understands Venetian and Florentineoriented painting as opposites, one must also have in view that already early on, the art of the
Venetians had been taken up also in other art scenes. A characteristic example is provided by
Leonardo, who spent the year 1500 in Venice and engaged creatively with the painting of the floating
city.
The art of Raffael (Urbino 1483-1520 Rome) was chosen as the pivotal point for this exhibition. This
makes sense insofar as Raffael, after his training in Umbria and his first great successes there, spent a
second 'apprenticeship' in Florence and engaged there with his great contemporaries, Leonardo da
Vinci and Michelangelo. This period is represented in the exhibition by two interesting versions of the
Holy Family with the Lamb (cat. no. 6) as well as those of the Madonna with the Cloves (cat. no. 7). But
only in Rome did Raffael obtain the major commissions and become the court painter to Popes
Julius II and Leo X. And only there did he develop an imagery that enabled him to represent
complex contents in graphic, easily legible and at the same time sophisticated compositions. A
characteristic example and simultaneously one of the outstanding paintings in this exhibition is
Saint John in the Desert (cat. no. 5). This extraordinarily high-quality painting can be regarded as a
studio painting representing the painter's impressive late Roman style. In the figure of St John, the
study of nature and antiquity merge with the engagement with Michelangelo's monumental figures in
the Sistine Chapel to form a perfect unity. It is works like these which established Raffael's fame
during his lifetime and for posterity and which decisively influenced the development of Italian
painting in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
In Raffael's late Roman period, Sebastiano del Piombo (Venice circa 1485-1547 Rome) became one of
his rivals. Probably first trained in Venice by Giovanni Bellini and then Giorgione, in 1511 the
influential banker and patron, Agostino Chigi, brought him to Rome. Here, in the years following, he
developed into a follower of Michelangelo and had the presumption to make Raffael an enemy right
up to the latter's death. The work shown here, Portrait of Michelangelo (cat. no. 10), attributed to
Sebastiano for good reason, shows the artist in his mature Roman period and is a characteristic
example of his style of portraiture. The painting shows the Venetian type of portrait in a rear view
(ritratto di spalla) which, however, Sebastiano has transformed into the formal language of advanced
Roman painting. With prodigious skill he employs the attraction of juxtaposing the veristic portrait
of Michelangelo with an open sketchbook showing on two pages drawings done by him. By
combining the gaze, which can be related to the viewer and also to the executing artist, with the
leaves of the sketchbook, an intensive and at the same time very personal portrayal of the
outstanding Italian Renaissance artist is achieved.
An echo of Raffael's art is shown by the Lamentation (cat. no. 11) by Paolo Farinati (Verona 15241606). The upper Italian Farinati got to know the influence of Raffael's conception of art in
particular through his disciple, Giulio Romano, whose works were accessible to him in Mantua.
Apart from that, Michelangelo's art and that of the Veronese gave him important stimuli, and he
owes his interest in precise and thorough drawing doubtless to his training through the middle
Italian works. Nocturnal scenes like the present Lamentation, in which the luminous colours contrast
against the dark background, occur many times in his oeuvre. The carefully structured pyramid of
figures on which this composition is based he owes also to Raffael, but the overall tenor of the
portrayal is determined by the ecstatic imagery of advanced mannerism.
With the grisaille by Ottavio Vannini (Florence 1581-1644), the Adoration of the Madonna by St
James and St Stephen (cat. no. 12), we find ourselves already in the baroque period. On the basis of
Florentine classicism, Vannini developed, through an engagement with Raffael and Michelangelo, his
own personal imagery which found great resonance in Florence during the first half of the
seventeenth century. The present work may be regarded as a bozzetto for large altar panels with the
same title. In juxtaposition with the painting by Farinati it becomes abundantly clear how, at the
beginning of the baroque period, a clarification of the formal imagery commenced and that now
Raffael's conceptions of painting (one recalls his Madonna di Foligno) once more drew attention with
greater substance.
The Italian paintings collected in this exhibition span a wide range from the middle of the fifteenth
century to the beginning of the seventeenth. They give an impression of the diversity of the subjects,
forms of expression and the media, and thus enrich and supplement the representative show of
drawings from this period. Although they can only provide spotlights, they may nevertheless
stimulate the viewer to visit larger collections of Italian painting.
Jürg Meyer zur Capellen
Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi called Donatello (school)
1386 - Florenz - 1466
1
Madonna with child (Madonna Castelvecchio), around 1450
Terracotta, 57 x 38 cm
PROVENANCE:
Medici, Florenz
G. Vallardi
King of Rumania
Private property
EXPERTISE:
Charles Avery, Kent, April 1995
Ralf Kotalla, Haigerloch, Oktober 1990 (technical report)
Donatello is regarded as one of the most important sculptors in the early Florentine Renaissance. At
first an assistant in Ghiberti's studio, from 1416 he had his own studio in Florence. In 1446/47 he
went for a time to Padua to work there with Michelozzo. Apart from his formative power in large
sculptures, his innovative technique of making reliefs is regarded as pioneering. For the first time,
Donatello succeeded in portraying spatial depth within the plane of the relief.
With faces touching one another, Maria and the child are portrayed in an intimate togetherness.
They are not alone but are accompanied round about by six cherubs. The mother, formed as a halffigure, has her head, encircled by a halo, inclined toward the child, holding it pressed to her with
both hands. In her pinned-up hair partially covered by a veil she is wearing a crown of leaves and on
her forehead a decorative headband. The child is shown wrapped in a cloth or robe and wearing a
head-covering from which short curls protrude. The child's head is also encircled by a halo. His body
is softly rounded and nestled within his mother's embrace. The partially uncovered legs lie next to
one another and are resting on one of the cherubs. In a kind of predella, a narrow strip with two
angels flying toward one another from the left and right form the lower edge of the relief. These
angels are holding a wreathed medallion between them.
With its emphasis on a lyrically tender connection between mother and child, especially the touching
of cheeks, the composition belongs to the portrayal type of Maria glykophilusa (Greek: sweet kissing)
which enjoyed increasing popularity in Italian art of the fifteenth century. With his Madonna Pazzi
(Bode-Museum, Berlin, Inv. 51) done around 1425-1430, Donatello himself influenced this
development (1). The Madonna Castelvecchio, named after a variant made of plaster kept in the Museo
del Castelvecchio in Verona, belongs nevertheless to a related development of this type (2).
Stylistically it is to be assigned to Donatello's creative phase after the altar of Sant’ Antonio in
Padua (circa 1446-1454) and the Madonna Chellini (circa 1456) (3). Details such as hair-style, veil and
crown, as well as the facial type of the two Madonnas are closely related with the relief presented
here. On the figure of St Justina from the altar of Sant’ Antonio there is also to be found a headband
very similar to the one described above. An examination of the material has confirmed that our relief
must have been made around 1450 (4). In an expertise Charles Avery lists four further plaster
exemplars of the Madonna Castelvecchio which in part differ from each other in small details and lead
him to the conclusion that all variants derived from an original by Donatello. The relief shown here
is distinguished from these variants by its precious material. The provenance of our relief from the
collections of the kings of Romania and originally probably from the house of Medici suggests that a
contemporary artist familiar with Donatello's style, probably a member of his studio, made it.
John Pope Hennessy, Italian Renaissance Sculpture, London 1996, S. 66f. u. S. 355.
Avery, Donatello. Catalogo completo delle opere, Florenz 1991, S. 115.
3 To the Altar in Padua cp. obove Pope-Hennessy, S. 356ff. To the ‚Madonna Chellini’ cp. A. Radcliffe and C. Avery,
The Chellini Madonna by Donatello, in: The Burlington Magazine, CXVIII, Juni 1976, S. 377ff.
4 Expertise Ralf Kotalla 21.10.1990
1
2 Charles
Francesco di Stefano called Pesellino ?
1422 - Florenz - 1457
2
Two angles
ca. 20 x 25 cm
Fragment of a fresco
The portrayal of angels is among the tasks of sacred art to which especially the artists of the
Renaissance zealously dedicated themselves. Despite Biblical descriptions according to which the
various categories of angels could be very different, and sometimes of fantastic appearance, in the
quattrocento they were represented preferably in a human form as sexless, winged beings of
unearthly beauty. The basis for this are the writings of the pseudo-Dionysius from the late fifth
century who was still equated with St Dionysius Areopagita in the early Modern Age. This author
explained not only the hierarchies of angels, but also described them as beings whose appearance
allow divine wisdom to come to appearance. (1)
The two angels preserved as a fragment are given halos and wings, but also characterized by the
beauty of their faces in which the equally reverent and composed familiarity with proximity to the
divine is reflected. The angel on the left has his eyes downturned. In front of his shoulder, the tips of
his hands raised in prayer are visible. The second angel has his eyes uplifted. Probably they were
originally directed toward the figure of Maria, whereas his companion was contemplating the lap of
the mother of God or the child lying before her on the ground. Along the contours of their faces, the
dotted traces can be detected which arise when transferring the perforated preliminary drawing to
the moist limestone plaster of fresco technique. (2)
In the quality of the drawing of the contours as well as the tenderly modulated and shaded faces by a
sure hand, an artist of high rank is apparent who must have been active in the middle of the
quattrocento, probably after 1450. The summary design of the curls which today, of course, are
lacking their original perfection through the loss of the partly rubbed off upper layer of paint 'al
secco', is reminiscent of the model by Fra Filippo Lippi (circa 1406-1469). Even the combination of
sharp contours with soft modulation of the facial features is oriented toward the work of Fra Filippo.
