Virgin and Child with St. John
(1490 Italy)
Colnaghi
Description:
Oil on panel
33 ½ x 35 ¼ in. (85 x 64 cm.)
Provenance: Edward Solly (as ‘attributed to Pontormo’), from whom acquired in 1825 as part of a collection of 3000 paintings by
King Friedrich William III of Prussia (according to the original label with the royal inventory number A 24 on the reverse), subsequently transferred in 1829 to the Royal Castle (where attributed by Waagen to Allori);
Listed in the 1883 inventory of the Neue Palais, Berlin (inventory number GK 1 5419);
Crown Prince Wilhelm III, Niederlandische Palais, Berlin, where recorded between 1910 and 1915 as ‘Olgemaelde, General Katalog 5419, Maria mit Jesus und Johannes, Goldener Rahmen’ (according to original label on the reverse);
Given to Graf zu Rantzau (according to hand-written inscription on the reverse); Posthumous Sale of Ernst Graf zu Rantzau, Auktionhaus Hermann Ball, Paul Graupe, Berlin 1931, Catalogue 12, lot 441 (illustrated), where bought by Asprech;
Sold, Weinmuller, Munich, 16/17 December 1953, lot 881 (as Francesco Granacci), where bought by
Joseph Clemens, Prince of Bavaria, and thence by descent from 1990;
Private Collection, Germany.
This beautiful painting of the Virgin and Child with St. John has recently been attributed by Philippe Costamagna to Raffaello di Michelangelo di Luca, known as Raffaellino dal Colle, a Tuscan follower of Raphael – an attribution confirmed by Everett Fahy. The artist worked for Raphael in Rome in 1519/20 and, following the latter’s death in 1520, he became Giulio Romano’s chief assistant in Rome, later accompanying him to Mantua. Born in the town of Colle, near Borgo San Sepolcro in c.1490, Raffaellino was first recorded in the Roman workshop of Raphael in 1519, and Raphael’s influence remained the dominant force in his work, although he also absorbed other influences, from Giulio Romano and from other artists such as Rosso Fiorentino, Bronzino and Dosso Dossi, with whom he collaborated in the early 1530s.
Between 1520 and 1524 Raffaellino worked under Giulio Romano and his hand has been detected by some scholars in the Vision of St. Constantine (1521) in the Sala di Costantino in the Vatican, as well as in some of the panels in the Vatican Logge (1518-19) and in the Loggie di Psiche (1517-18) in the Villa Farnesina where he worked with Giulio Romano and Gianfrancesco Penni. The influence of Giulio Romano at this period can be seen in the dynamic mannerist composition, the porcelain-like finish and rather chilly colouring of The Virgin and Child with the Infant St. John (Borghese Gallery, Rome), on which he may have collaborated, which, in turn is based directly on the painting of the same subject by Giulio Romano in the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. Raffaellino’s early dependence on the latter can be seen in his Resurrection altarpiece painted in 1525 for his home town of Borgo San Sepolcro, where Christ’s torso and leg directly relate to a composition by Giulio Romano. According to Vasari, Rosso Fiorentino took refuge with Raffaellino dal Colle in 1527 after the Sack of Rome, and his influence can be detected in the Mannerist elongation of the figure types in such works as the Virgin and Child with St. Sebastian and the Archangel Michael (1528/9, S. Michele Arcangelo, Città di Castello) and in the Assumption (1529-30, S. Maria in Val d’Abiso, Piobbico), and again in later works such as the Purification of the Virgin (1536, Pinacoteca, San Sepolcro), an altarpiece once attributed to Rosso. However the artist’s move to the Marche c.1530, prompted a resumption of classicism which is particularly evident in his paintings of the early 1530s. The agitation and the sharp mannerist colouring of his paintings of the 1520s is no longer evident and his paintings of the 1530s with their luminous landscapes and calm, harmonious compositions, are imbued with the Umbrian spirit of the earlier Raphael. This was to influence in turn artists like Bronzino, who worked alongside him in Pesaro between 1530 and 1532. These Raphaelizing tendencies were probably intensified by the large amount of maiolica based on Raphael’s designs produced in the factories at Gubbio and Urbino and the contact with the more Peruginesque works of Raphael which Raffaellino would have seen while working in the Duchy of Urbino, Raphael’s birthplace.
It is to this phase of his career in the 1530s, when Raffaellino renewed contact with the earlier work of Raphael, that Costamagna assigns the present picture. The harmonious triangular composition shows the inspiration of prototypes by Leonardo and the younger Raphael. The fine landscape is also reminiscent of the Umbrian backgrounds in Raphael’s early Madonnas, such as the Madonna del Prato (1505/6, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), whose inspiration can be seen in other works by Raffaelino of c. 1530, such as the Annunciation (Pinacoteca Communale, Città di Castello) and the Holy Family with St. Jerome (Desborough Collection, England), as well as in some of the pictures painted by Bronzino in the Marche in the early 1530s. The pose of the Christ Child’s lower body, on the other hand, seated in his mother’s lap with wriggling legs, harks back to Leonardo’s Benois Madonna (1478, Hermitage Collection, Leningrad) and his gesture of blessing echoes that in the Leonardo cartoon of St. Anne, the Virgin, the Christ Child and St. John (National Gallery, London). The elongation of the Virgin’s lap in order to accommodate more comfortably the figure of the young Jesus, a feature found in Raffaelino’s altarpiece of 1528/9 in S. Michele Arcangelo, also probably derives from the Leonardo cartoon.
The beautiful open features of the Virgin’s face, on the other hand, are more reminiscent of Bronzino’s Virgin in the Madonna and Child with St. John (c. 1530, Milan, private collection) than of any Raphael prototype and the tightly curled heads of the boys, their widely spaced eyes and retroussé noses are also rather reminiscent of Bronzino , with whom Raffaellino collaborated, along with Dosso Dossi, on the decorations of the Villa Imperiale, Pesaro. Both the face of the Virgin and the features and hairstyle of the Christ Child are similar to those in Raffaellino’s altarpiece of the Virgin and Child with Sts. Sebastian and Michael (S. Michele Arcangelo, Città di Castello) and the altarpiece of the Madonna of the Veil with the Archangels Gabriel, Raphael and Michael (1531-2, Oratory of the Corpus Domini, Urbania).
The device of the column, which is perhaps a more typically Venetian than Florentine feature, and which may reflect Raffaelino’s contact with Venetian ideas in the Marche absorbed via Dosso and Lotto, appears also in the Madonna of the Veil, The Adoration of the Shepherds (c.1528-9, Museo Civico, Pesaro), where there is a similar landscape background, and, with the column in broken form, in the Desborough Collection Holy Family with St. Jerome (c.1527). In all three paintings the pose of the Virgin is drawn directly from a Raphael prototype: the Madonna di Loreto. This may also have provided inspiration for the original composition of our picture, because technical analysis has revealed that, in place of the landscape shown in the top right-hand corner, there was originally to have been the head of St. Joseph whose pose, to judge from the x-rays and the infra-red photographs of the underdrawing, would have been very similar to that in the Madonna di Loreto. Finally, the high quality of the landscape background and the animation shown, particularly on the face of the Infant St. John, is comparable to that in the Virgin and Child with the Christ Child, and Sts. Roch, Francis of Assisi, Stephen and Sebastian (c. 1540, Church of St Francis, Cagli). This suggests that our picture was probably painted in the fourth decade of the 16th century.
We are grateful to Philippe Costamagna and Everett Fahy for their assistance.
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19th Century European Art