(3) Corresponding influences (to be added would be those of Fra Angelico (1387-1455)) can be found,
for instance, in the work of Benozzo Gozzoli (1420-1497) who, however, was not a student of Filippo.
Mostly, however, Benozzo's faces are fuller and less lovely. As a rule, he also put glossy lines on the
lips of his figures. (4) He therefore does not come into question as the creator of the fragment. Instead,
Francesco di Stefano Pesellino (1422-1457) must be considered, who was among Fra Filippo's
assistants and before had also worked for Fra Angelico. Pesellino, about whom Vasari wrote that he
would have exceeded his teacher, Filippo, had he not died so young, left behind a correspondingly
small oeuvre. (5) The angels are related precisely to Pesellino's later works such as the two Cassone
panels with the Struggle and Triumph of David from 1440-50 and the Trinity with Saints,
which Pesellino left unfinished. (16) The size and state of the fragment, whose gilded parts may have
been renewed in more recent times, make the ascription more difficult. Stylistic reasons and the great
artistic attractiveness of the fresco speak in favour of an important master from the milieu or the
successors of Filippo Lippi, or perhaps of Francesco Pesellino.
Pseudo-Dionysius (Dionysius Areopagita), The Divine Names, Kap. 7,2, The Celestial Hierarchy, Kap. 2,1, Kap. 5 u.
Kap. 7,2, in: The Complete Works, translated from Colm Luibheid, New Jersey 1987.
2 Jill Dunkerton, Susan Foister, Dillan Gordon u. Nicholas Penny, Giotto to Dürer. Early Renaissance Painting in The
National Gallery, London 1991, S. 169.
3 cp. The frescos in Santo Stefano, Prato: Jeffrey Ruda, Fra Filippo Lippi. Life and Work, London 1999, S. 258ff.
4 cp.. the frescos in the chapel of the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi: Cristina Acidini Luchinat (Hg.), The Chapel of the Magi.
Benozzo Gozzoli’s Frescoes in the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi Florence.
5 Giorgio Vasari, Leben der ausgezeichnetsten Maler, Bildhauer und Baumeister…, Florenz 1568, dt. von Ludwig
Schorn, Stuttgart u. Tübingen 1839, Bd. II,2, S. 60ff.- To Pesellino cp. Raimond van Marle, The Development oft the
Italian Schools of Painting, New York 1970, Vol. X. S. 469ff.
1
Leonardo da Vinci (school)
Vinci 1452 -1519 Amboise
3
Christ and St. John
REPORT:
Oil on panel, 42,9 x 51,1 cm
Prof. Dr. Ernst-Ludwig Richter, Staatl. Akademie der bildenden Künste
Stuttgart, 1994
The invention of a motif of unusual significance can be traced back to Leonardo: the embrace of the
Christ child with the boy, John, inspired by a passage from the Apocrypha, the Meditationes Vitae
Christi by the pseudo-Bonaventura. A sheet in Windsor Castle (12514) provides evidence for the
engagement with this motif. Various drawings after Leonardo vary the motif from the 'Madonna
with the cat' through to 'children playing'.
The success of this portrayal of the embrace is evidenced in variations by a series of paintings which
stem from studios within Leonardo's sphere of influence including, among others, from Lombardy
(Marco d’Oggiono (1) and above all, Giampietrino, Bernardino Luini, Martino Piazza da Lodi,
Bernardino de’ Conti, Francesco Napoletano, Cesare da Sesto) to Flanders (Joos van Cleve, Quentin
Masssys, Ambrosius Benson, Jan Gossaert, called Mabuse).
Up until the second half of the sixteenth century we find many works ascribed to Boltraffio, Salai,
Ferrando Spagnolo through to Bernardino Lanino.
The most interesting citation in connection with Leonardo's' authorship, at least as far as the draft is
concerned, are "two children embracing and kissing each other in the grass" from the collection of
Margarete von Österreich in the Hotel de Savoie at Malines in Flanders, a painting which was
documented already in 1516 but to the present day has not been able to be conclusively identified.
The Hamburg painting was published for the first time in 1996 in my book, Leonardo: Kunst und
Wissenschaft des Universum with the following commentary: "Leonardo's studio (after a draft by the
master), Christ and the small John, 43 by 51 cm, oil on wood, unpublished painting with regard to an
expected analysis and restoration, private collection." Of especial iconological interest is the embrace
of Christ with the small St John inspired by the apocryphal evangelia. Various versions from
Leonardo's milieu are known (e.g. by Marco d’Oggiono), but the original has been lost. The Hamburg
painting has considerable qualities. (2)
1 Pseudo-Dionysius (Dionysius Areopagita), The Divine Names, Kap. 7,2, The Celestial Hierarchy, Kap. 2,1, Kap. 5 u.
Kap. 7,2, in: The Complete Works, übersetzt von Colm Luibheid, New Jersey 1987.
2Jill Dunkerton, Susan Foister, Dillan Gordon u. Nicholas Penny, Giotto to Dürer. Early Renaissance Painting in The
National Gallery, London 1991, S. 169.
In 1999 it was listed by Federico Zeri as among the one hundred most important works of painting
and drawing by Leonardo and his studio (for lack of a secured original) with the following caption in
Leonardo. L’Ultima Cena:
"Christ and the small John (1483-1508). This is a small panel painting with a subject taken from a
passage in the apocryphal evangelia. The painting, which still has to be analyzed and restored, is
interesting especially from an iconological viewpoint because it is situated on the threshold between
the sacred and the esoteric. Other versions of the same motif are also known, such as one by Marco
d’Oggiono, a painter from Leonardo's milieu." (3)
Later, the author published our painting as a product of Leonardo's studio after an idea of the master
in Leonardo und Europa (4) and in Leonardo infinito (5).
Apart from a few unfinished details and darkening in parts, the work possesses high painterly
qualities, particularly in the graduations of tone.
Twelve years after its first publication as a hitherto unknown work, it is now possible to carry out
further scientific investigations and stylistic comparisons and to pursue Leonardo's influence in
Lombardy and Flanders. The original cartoon for the painting has not been preserved. The versions
by Marco d’Oggiono, Hampton Court and van Cleve, Chicago have been regarded to the present day
as points of reference. (6) The Hamburg painting remained unknown to Suida (1929), Chastel (1978)
and even Franco Moro (1991) and Luisa Traversi (1997), even though these scholars have provided
very well-documented researches on this subject in recent times and have followed up other hitherto
unknown references.
Christ’s embrace with the young John has a heightened symbolic significance by virtue of its
interweaving of emotionality of the soul between divine and human nature and from different
cultures and providences.
Within the development of iconology, the sacred (sometimes portrayed by the dove) is supplemented
in Flemish art with the profane and the mythological, for instance, by inserting symbolic medallions
with portrayals of ancient figures such as Oedipus and Antigone, Aeneas and Dido, which hints at
other tragic fates.
The motif of the two children can be found varied in the iconography of the Dioscurian Castor and
Pollux, in compositions of the group Leda with the Swan (Uffizi, Philadelphia, Wilton House)
through to Andrea del Sarto and Bachiacca.
The composition of the religious subject underscores the importance of St John as someone who
prepared the way for Christ and who is also described as the "ambassador of the King of Light", the
Inspired One and "the last of the Jewish prophets". Whereas Christ is regarded as a symbol of mercy,
John stands here for the truth. The embrace and kiss of the two children refer to justice and peace.
Such a reading of the painting points to Gnostic thinking, in particular, to Beato Amadeo Mendes da
Sylva who, a Jew born in Morocco, studied in Portugal and converted to Christianity. He was the
author of Apocalypsis Nova and Liber revelationum (dedicated to the vision of the Leonardoesque
pseudo-Bramantino in the Galleria Barberini) and became the moral leader of the brotherhood of San
Francesco Grande in Milan. For this religious community Leonardo had created the Grotto
Madonna, a masterpiece of spirituality which has often been interpreted from heretical standpoints,
also because of the significance which the Christ child and the boy John have in it, once more a nodo
vinciano of scholarship and knowledge.
Such a reading of the painting points to Gnostic thinking, in particular, to Beato Amadeo Mendes da
Sylva who, a Jew born in Morocco, studied in Portugal and converted to Christianity. He was the
author of Apocalypsis Nova and Liber revelationum (dedicated to the vision of the Leonardoesque
pseudo-Bramantino in the Galleria Barberini) and became the moral leader of the brotherhood of San
Francesco Grande in Milan. For this religious community Leonardo had created the Grotto
Madonna, a masterpiece of spirituality which has often been interpreted from heretical standpoints,
also because of the significance which the Christ child and the boy John have in it, once more a nodo
vinciano of scholarship and knowledge.
Vgl. die Fresken in Santo Stefano, Prato: Jeffrey Ruda, Fra Filippo Lippi. Life and Work, London 1999, S. 258ff.
Vgl. die Fresken in der Kapelle des Palazzo Medici-Riccardi: Cristina Acidini Luchinat (Hg.), The Chapel of the Magi.
Benozzo Gozzoli’s Frescoes in the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi Florence.
5 Giorgio Vasari, Leben der ausgezeichnetsten Maler, Bildhauer und Baumeister…, Florenz 1568, dt. von Ludwig
Schorn, Stuttgart u. Tübingen 1839, Bd. II,2, S. 60ff.- Zu Pesellino vgl. Raimond van Marle, The Development oft the
Italian Schools of Painting, New York 1970, Vol. X. S. 469ff.
6 Sowie weitere Darstellungen mit erheblichen Variationen in der Ausstattung, wobei sich jene der beiden Putten als
weniger bedeutend heraus gestellt haben. Siehe auch die unterschiedlichen Liebkosungen in den beiden Gemälden Marco
d’Oggionos (Lapyrière e Mond), veröffentlicht von Carlo Pedretti in „Accademia Leonardi Vinci“, VI, 1993.
3
4
Raffaellino del Garbo
San Lorenzo a Vigliano ca. 1470 - Florenz ca. 1524
4
PROVENANCE:
LIERATURE:
Adoration of the child
Black ink on grounded wood, Ø 86 cm,
original tondo frame from circa 1500
Joseph Duveen, London
Emil Bürgi, Bern
Vgl. D. Bomford, Art in the making, Underdrawings in Renaissance paintings, London 2002
On the tondo, the preliminary drawing for an Adoration of the Child in the stall of Bethlehem can be
seen. The family takes up the entire foreground of the picture. Maria is kneeling full of devotion
before the Christ child lying on the ground. Opposite her sits Joseph on the left at the head of his son.
Between the two, the figure of a boy is also adumbrated. In the background on the right one can
discern architectural elements defining the stall. The design of the pillars and the positioning of the
ox and the donkey behind the trough are reminiscent of Ghirlandaio's Adoration of the Child by the
Shepherds (Florence, Santa Trinità, Sassetti Chapel).
The unfinished panel originally showed remainders of the preliminary drawing in black ink, e.g. on
the hem of Joseph's coat. Later overpaintings and major damage (perhaps by iconoclasm) have made
restoration urgently necessary.
In an elaborate and tedious procedure, Hildegard Brauneck has removed remainders of paint and in
this way exposed the preliminary drawing. Many pentimenti, e.g. at the feet of the Christ child, show
a lively and free preliminary work. The ox and the donkey, which were not realized in the painting,
and several smaller sketches such as the study for the figure at the top left in heaven became visible.
Unfortunately, some supplements impair the overall impression, but not only for the lover of
drawings is there here a rare opportunity to look over the artist’s shoulder during the preliminary
work.
AA
Raffaelo Santi (Sanzio) and workshop
Urbino 1483 - 1520 Rom
5
The young St John the Baptist
Oil on panel, 174,3x154,5 cm
PROVENANCE:
Pallavicini, Wien
Private property, Germany
EXPERTISE:
Dr. Albert Schug, 1995
LITERATURE:
M. M. Grewenig/ O. Letze. Leonardo d Vinci – Künstler, Erfinder, Wissenschaftler,
Historisches Museum der Pfalz, S. 188
Speyer 1995
EXHIBITIONG:
Leonardo da Vinci - Künstler, Erfinder, Wissenschaftler, Historisches Museum der Pfalz,
Speyer 1995 -2001
-
Historisches Museum der Pfalz, Speyer , Deutschland
Kunsthal Rotterdam, Niederlande
Schottenstift Wien, Österreich
Museum of Science, Boston, USA
Singapore Art Museum, Singapur
Seoul Arts Center, Korea
Royal British Columbia Museum, Victoria, Kanada
Pretoria Art Museum. Pretoria, Südafrika
National Museum of Slovenia, Ljubljana, Slowenien
National Museum of History, Taipeh, Taiwan
National Science and Technology Museum, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Schweizerisches Landesmuseum, Zürich, Schweiz
A scholarly publication to the painting is in work by Prof. Dr. Jürg Meyer zur Capellen.
The young St John the Baptist is sitting in front of a rock-face on a fallen tree, resting his right foot
on a stone. A panther skin draped loosely over his body covers his pudendum. His gaze turned
toward the viewer, with his raised right arm he is pointing to a tubular cross fastened to a branch
which radiates a glowing light. In his left hand he is holding a scroll on which the A as well as the
DEI of the ECCE AGNUS DEI can be seen. On the left a spring rises which gushes into a body of
water, and on both sides the rocky surroundings are enlivened by plants in the foreground. The
darkness of the rock-face gives way on the right-hand side, opening up a vista of a mountainous
landscape.
With its motif, this portrayal corresponds to an earlier painting of St John by Raffael which today is
kept in the Louvre, but here, the tubular cross as well as the gesture of wisdom from the young
Baptist are deployed in a new way. At first, the young saint turns his gaze and his bodily presence
immediately to the viewer; his sitting posture is at the same time characterized by uprightness. In
this way, he seems to be striving upward and pointing, in the sense of a preview of the suffering and
saving of Christ, emphatically to the glowing cross which, presumably, is to be understood as
eliminating the darkness. The spring arising right next to the cross intensifies the reference to Christ.
The figure of the Baptist appearing in front of the dark background may be viewed as a new image
found by Raffael which, even beyond Caravaggio, has unfolded a strong influence. — A Study of a
Young Man Sitting kept in the Uffizi has for a long time been brought into connection with the
painting of St John in the Desert, and, despite earlier reservations, this study may be regarded as a
draft by the artist's own hand. (1) It presumably represents the starting-point for the painting of St
John which belongs to the artist's last period of work.
According to Vasari, the painting, whose presumed first version is today kept in the Florentine
Uffizi, was done for Pompeo Colonna (1479-1532) who had been appointed Cardinal by Pope Leo X
in 1517. (2) For a long time, the version in the Uffizi was very popular and at first regarded as an
indubitable work of Raffael's, but the execution was already ascribed to the school by Passavant. (3)
Today we may assume that this painting represents a concept by Raffael and, although created for
Colonna, was executed by Raffael's assistants. It should be noted that in his advanced Roman years,
Raffael increasingly called on his assistants to execute even paintings which left the studio under his
name. His way of proceeding in this regard is today comprehensible to us only in outline and requires
further investigations.
A large number of preserved copies, including early ones, in various media attests to the great
popularity of this composition among contemporaries. (4)
Vgl. Ferino Pagden in Gregori 1984, S. 346ff., no. 37.
Vasari 1568 (hg. Milanesi), IV, S. 370f.; Florenz, Uffizi, inv. 1890, no. 1446.
3 Passavant 1839, II, S. 351ff.
4 Vgl. Meyer zur Capellen 2005, S. 235ff, Nr. A4, zum Florentiner Gemälde wie auch zu dessen Wiederholungen, von
denen bisher 34 nachgewiesen werden konnten.
1
2
The present version is interesting in several respects. On one hand, what is remarkable about the
painting is that, in contrast to the Florentine version, it was painted in oil on wood, a much more
elaborate procedure both technically and financially. This aspect alone could point to a commission
from a high personage and raises the painting above the great number of plain copies. Furthermore,
here the obvious painterly care with which the panel was executed strikes the eye. This care is
expressed at first in the differentiated modulation of the youthful body which here, according to
humanist understanding, may be understood as a symbol of beauty and virtue. Next to it, in the
luminous green of the vegetative growth, a lively contrast to the darkness of the rocky hollow
unfolds. Thus, the mode of painting as well as the painting’s special qualities speak in favour of its
being a very early version of the famous composition by Raffael which presumably was done during
the painter's lifetime. The painting would thus not be designated as a copy but as a replica. However,
only further, more precise investigations could provide clues about which executing artist or artists
would here come into consideration.
Fachliteratur:
- Vasari, Giorgio. Le vite de’ più eccellenti architetti, pittori e scultori italiani: Le opere di Giorgio Vasari. (1568) Hg.
Gaetano Milanesi. 8 Bände Florenz 1906. Reprint, Florenz 1981.
- Passavant, Johann David. Rafael von Urbino und sein Vater Giovanni Santi. 2 Bände, Leipzig 1839.
Band 3, Leipzig 1858.
- Gregori, Mina, et al. Raffaello a Firenze: Dipinti e disegni delle collezioni fiorentine. Florenz 1984.
- Schug, Albert in Leonardo da Vinci. Künstler, Erfinder, Wissenschaftler. Hg. Meinrad Maria Grewenig und - - Otto
Letze. Speyer 1995, S. 188-191.
- Meyer zur Capellen, Jürg. Raphael – The Paintings. Band II: The Roman Religious Paintings
ca. 1508- 1520. Landshut 2005
Raffael and workshop
(Urbino 1483 - 1520 Rom)
6
The Holy famlily with the lamb
Oil on panel, 32,2 x 24,0 cm (size 8-9mm)
Sinistral trimmed?
TECHNICAL REPORTS:
Prof. Hermann Kühn, München, 25. Mai 2001,
The Infrarot-Reflektographie shows the holes according to the original carton in Oxford
EXPERTISE:
Prof. Filippo Todini attributed the painting in 1998 to Francesco Ubertini, gen.
„Il Bacchiacca (1494 -1557).
Prof. K. Oberhuber gibt unserem Exemplar vor der Lee-Fassung den Vorzug, hält die PradoFassung aber für das einzige Original.
Dr. Albert Schug und K. F. Kramer sehen in unserem Gemälde die erste
(unvollendete?) Urfassung, die Lee- und die Prado-Fassung als spätere Repliken.
PROVENANCE:
Die Provenienzforschung steht noch aus. Die rückseitig angebrachten Siegel
müssen noch ausgewertet werden.
There are several versions of our painting; none of the hitherto known versions can be traced back to
Raffael's time. The most well-known exemplar in Madrid (29.0 by 21.0 cm) is signed on the breast
seam of the Madonna's dress and dated 1507 (inscription unclear: MDVII … IV). The painting which
has been exhibited in the Prado since the mid-nineteenth century was earlier in the possession of the
Escorial and is still regarded as the only original by some Raffael scholars.
When a second exemplar cropped up about sixty years ago (32.0 by 22.0 cm) which is signed in the
same place as the Prado painting, but dated three years earlier, namely 1504, the owner at the time,
Viscount Lee of Fareham (Fig. 1) published it with the support of proven experts such as Kenneth
Clark and Oskar Fischel as a further original by Raffael. This claim at first met with widespread
rejection on the part of art history scholars.
When, after thorough technical investigations and researches, Dr Albert Schug was able to
demonstrate that, among other things, the preliminary drawing made visible by infrared
reflectography had been perforated by the original cartoon preserved in Oxford, with this he was able
to persuade Prof Leopold Dussler who, in his works monograph revised in 1971, gave priority to the
Lee version before the Prado painting, without, however, retracting the master's authorship from the
Madrid painting.
Prof J. Meyer zur Capellen has further occupied himself with this subject on this basis and, in 1989
and 1996, published important articles on the question concerning the originality of the Lee/Madrid
versions. He included the Lee version in his authoritative catalogue of works.
Building further upon this, in 1995 at the Kassel Friedericianum, Prof J. M. Lehmann organized a
special exhibition, The Holy Family with the Lamb of 1504, and published an important catalogue on
the subject. In this catalogue a reproduction-engraving by Carlo Gregori (1719 -1754) is reproduced
in which a tree behind Joseph appears which is not visible in the oil paintings. Significantly, the
infrared reflectograph of the Prado painting also showed that during the painting process the small
tree at the right edge of the painting and the tree behind Joseph (corresponding to the original
composition of the Lee painting) were inserted. These trees have been interpreted as an important
compositional element and are also in our painting (the Hamburg version). As is clearly discernible,
they do not belong to the underlying drawing dependent on the Oxford cartoon, but were added only
later when the group of figures had already been traced and largely executed.
Prof Lehmann reasons in his article, "Raffael painted the Lee painting in 1504 during the first weeks
of his stay in Florence and kept the painting as a prototype, as a 'demonstration model' in his studio.
Thus it was possible for him or, afterwards, even his assistants to precisely repeat the composition
already invented, right down to the colouring and, with these repetitions, to satisfy the obviously
numerous interested persons who asked for a private devotional painting. The painting from 1504
remained in his possession until a further exemplar, such as the painting in Angers, could take on the
function as model. Only then could Raffael's painting leave the studio and find a new, hitherto
unknown owner."
(Note: To date, this procedure has not been proven for Raffael.)
In 1501, a cartoon by Leonardo da Vinci with a portrayal of the St Anna Threesome caused a great
stir in Florence among artists and citizens. Unfortunately, it has been lost. In 1979 Dr A. Schug
published a study by Leonardo which until then had remained unknown in private ownership,
showing a sitting Anna Threesome with the Holy Maria leaning forward and the Christ child playing
with a lamb, which almost literally provides the model for Raffael's figure composition of the holy
family with a lamb (cf. Martin Kemp, Leonardo da Vinci. The Mystery of the Madonna of the
Yarnwinder. Edinburgh 1992, pp. 54f., no. 9).
The Hamburg version is missing a signature and date on the breast seam of the dress. However, gold
remainders from an earlier labelling can be detected. Likewise, the halo of the Christ child is missing
and also Joseph's. Whether it is a matter of losses or an unfinished version must be clarified by
further examinations.
In his comparative study of the Hamburg version, K. F. Kramer comes to the conclusion that this
version, according to its mode of painting, from the master’s hand in its colouring and essential
details such as the landscape, the architecture, the river bank, etc. is on a par with all the
'parameters' adduced for the Lee painting, and perhaps even superior.
Dr A. Schug argued, "The formal and material perfection of the painting secures for it its priority
before all other versions of the subject". The heavy, Leonardoesque expression of the Madonna led
him to surmise that our exemplar could be an unfinished original version. "Only now has it become
apparent what defects in the versions in Madrid and Angers have been overlooked or accepted for
Raffael.
Next to the Lee version, the painting is the most important Raffael find in recent times and will
stimulate further intensive research on the problem of replicas."
AA
Fachliteratur:
- Vasari, Giorgio. Le vite de’ più eccellenti architetti, pittori e scultori italiani: Le opere di Giorgio Vasari. (1568) Hg.
Gaetano Milanesi. 8 Bände Florenz 1906. Reprint, Florenz 1981.
- Passavant, Johann David. Rafael von Urbino und sein Vater Giovanni Santi. 2 Bände, Leipzig 1839.
Band 3, Leipzig 1858.
- Gregori, Mina, et al. Raffaello a Firenze: Dipinti e disegni delle collezioni fiorentine. Florenz 1984.
- Schug, Albert in Leonardo da Vinci. Künstler, Erfinder, Wissenschaftler. Hg. Meinrad Maria Grewenig und - - Otto
Letze. Speyer 1995, S. 188-191.
- Meyer zur Capellen, Jürg. Raphael – The Paintings. Band II: The Roman Religious Paintings
ca. 1508- 1520. Landshut 2005.
Raffael and workshop
(Urbino 1483 - 1520 Rom)
7
Madonna dei Garofani
Oil on panel, 37,1 x 29,5 cm, (size ca. 9 mm), around 1506
TECHNICAL REPORT:
Prof. Dr. H. Freiherr von Sonnenburg, Doerner-Institut, München 1982
PROVENANCE:
Hungarian nobility
Private property
LOAN
For the Madonna dei Garofani similar parameters apply as for the Holy Family with a Lamb. It was
also done in Florence and also goes back to a precursor by Leonardo da Vinci. Around 1478 Leonardo
painted the Madonna Benois/Leningrad which thus was the inspiration for the new composition.
The popularity of the Madonna dei Garofani is evidenced by the large number of copies from the
sixteenth century.
In 1991 Dr Nic. Penny published a version (29 by 23 cm) formerly owned by the Duke of
Northumberland, which for a long time had been regarded as a copy, as an original of Raffael's and,
in 1994, acquired it for the National Gallery in London. This has been recognized by a majority of art
scholars, but in recent literature has also been controversially discussed.
Already Crowe and Cavalcaselle defended the hypothesis that Raffael only provided draft drawings
but had the painting executed by his studio or an assistant.
Experts at the Herziana in Rome confirmed for the previous owner of our painting in the midseventies that the exemplar was a choice painting from the "master’s closest circle".
Dr A. Schug values the Hamburg version for its warmer colouring in comparison to the London
version and counts the painting among the best preserved works of the sixteenth century in German
ownership. It is the largest of all the versions and bears, in addition, a small tree on the right in the
landscape.
An infrared reflectograph showed the preliminary drawing from an impressed cartoon, similar to the
preliminary drawing for the Madonna Aldobrandini in London.
AA
LITERATURE:
- Beck, James. From Duccio to Raphael - Connoisseurship in Crisis, Florenz 2006
- Meyer zur Capellen, Jürg. Raffael in Florenz, München 1996, S. 165ff
- Meyer zur Capellen, Jürg: Raphael - The paintings VolumeI, Landshut 2001, S. 210ff,
Volume III, 2008, S. 217ff
Girolamo Genga
ca. 1476 - Urbino - 1551
8
Horse-Rider with Entourage
Tempera on panel. 48,5 x 63,5 cm.
PROVENANCE:
Pallavicini, Styria (sale Knight, Frank & Rutley, London, 27. Mai 1927, Lot 15
as an orginal from Alovigi d’Assisi gen. L`Ingegno )
Florence J. Gould (Sotheby’s London, 25. April 1985, Lot 85)
LITERATURE:
Burlington Magazine, vol. L 1927, XLVIII, S. 230
Anna Maria Petrioli „Una predella giovanile di Girolamo Genga”
Ulrich Middeldorf, 1968, Ss 206-211, Abb. (asGirolamo Genga)
The panel painting shows a cavalcade moving from the right (left?) edge of the painting to its centre,
led by a rider on a white horse. It seems as if the cavalcade is being held up by a man coming from
the left (from the right?). In the background, a hilly landscape opens up whose centre is formed by a
bare rock surmounted by a chapel.
The riders' clothing is plain, just as the landscape is only hinted at. Scattered about are individual
bushes and tree stumps in the otherwise barren landscape. Even the faces of the individual figures are
only schematic. In marked contrast to this stand the expansive movements and stilted poses of the
riders and horses, which gives the painting a strong dynamic typical of the early Genga:
"That subtle eccentricity on which the compositional schema is based with its proclivity for
sequences of superpositions and nestings supported by applications of colour which additionally
emphasize the cloven quality of the ground, by contrast, allows an artistic personality to be clearly
recognized who renounces any recourse to stereotypical traditionalism..." (Petrioli)
Only in the interplay with two other panels with clearly the same content can the portrayal be
deciphered as a scene from the life of St Januarius. A painting cropped up in 1916 at an auction of
the Paolini collection which today, however, has been lost. The second panel is located in the Galleria
Bellini in Florence. The present work is the middle panel of the predella.
AA
Giovanni Bellini
um 1439 - Venedig - 1516
9
Christ Blessing, possibly c. 1505-10
PROVENANCE:
H. F. Frankhauser, 1959
Private property, Swizerland
Oil on panel, 48;5 x 36;5 cm
LITERATURE:
Anchise Tempestini. Giovanni Bellini, Electa 2000, Mailand, S. 171 and S. 182, Nr. 104
EXHIBITON:
L`Art sacré, Galerie Charpentier, Paris, Art et style Nr. 26
EXPERTICES:
Prof. G. Fiocco and Prof. R. Palluchini
This beautiful bust of Christ, lit strongly from the left, is reported to have been known to the
Venetian art scholars Giuseppe Fiocco (1884-1972) and Rodolfo Pallucchini (1908-1989) and was
published in 2000 by Anchise Tempestini as an autograph work of the great Venetian Renaissance
painter Giovanni Bellini. Tempestini rightly places the Blessing Christ late in Bellini’s career,
although specification of a precise moment is as yet premature (1); he also reports the plausible
opinion that the work may, judging from physiognomic similarities with Titian’s Christ in the
Tribute Money painted for Alfonso d’Este (1516; Dresden, Gemäldegalerie),(2) be the work of the
young Titian, who was Bellini’s pupil and believed to have been active in Bellini’s workshop at the
start of the Cinquecento. Throughout his long and highly influential career, Giovanni Bellini created
religious pictures of the highest caliber. His works have long justly been revered for their profoundly
felt spirituality and for the dignity and poignancy of their expression of human emotion. They
include monumental altarpieces designed for ecclesiastic settings and smaller pictures, such as this
one, intended for private devotion and contemplation. The enormous popularity of Giovanni
Bellini’s devotional compositions is attested by the large number of copies and variants produced in
his workshop in Venice and by his followers.(3)
The Galerie Hans picture exemplifies a well-studied category of small, portrait-like devotional
image that, deriving ultimately from Byzantine sources, was introduced into Early Netherlandish
painting during the first half of the fifteenth century and became especially popular in northern Italy
toward the end of the century.(4) Typically, the blessing Christ is shown frontally to bust length,
generally against an undefined dark background; he is most often robed in dark purple or red to
signify his eternal majesty and nimbed with a distinctive tripartite (cruciform) halo consisting of
fanned gold rays. In certain exemplars, as in Robert Campin’s painting of c. 1430-35 (John G.
Johnson Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art),(5)Christ’s left hand is also included, the fingers
resting either on the lower edge of the panel or on a painted parapet. This particular convention
suggests the royal presence of Christ before the pious viewer analogously to that of a secular king
who appears to his subjects while standing at a window. Notable later examples of this specific
iconography include works by Antonello da Messina (1475, London, National Gallery),(6) Hans
Memling (1478, Pasadena, Norton Simon Museum; 1481, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts)(7)and Marco
Basaiti (1517, Bergamo, Accademia Carrara, with a light brown background).(8) In other cases -comparably to the central image in Rogier van der Weyden’s Braque Triptych in the Musée du
Louvre(9) -- Christ holds in his left hand the cross-surmounted orb of royal dominion that denotes his
title Salvator Mundi. Known in numerous Flemish examples, this convention is likely to have been
employed in a lost work by Leonardo da Vinci(10) and is also seen in northern Italy during the early
sixteenth century, for example, in a work by Andrea Previtali dated 1519 (London, National
Gallery).(11)
Closely related is a second category of portrait-like image: the Vera Effigies, or true face of Christ,
known in the vividly realistic composition devised by Jan van Eyck in 1438 and showing only the
hieratically frontal head and red-robed upper portion of the chest.(12) The border of the robe in one
copy of van Eyck’s prototype, where the face is distinctly long and narrow, is inscribed Rex Regum
(King of Kings); in others, the border is set with gems. The diffusion of this image is integrally
connected to the veneration of two cloth relics, the Mandylion and the Veronica, believed to bear the
actual (miraculously created) imprint of Christ’s face. The Veronica, preserved in St. Peter’s in Rome
by the twelfth century, was honored by an Office written by Pope Innocent III in 1216; two specific
prayers were later composed for its veneration, and it appears to have been the first indulgenced
image. Pope Innocent IV (1243-54) granted an indulgence of forty days for the recitation of one of
these prayers in front of the Vera Effigies or a copy of it; the indulgence was increased by the late
fifteenth century to at least ten-thousand days. The popularity of this devotion is suggested by
Petrus Christus’ three-quarter-length Portrait of a Young Man (1450s, London, National
Gallery),(13) where a placard bearing a depiction of the “holy face” along with the text of the prayer
is seen, affixed to a wall, in the background. Variant “portraits” of Christ from the period
significantly include images by Fra Angelico (late 1430s or early 1440s; Livorno, Museo Civico
Giovanni Fattori)(14) and Petrus Christus (c. 1445; New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art(15))
that show Christ crowned with thorns. Another variant is Bellini’s brother-in-law Andrea
Mantegna’s Bust of Christ (1493; Correggio, Museo Civico),(16)where Christ glances downward and
holds a book; as does the Galerie Hans picture, Mantegna’s work has a painted border that enhances
the illusionism of Christ appearing at a window.
The “portraits” of Christ that proliferated in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries also
relate generally to an apocryphal text that dates no earlier than the thirteenth century but
purportedly was written by Publius Lentulus as an eye-witness account in a letter to the Roman
Senate. Christ is described as “having a reverend countenance which they that look upon may love
and fear; having hair of the hue of an unripe hazelnut and smooth almost down to his ears…waving
over his shoulders; having a parting at the middle of the head according to the fashion of the
Nazareans; a brow smooth and very calm, with a face without wrinkle or any blemish…; having a
full beard of the colour of his hair, not long, but a little forked at the chin.”(17) The Lentulus Letter
would seem to account not only for the treatment of Christ’s hair and beard characteristic of the
genre but also for the symmetry and proportionality of physiognomy common to most examples(18)
It would also seem to underlie Bellini’s search for an ideal of physical beauty and perfection that is so
strongly conveyed in the present picture.
Five Heads of Christ by Giovanni Bellini are recorded in documents or literary accounts dating
between 1493 and1627.(19) Four are listed in private collections, including those of the Este family
in Ferrara and of the Venetian collector Andrea Vendramin (inventoried in 1627)(20).Among them is
also one observed in 1528 by Marcantonio Michiel in the house of Zuan Antonio Venier in Venice:
“La testa del Christo in maiesta, delicata e finita quanto è possible,… (Der Christuskopf mit Nimbus,
[wörtlich: in Herrlichkeit] von einer Ausführung liebevoll und vollendet, wie es nur sein kann,…).(21)
The fifth is cited at the prestigious Venetian confraternity, the Scuola della Carità. Although none of
these references is surely identifiable with any of the numerous extant works associable with
Bellinian prototypes, there are two outstanding examples of the iconographic type that are widely
attributed to the master’s hand and most likely date from the first decade of the sixteenth century.
Belonging to the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa and to the Real Academia de San Fernando
in Madrid, respectively, both are currently on view in the Giovanni Bellini exhibition in Rome.(22)
They share with the Galerie Hans picture the conventional black background, rayed halo, red robe,
and pattern of hair and beard. In the Ottawa picture, Christ’s face is shown in strict frontality, and
his blessing right hand included; the position of the fingers of the Hamburg Christ are closer to those
of the blessing hands in Antonello’s and Memling’s works mentioned above, or that seen in Alvise
Vivarini’s Blessing Christ of 1494 (Venice, San Giovanni in Bragora),(23) than to the more relaxed
gesture of the Ottawa Christ. In the Madrid picture, the bust is truncated slightly higher than in the
Ottawa and Hamburg pictures and is seen behind a fictive ledge that bears Bellini’s signature;
unconventionally, however, both head and chest are here somewhat angled to the plane, and Christ
directs his gaze sharply to his right.(24) Whereas the present painting is more closely comparable to
the Ottawa picture in its composition, it subtly shares -- through the slight tilt of the head and
sideward glance -- the intimation of motion conveyed in the image in Madrid. The Ottawa and
Madrid Christs have rightly been compared stylistically with the beautiful frontal head of the
standing Christ in Bellini’s Baptism altarpiece of 1500-02 in Vicenza,(25) but we should note that the
proportions of the Ottawa and Hamburg heads are somewhat longer and narrower than those of the
majority of Bellini’s representations of the adult Christ. This aspect would seem to suggest
purposeful recollection of the Eyckian Vera effigies, and the placement, in front of the shoulders, of a
portion of the curled ends of Christ’s hair in the Madrid and Hamburg pictures surely calls to mind
the wording of the Lentulus Letter, a copy of which is in fact recorded in the collection of Andrea
Vendramin mentioned above.(26)
Similarly to the Hans picture, those in Ottawa and Madrid provide Christ with a dark blue
mantle; in the former, it is lined with green. But whereas the robes in these two works are a purplish,
rose- or wine-red, the choice for the Hamburg picture is the bright orange-red hue that Bellini had
dramatically employed in the 1470s for the mantle of St. Paul in the Pesaro Coronation of the
Virgin,(27) a color that recurs often in his works dating from the Vicenza Baptism forward, and one
that is especially conspicuous in Titian’s early oeuvre, as for example in his great Assuntà in the
church of the Frari or in the Tribute Money noted earlier. The lovely, gentle tilt of Christ’s face and
his slight upward glance evoke listening and reflection. Analogies are found in Bellini’s work from
the late 1480s or early 1490s forward: the head of the Madonna in both the Renier Madonna with
Two Female Saints and the Venier Madonna with Sts. Paul and George, and those of the female saint
in the Giovanelli Madonna and Saints, the musician angel at the foot of Mary’s throne in the great
San Zaccaria altarpiece of 1505, and the St. Louis of Toulouse at the center of Bellini’s Madonna in
Glory now in San Pietro Martire, Murano.(28) Indeed the pensive and lyrical character of the tilted
head of the Hamburg Christ may be seen to anticipate these qualities in Titian’s Young Shepherd with
a Flute (c. 1515; Hampton Court),(29) where the dark background and “close-up,” frontal placement
of head and bust are quite similar. At the same time, the alert vivacity of Christ’s glance seems to
anticipate this quality in Titian’s engaging Portrait of a Man with a Blue Quilted Sleeve (c. 1510-12;
London, National Gallery).(30)
The departure from the standard frontality of the iconographic type that we see in the Hamburg
and Madrid busts of Christ is carried further in a work attributed to Titian c. 1507 that was exhibited
at Piero Corsini, Inc. in 1991 and shows Christ to bust-length against a dark ground; he is nimbed
with the familiar three groups of gold rays and robed in red with a blue mantle, but the figure is
angled to the plane, with the proper right shoulder brought forward, in a pose similar to the sitter’s
in Titian’s famous portrait just cited.(31) This painting specifically documents experimentation with
the standard iconographic type, as we know from an x-radiograph that reveals that a frontally posed
head of Christ was initially planned for the small panel. The evolution toward a “true” image of
Christ that alludes to portraiture but keeps pace with emerging portrait conventions is attested by
Titian’s waist-length “portrait” of Christ of c. 1532 (Florence, Palazzo Pitti).(32) Wearing red robe
and blue mantle, with bursts of yellow light replacing the tripartite striations of the older halo type,
Christ is seated in near profile against a landscape. Interestingly, too, Titian’s Pitti picture has
recently been related to the proliferation from c.1500 of devotional medallions that represent, in
relief, the “true face” of Christ in profile(33).
CW
1 The
work is known to the present writer only from the photograph.
Paul Joannides, Titan to 1518: The Assumption of Genius, New Haven and London, 2001, pp. 233, 238, 249, fig. 215;
Peter Humfrey, Titian: the complete paintings, Ghent and New York, 2007, no. 49, p. 90.
3 See notably Fritz Heinemann, Giovanni Bellini e i belliniani, vols. I, II, Venice, 1962; vol. III, Hildesheim, Zurich, and
New York, 1991; see I, pp.58-61, for Bellinian compositions (types 193-99) of busts of Christ. For those in Ottawa and
Madrid discussed below, Heinemann groups twenty-eight works in the first type and seventeen in the second; see further
Heinemann, III, pp. 45-46 (type S. 205).
4 See Sixten Ringbom, Icon to Narrative: the rise of the dramatic close-up in fifteenth-century devotional painting, 2nd
edition, Doornspijk, 1984, and further below; see also above n. 3.
5 Ringbom, fig. 18; here, however, a bust-length image of the Virgin Mary is included at the right, the figures appear
against a gold background, and Christ’s halo is gold.
6 Mauro Lucco in Mauro Lucco, ed., Antonello da Messina: l’opera completa, exh. cat., Rome, Scuderie del Quirinale, 18
March-25 June 2006, Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2006, cat. no. 36, pp. 236-37.
7 Dirk de Vos, Hans Memling, exh. cat. Bruges, Stedelijke Musea and Antwerp, Fonds Mercator Paribas, 1994, cat. nos.
10, 24, pp. 66-67, 106-07.
8 Mauro Lucco in David Alan Brown and Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, Bellini, Giorgione, Titian and the Renaissance of
Venetian Painting, exh. cat., Washington, National Gallery of Art, 18 June-17 September 2006 and Vienna,
Kunsthistorisches Museum, 17 October 2006-7 January 2007, Washington and Vienna, 2006, cat. no. 14, pp. 108-09.
9 Giovanni Agosti and Dominique Thièbaut , eds., Mantegna 1431-1506, exh. cat., Paris, Musée du Louvre, 26
September, 2008-5 January 2009, Paris, 2008, cat. no. 49, pp. 160-61.
10 See recently Carlo Bertelli, “I Volti di Cristo secondo Leonardo,” pp. 187-97 in Christoph L. Frommel and Gerhard
Wolf, L’Immagine di Cristo dall’acheropita alla mano d’artista dal tardo medioevo all’età barocca, Vatican City, 2006, pp.
194-97.
11NG2501 (included by Heinemann, I, p. 58, under type193; II, fig. 498); a Christ Blessing, showing only the right hand,
by the same artist and painted c. 1512-1515, is also in London (NG3087).
12 See Ringbom 1984, pp. 23-24; John Oliver Hand, “Salve sancta facies: Some Thoughts on the Iconography of the
Head of Christ by Petrus Christus,” Metropolitan Museum Journal, 27, 1992, pp. 7-18, fig. 3; Maryan W. Ainsworth,
“The Art of Petrus Christus,” pp. 67-91 in Maryan W. Ainsworth, with contributions by Maximilaan P. J. Martens,
Petrus Christus: Renaissance Master of Bruges, exh. cat., New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994, pp. 60-62;
Gerhard Wolf, “From Mandylion to Veronica: Picturing the ‘Disembodied’ Face and Disseminating the True Image of
Christ in the Latin West,” pp. 153-79 in Herbert L. Kessler and Gerhard Wolf, eds., The Holy Face and the Paradox of
Representation, Bologna, 1998; and Christoph Egger, “Papst Innocenz III. und die Veronica. Geschichte, Theologie,
Liturgie und Seelsorge,” pp. 181-203 in Kessler and Wolf 1998. See Frommel and Wolf 2006 for further related studies.
13 London, National Gallery; Hand 1992, fig. 4; Ainsworth 1994, fig. 66.
14 Pia Palladino in Laurence B. Kanter and Pia Palladino, Fra Angelico, exh. cat., New York, Metropolitan Museum of
Art, 26 October 2005-29 January 2006, New York, 2005, cat. no. 33, pp. 172-75.
15 New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Hand 1992; Ainsworth 1994, cat. no. 4, pp. 86-91.
2
Giovanni Agsoti, cat. no. 123, pp. 300-302, in Agosti and Thiébaut 2008. The book is inscribed EGO SVM: NOLITE
TIMERE (Mt 14:27, Lk 24:36: Ich bin’s; fürchtet euch nicht! ); the Latin inscription on the left edge of the painted
frame reads “Mortify yourselves before this effigy of my face.”
17The Latin text is given in Ernst von Dobschütz, Christusbilder: Untersuchungen zur christlichen Legende, Leipzig, 1899,
p. 319.
18 See Ainsworth 1994, pp. 87-88, figs. 105-106.
19 Georg Gronau, Giovanni Bellini, Stuttgart and Berlin, 1930, pp. 101, 208.
20 Tancred Borenius, The Picture Gallery of Andrea Vendramin, London, 1923, pl. 1; see also pl. 20A for the bust of Christ
said to have been by Giorgione but attributed by Borenius to the school of Bellini (p. 5, fig. 7).
21 Frimmel, Theodor von, Der Anonimo Morelliano: mit Text und Übersetzung, Vienna, 1988, pp. 98, 99. Heinemann
1962, I, pp. 58-59 (193bis; II, fig. 273) suggests that this work may be identical with Munich, Bayerischen
Staatsgemäldegaleriesammlungen, inv. no. 4516, which he proposes as an early Titian.
22 See for condition, attribution history, and evaluation of date the extensive entries of Giovanni C. F. Villa, cat. no. 49,
pp. 290-91 and Mauro Lucco, cat. no. 50, pp. 292-93 in Mauro Lucco and Giovanni C. F. Villa, eds., Giovanni Bellini,
exh. cat., Rome, Scuderie del Quirinale, 30 September 2008-11 January 2009, Cinisello Balsamo, Milan, 2008.
23Rodolfo Pallucchini, I Vivarini, Venice,1962, cat. no. 258, p. 137.
24The same glance and angle of the head are found in the full-length Blessing Christ, in Ottawa, shown standing against
a landscape, attributed to Bellini’s workshop (Myron Laskin, Jr. and Michael Pantazzi, eds., Catalogue of the National
Gallery of Canada, Ottawa: European and American Painting, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts, Ottawa, 1987, cat. no. 328,
pp. 15-17; see also Lucco as in n. 22 above. The face of Christ depicted on the placard in Petrus Christus’s portrait noted
above also shows Christ looking sharply to one side.
25Giovanni C. F. Villa in Lucco and Villa 2008, cat. no. 47, pp. 284-87.
26Borenius 1923, p. 5.
27 Mauro Lucco in Lucco and Villa 2008, cat. no. 17, pp. 190-201.
28 See, respectively, Peter Humfrey in Lucco and Villa 2008, cat. no. 26, pp. 226-27; Giovanna Nepi Scirè in Rona
Goffen and Giovanna Nepi Scirè, eds., Il Colore ritrovato: Bellini a Venezia, exh. cat., Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia,
30 September 2000 – 28 January 2001, Milan, 2000, cat. no. 16, pp. 135-36; Giovanni C. F. Villa in Lucco and Villa
2008, cat. no. 46, pp. 280-83; Annalisa Perissa Torrini in Goffen and Nepi Scirè 2000, no. 34, pp. 159-61; Giovanna Nepi
Scirè in Goffen and Nepi Scirè 2000, no. 21, pp. 139-40.
29 Joannides 2001, pp. 100, 197, 255, fig. 238, Humfrey 2007, no. 26, p. 64.
30 David Jaffé, ed., Titian, exh. cat., London, National Gallery, 19 February-18 May 2003, London, 2003, cat. no. 5, pp.
82-83; Humfrey 2007, no. 24, p. 61.
31Frank Dabell, exh. cat., Piero Corsini: Venetian Paintings from Titian to El Greco, 10 October 10-8 November 1991,
New York, 1991, cat. no. 1, pp. 10-13.
32Harold E. Wethey, The Paintings of Titian, I, The Religious Paintings, London, 1969, cat. no. 19, pp. 78-79, pl. 92.
Joannides 2001, p. 249 notes the affinity in the characterization of Christ here with that in the Tribute Money.
33 Philene Helas, “Il Redentore di Tiziano e l’invenzione di un ritratto storico el Salvatore,” pp. 341-373 in Frommel
and Wolf 200
16
Sebastiano Luciani, genannt del Piombo
Venedig 1485 - 1547 Rom
10
LITERATURE:
Portrait of Michelangelo
Oil on panel, 88,5 x 74 cm, ca. 1520-1525
Verso a Vatikan Seal from the 18. century
Angela Ghirardi: “B. Passarotti, il culto di Michelangelo e l` anatomia nell` età di Ulisse
aldrovandi”, Bononia University Press 2004
Costanza Barbieri: “Tributo al Maestro”, Art et Dossier, Giunti Editore 235, Juli 2007
Costanza Barbieri: “A Portrait of Michelangelo by his friend Sebastiano”, in “Artibus
et Historiae” Wien - Cracow 2007, Nr. 7 S. 107 -120
This beautiful, rare portrait of Michelangelo in virile middle-age, recently appeared on the market
and was sold at the Dorotheum, Vienna (lot. 73) on March 22, 2001, with an attribution to the
Bolognese painter Bartolomeo Passerotti (1529-92), suggested by Giancarlo Sestieri and accepted by
Angela Ghirardi (2004). This attribution, however, is unconvincing for several reasons, as argued by
the present writer in 2007, and it should also be reconsidered in the light of our new knowledge of
Sebastiano Luciani, called del Piombo, gained at the monographic exhibitions devoted to him in
Rome and Berlin in 2008.
The stylistic analogies between the Portrait of Michelangelo and Passerotti’s portraits, such as his
Gregorio XIII (Gotha), are discussed by Ghirardi in terms of “plastic structure,” “Venetian colors,”
and “attentive observation of hands and gestures”; however, such general terms could be applied to
many artists. In detail, Passerotti’s handling is dry and linear, compared to the gently, velvety tones
of the Portrait of Michelangelo with its delicate handling of glazes, soft chiaroscuro, and harmonizing
hues. All the surface qualities of this portrait are very different from the heavy handling of the lateManiera Bolognese painter, with his consistent lack of sensitivity to the properties of pigment. They
point to an earlier date and to a different cultural and artistic milieu. Furthermore, another
consideration must be taken into account. The iconography of this Portrait of Michelangelo is unique;
it does not derive from any other known portrait of him, such as those by Giuliamno Bugiardini,
Baccio Bandinelli, Jacopino del Conte or Daniele da Volterra: how could Passerotti- painting in a
different milieu -represent Buonarroti’s intense look without a model? The vivid presence of the sitter
excludes the hypothesis that it is a copy, while the style of the painting points both to a date before
Passerotti’s birth and to a different artistic context.
The compositional identity between Sebastiano del Piombo’s Francesco Arsilli (Ancona, Pinacoteca
Civica, of c. 1522.) and the Portrait of Michelangelo is an important clue to the latter’s authorship.
The two portraits have a common structure, with a figure half-length, seated and leaning on a table
covered by a green cloth, turning his head to the right toward us, in the so called Giorgionesque
turning portrait. Sebastiano, Giorgione’s pupil, used a similar composition on several occasions, for
example in the Musician (Paris, Rothschild collection), of c.1515-1518. It was typical of Sebastiano’s
practice to reuse the same compositional formula with little variation in his portraits, such as, for
instance, in the two portraits supposedly of Vittoria Colonna (Barcelona, Colleccion Cambò, and
Leeds, Harewood Collection).
Stylistic analogies are also to be found in the execution of the two paintings. This is particularly
evident in the hands of Arsilli and Michelangelo, painted with delicate, veiled strokes, in the
accurate, virtuoso rendering of the fur collar, and in the dynamic and volumetric pose, with the right
elbow protruding toward the viewer and creating a convincing impression of depth. The same
rotating, solemn movement amplifies and inflates the body’s masses and the draperies, with much
more expansive results than the rigid stances found in Passerotti’s portraiture.
Whereas Arsilli, a poet of the Accademia Coryciana, holds a book of poems, Michelangelo holds a
book of drawings representing a male torso with his head turned to the left, and, on the right page, a
beautiful study of a leg and of a hand. The fictive ink drawing is very similar to a real one in the
Fitzwilliam Museum, (P.D. 122-1961), traditionally attributed to a follower of Michelangelo, which
no doubt derives from a lost original by the master. Such a drawing was certainly chosen to evoke
the inspirational force of Michelangelo’s study of human anatomy, and his mastery of bodylanguage, a central reason for Sebastiano’s admiration for Buonarroti.
The close correspondance between the portrait of Francesco Arsilli, Sebastiano’s physician, and the
portrait of Michelangelo, his friend and associate, both of whom enjoyed an intimacy with the
painter, are striking in terms both of composition and style. The paintings are also similar in size: the
Arsilli measures 85 x 69 cm., close to the 88,5 x 74 cm. of the Michelangelo. If we assume, therefore,
1520-25 as a likely date, Michelangelo would have been about 45-50, a plausible age for the sitter in
Sebastiano’s painting.
The painting presents problems of conservation: the area of the right ear, the neck and the collar,
have been repainted by a different hand, presumably changing the overall appearance of the portrait.
Given the importance of the painting, further technical analysis is needed in order to clarify its
condition, and to provide a deeper understanding of its technique.
On the back of the painting a seal in red sealing wax with the letters RCA …ANA …ERRA
(Reverenda Camera Apostolica, Dogana di Terra) provide us with the information that the painting
passed trough the customs of the Papal State around the middle of the Eighteenth century.
Costanza Barbieri
CB
Literatur
- Angela Ghirardi: “B. Passarotti, il culto di Michelangelo e l` anatomia nell` età di Ulisse
aldrovandi”, Bononia University Press 2004
- Costanza Barbieri: “Tributo al Maestro”, Art et Dossier, Giunti Editore 235, Juli 2007
- Costanza Barbieri: “A Portrait of Michelangelo by his friend Sebastiano”, in “Artibus et Historiae”
Wien - Cracow 2007, Nr. 7 S. 107 -120
Paolo Farinati (Farinato)
1524 - Verona - 1606
11
The lamentation of Christ
Oil on slate, 32,4 x 27, 9 cm
PROVENANCE:
Philip Pouncey, London
The lamentation of Christ by Maria, Maria Magdalena and Joseph of Arimathia directly after Christ
is taken from the cross is portrayed.
Half propped up, Christ's corpse is leaning against the knees of his mother, wrapped in a white cloth.
Maria Magdalena is kneeling to the right of the dead saviour. Slightly bent forward, she is holding a
vessel of ointment in her right hand as if she still wanted to dress the wounds.
In this nocturnal scene, Farinati knows how to portray, in a masterly way, the various emotions of
the mourners in their gestures and facial expressions.
The desperate pain of the mother is reflected in her head tossed slightly back with her mouth open in
a mute scream and her eyes turned away. She is throwing her arms away from herself with her fingers
spread in impotent pain. Maria is lying in Joseph's arms, who has laid his left arm protectively
around her shoulder. He is holding his left hand with a white cloth pressed against his cheek in a
gesture of humble mourning. The two figures form a unity emphasized by the red robe.
By contrast, Maria Magdalena is turned toward the corpse so that these two figures likewise form a
unity. Shocked, she grasps her breast and looks with an incredulous gaze at the lowered head of the
dead Christ. She seems not yet to have realized the saviour's death.
Completely tied to mannerism, Farinati provides the figures with strongly contrasting, luminous
colours and expressive gestures. The influence of Michelangelo in the modulation of the body of
Christ, however, can also be clearly detected.
AA
Ottavio Vannini
1585 - Florenz - 1643
12
Madonna with child, St. James and St. Stephen
Oil on canvas, 35,0 x 30,0 cm
PROVENANCE:
Marie Theres Comtesse de la Beraudiere, Paris
LITERATURE:
Il Seicento Fiorantini, Florenz, 1986, S. 232, Nr. 1.107
The painting shows the Madonna with child hovering on a cloud at whose feet St James and St
Stephen are kneeling. The painting’s content and composition are traditional.
The Madonna, surrounded by several putti, is enthroned on a cloud and is holding the Christ child,
his arm lifted in benediction.
St James, shown to be a pilgrim with a hat and staff, is kneeling on her (the?) left. To the right is St
Stephen with an open book and stones.
The strong lower view, the semicircular upper enclosure, the size of the painting and the unusual
choice of grisaille technique for a canvas painting of this kind point to the fact that the painting was
made as a modello for a large altar panel (Madonna col Bambino e i Santi Jacopo e Stefano 220 by 203
cm, private collection).
The partly sketchy bozzetto shows at the top left a putto who does not appear in the painting. The
figures show the influence of Fra Bartolommeo.
AA
Workshop of Gianfrancesco Susini (ca. 1575-1653)
13
The Swordsman “Borghese “, Florence, 17. mid-century
Bronce, H. 33 cm (without base)
PROVENANCE:
EXPERTISE:
J. Böhler, München
Baron von Stumm, Berlin
Charles Avery, Kent, April 1995
LOAN
The statuette of a swordsman in a powerful, diagonally stretched pose is a bronze reduction of the socalled Swordsman Borghese. This marble statue made around 100 BC by Agasias of Ephesus, in turn,
goes back to a lost statue three centuries earlier supposedly by Lysipp.
At first the sculpture by Agasias entered the collection of the Cardinal Scipione Borghese. It
remained in the possession of the famous art collector and his heirs until Napoleon acquired parts of
the collection of his brother-in-law, Prince Camillo Borghese, in 1807 and had the works brought to
Paris. The Swordsman is still to be seen there in the Musée du Louvre. (1)
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Swordsman Borghese was among the most
admired ancient sculptures. Immediately after it was exhibited in the Villa Borghese, it became an
attraction in Rome and the object of artistic studies. Thus, for instance, Rubens employed the
posture of the fighter in one of his paintings. (2) Copies were also made already in the first half of the
seventeenth century, including in bronze for King Charles I of England (today in Windsor Castle).
Bronze reductions after the Borghesan Swordsman were popular souvenirs of those tours which since
the seventeenth and particularly eighteenth centuries led especially to Rome as a part of aristocratic
education. Apart from the ideal and aesthetic appreciation of the figure as a perfect example of the
art of antiquity, a prominent role was played also by its usefulness as an anatomical model. Castings
or reductions of the Swordsman were therefore both decorative pieces for aristocratic households and
useful material for European academies. (3)
Evidence of such a culture is provided also by the statuette shown here. In contrast to the work of
Agasias and most of the variants, it was from the start supplemented by the classical weapons of the
sword-fighter. The fracture of the lost sword can be seen by the hilt; the shield without a sword
would also be meaningless. An interpretation of the marble model obviously intended by this
supplement nevertheless remains puzzling. The bronze shield bears as an ornament the relief of a
kerykeion, the wand of the messenger of the gods, Hermes, around which two snakes are entwined.
—
In antiquity, this symbol was borne also by the earthly bringers of tidings who, however, therefore
were regarded as invulnerable and therefore would not have required the additional protection of a
shield and sword. That the creator of the bronze statue wanted to allude to the god himself is equally
improbable in view of the absence of other attributes of Hermes such as the travelling hat and the
winged sandals.
The bronze is not signed, but its quality and the golden-brown patina point to Florence as the place
of production and to the seventeenth century as the period when it was produced. Probably it was
made in the studio which is particularly renowned for the imitation of ancient art works, that of
Gianfrancesco Susini (circa 1575-1653). Like his uncle, Antonio Susini (1572-1624), he was trained in
the studio of Giambologna (1529-1608). After the death of his uncle he took over his studio and in
the same year undertook a journey to Rome on which he made a wax model for the reduction of the
Hermaphrodite, another work from the collection of Cardinal Borghese. (4)
On this occasion, Susini also may have made a wax model of the swordsman.
COB
Francis Haskell u. Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique, New Haven/London 1981, S. 221ff.
Peter Paul Rubens, Allegorie auf den Waffenstillstand von Pont-de-Cé, um 1622, Paris, Louvre, Inv. 1787.
3Helmut Friedel (Hg.), Pygmalions Werkstatt. Die Erschaffung des Menschen im Atelier von der Renaissance bis zum Surrealismus,
Ausst.Kat. München 2001, Köln 2001, S. 18 u. Kat. 30-33, 54, 90 u. 92.
1
2
Giovanni di Bologna called Giambologna (after)
Douai 1529 - 1608 Florenz
14
Merkur, Florence, 2. half of the 17. century
Bronce, H. 67,5 cm (without base)
PROVENANCE:
J. Böhler, München
Baron von Stumm, Berlin
EXPERTISE:
Charles Avery, Kent, April 1995
Running in flight, the leading foot of his stretched leg only fleetingly touching the ground and the
other leg thrown back at right-angles, the messenger of the gods is hurrying on. The breath of the
west wind, Zephyros, is carrying him over the Earth. The stretched left leg mirrors the upwardly
stretched arm, the finger pointing toward heaven, as if touching the air, imitating the foot's light
contact with the breath of air from Zephyros. The youthful, athletic figure of the god looking
upwards toward his destination is thus spanned between heaven and earth. In his left hand he is
holding the insignia of his office as messenger, the feathered caduceus (Greek: kerykeion) around
which two snakes are entwined. The wings on his ankles and his head-covering also show him to be
the messenger of the gods.
The Mercury of Giambologna (1529-1608) embodies the ideal of movement and in this represents an
acme of mannerist sculpture. (1) A verse from Homer's Odyssey, in which Zeus sends his divine
messenger, presumably served as a literary source. "Straightway he bound beneath his feet his
beautiful sandals, ambrosian, golden, which were wont to bear him over the waters of the sea and
over the boundless land swift as the blasts of the wind. And he took the wand wherewith he lulls to
sleep the eyes of whom he will, while others again he awakens even out of slumber" (V, 43-46) (2
transl. Loeb Classical Library) The image itself arose from the commissioned monument project for
the University of Bologna for whose planning Giambologna had recourse to a coin of Emperor
Maximilian II. Its reverse is decorated by a portrayal of Mercury with the inscription, "Quo Me Fata
Vocant" (Wherever fate calls me). (3) The versatile god, who was regarded also as the god of
eloquence, and therefore as the patron of universities, as well as the soul-guide who leads the
deceased into the world beyond, is interpreted as the mediator between heaven and earth in
Giambologna's formal design. The world beyond, heaven, is his destination, and in this way he
becomes a symbol for the path of the — Christian — soul to god. In various exemplars, the
Florentine court sent Giambologna's Mercury as a gift to friendly rulers, including to Emperor
Maximilian II in Vienna around 1565 and to Dresden in 1587 to Christian I, the Elector of Saxony.
(4) Even after Giambologna's death, castings of the Mercury remained the epitome of Florentine art
and were sought-after objects for European art collections.
COB
Werner Hofmann/Wiener Festwochen 1987 (Hg.), Zauber der Medusa. Europäische Manierismen, Ausst. Kat. Wien
1987, S. 158f.
2 Olof Gigon (Hg.), Homer. Die Odyssee, deutsch von Wolfgang Schadewaldt, Zürich /Stuttgart 1966.
3 Herbert Keutner, Die künstlerische Entwicklung Giambolognas bis zur Aufrichtung der Gruppe des
Sabinerinnenraubes, in: Charles Avery, A. Radcliffe u. Manfred Leithe-Jasper (Hg.), Giambologna (1529-1608). Ein
Wendepunkt der Europäischen Plastik, Ausst. Kat. Wien 1978, S. 19-30.
4 Manfred Leithe-Jasper, Il Mercurio volante. Il problema della figura serpentinata, in: Beatrice Paolozzi Strozzi u.
Dimitri Zikos (Hg.), Giambologna. Gli dei, gli eroi, Ausst. Kat. Florenz 2006, S. 255ff. Vgl. ebd. Kat. 52-57.
1
Workshop of Gianfrancesco Susini (ca. 1575-1653)
15
Nessus und Deianira (after Giambolgna) Florence, 17. mid-century
Bronce, H. 40 cm (without base)
PROVENANCE:
J. Böhler, München
Baron von Stumm, Berlin
EXPERTICE:
Charles Avery, Kent, April 1995
In his Metamorphoses Ovid describes the rape of Deianira, the wife of the hero Hercules, by the
centaur Nessus (IX,101 FF). Nessus, with whom Hercules catches up, lethally wounding him,
whispers to Deianira that she should dip her robe in his blood and keep it as a magic charm; at one
time it will save the love of her spouse. A long time later Deianira sends the robe to Hercules who
supposedly had turned to another woman. The hero puts on the piece of clothing and, burning in it,
is removed to the Olympian gods and thus to immortality.
Giambologna (1529-1608), who was mainly active at the Florentine court of the Medici, created one
of his most popular works around 1575 with the figurative translation of the episode. (1)
Giambologna himself, his studio assistant Antonio Susini (1572-1624), and his nephew and heir
Gianfrancesco Susini (circa 1575-1653), among others, made several variants, some of which differ
from one another in small details. (2) Our bronze piece belongs to the earliest variants designated as
Type A, and its high quality speaks for the conjecture that it was cast in the studio of the younger
Susini. (3) It portrays the rape of Deianira itself and, with dramatic gestures, sets in scene the
opposition between animal power and impotent despair. Following the turning of each of their heads,
the bodies of the perpetrator and the victim are striving in opposite directions. While the centaur, in
Greek mythology the symbol of untamed nature, sets off in flight, the woman is grasping into the
void, seeking a hold. The twisted body has been forced almost into the horizontal and, through this
contrivance, the figura serpentinata, which is the proper ideal of a form striving upward in a spiral,
the body is tipped off balance. The artist could not have expressed the collapse of the ethical order
through brute force any more visibly. It is not surprising that the group of Nessus and Deianira is
counted among those works which the Grand Dukes of Tuscany from the house of Medici liked to
send as diplomatic gifts to friendly courts. (4)
COB
Volker Krahn (Hg.), Von allen Seiten schön. Bronzen der Renaissance und des Barock, Ausst.Kat. Berlin 1995,
Heidelberg 1995, S. 376f.
2 Charles Avery, Giambologna. The Complete Sculpture, London 1993 (2. ed.), S. 263f., Kat. 90-93.
3 Gutachten Charles Avery.
4 B. Marx, Künstlermigration und Kulturkonsum. Die Florentiner Kulturpolitik im 16. Jahrhundert und die
Formierung Dresdens als Elbflorenz, in: B. Guthmüller (Hg.), Deutschland und Italien in ihren wechselseitigen
Beziehungen während der Renaissance, Wiesbaden 2000, S. 211ff.
1
© 2008 Galerie Hans