Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 71:

FORMER INV. NOS.: 264 (M. 1804); KM 244.

TECHNICAL NOTES: The support is a single piece of coarsely
woven, plain weave linen fabric. It has been glue-lined and mounted
on a non-original stretcher. The ground is dark red and covers
the whole support. The paint layer is slightly abraded and impastos
have been flattened in the lining process. There are just a few
retouches. The varnish is yellowed. The painting is in good condition.
Documented restoration: 1979: Regeneration of varnish.
Retouching.

PROVENANCE: Martelli 1804.

EXHIBITED: Stille Welt – Italienische Stilleben aus drei Jahrhunderten,
Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Munich, 2002–03;
Hans Gedda & Mörkrets Mästare, Kungliga Akademien för de fria
Konsterna, Stockholm, 2013–14.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: NM Cat. 1867, p. 55 (as Ribera); Sander 1872–76,
p. 117, no. 264 (as Ribera or Flemish master); NM Cat. 1958, p. 177 (as
Ruoppolo); Sterling 1952, p. 131, note 115 (as Ruoppolo);
Di Carpegna1961, p. 123 (as Recco); NM Cat. 1990, p. 284
(as Recco). This painting is an example of Recco’s still lifes
with oysters and it has played a pivotal part in the
definition of his oeuvre as a whole.

Giovanni Battista Recco’s paintings have often
been confused with the work of his compatriot
and contemporary Giovanni Battista Ruoppolo
(1629–1693). Both Ruoppolo and Recco signed
their works with the initials GBR. This is the
signature found in the present painting; here,
however, the initials intertwine. Salerno has
regarded this as a distinguishing mark between
those of Ruoppolo’s and Recco’s works that are
signed GBR, taking the view that the canvases
signed with separate initials are of lesser quality
and should be assigned exclusively to Ruoppolo.
The present work is dated 1653; in those instances
where Recco has signed his paintings, only the
years 1653 and 1654 are known.¹

Research in the 1950s and 1960s enabled a small
but distinctive oeuvre particular to Giovanni Battista
Recco to be pinpointed: apart from the present
painting, there are also, for example, paintings
in the Rappini Collection, Rome (signed and dated
1654); in the Astarita Collection, Naples (signed
with a monogram); in the Galleria Nazionale,
Palermo; in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; and in
the Moret Collection, Madrid (signed “Recus F”
and dated 1654).

The present work was earlier attributed to
Ruoppolo, but comparative study with a painting
in the Besançon Museum, bearing the signature
“G B Recco”, has led to a firm attribution of the
Nationalmuseum painting to Recco.² It exhibits
the same kind of glistening oysters, depicted in
a highly detailed and assured manner. There is
a great feeling for the nature of the molluscs on
display: their surface texture, and the way the
mother-of-pearl and wet flesh of the oysters reflect
the light. The blue-grey and white of the oysters
contrast to great effect with the orangey red of
the fish on the plate in the centre foreground.
Recco’s rendition of the mother-of-pearl of the
oyster shells and the scales of the conspicuous, yet
harmoniously contrasting, red fish has a delicate
and at the same time luminous, and almost hyperreal,
quality.

This effect is further heightened
by the deep, quite Caravaggesque, chiaroscuro of
the painting. The chiaroscuro effect is also very
similar to that of the Besançon painting, as well
as to that of a still life with oysters attributed to
Recco in the Louvre, Paris.³ Recco emerged at a
time when the influence of and use of chiaroscuro
effects in Neapolitan painting were strong, and,
as Nolfo di Carpegna has pointed out he quickly
assimilated the contemporary stylistic currents.⁴
The strong Neapolitan characteristics of the
painting led Corvi and Tofanelli to describe it as a
“Pesci. Ribera o Fiammingo”.

DP

1 Di Carpegna 1961, pp. 123–132.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid., p. 127.

4 Ibid., pp. 123–132.

Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 24:

FORMER INV. NOS.: 115 (M. 1796–97); 155 (F. 1798); 375 (1804); KM 491.

TECHNICAL NOTES: The support is a single piece of coarse,
tightly woven, plain-weave linen fabric. The ground is red and covers
the whole support. It has been glue-paste lined and mounted
with staples on a Martelli strainer. This was probably done in Italy
before shipping to Sweden. The painting was originally probably a
little smaller than it is now: at the top, the tacking edge has been
folded out and a border has been painted directly on the strainer.
This was done at the same time as the relining. UV fluorescence
shows a few retouches along the borders. The varnish is yellowed.

PROVENANCE: Martelli 1804.

EXHIBITED: Hans Gedda & Mörkrets Mästare, Kungliga Akademien
för de fria Konsterna, Stockholm, 2013–14.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: NM Cat. 1867, p. 2 (as Caravaggio); Sander
1872–76, III, p. 128, no. 375 (as Caravaggio); NM Cat. 1958, p. 35
(as Caravaggio, manner of); NM Cat. 1990, p. 64 (as Ceccio del
Caravaggio, attributed to).

In Fredenheim’s catalogue, the present painting
is attributed to Caravaggio.¹ Corvi and Tofanelli,
on the retained original Martelli paper label, also
attribute it to that artist. Though clearly not by
Caravaggio himself, the painting was nonetheless
reattributed by Ann Sutherland Harris to perhaps
the most intimate of his followers, Cecco del
Caravaggio.²

Cecco’s typical clear rendering of outlines is
found in the Nationalmuseum painting. There
are for example the black brushstrokes defining
the fingernails of the Magdalen’s left hand, as well
as details of her face such as the nose and mouth.
Her fingers – whose highlighted, quite Mannerist,
elongated joints seem at the same time quite thick
and supple – are highly reminiscent of Cecco’s
execution of the fingers of the Flute Player in the
Ashmolean, Oxford, especially of his right hand,
and of the fingers of the Maker of Musical Instruments
in the National Gallery, Athens, a close
version of which is in the Wellington Museum,
Apsley House, London.

Because Cecco’s careful rendition of the texture
and volume of flesh and fabric alike – built
through the masterly application of detailed
shades and hues – is contained within these distinctly
outlined boundaries, a kind of expressive
tension is created. This artificial device, perhaps
paradoxically, adds a sense of three-dimensionality,
enhancing the effect of the chiaroscuro to
a degree and lending the composition a feeling
of fluency and movement. This type of execution
seems particularly well suited to the subject
matter at hand: Cecco invests its pathetic sentiment
with a clearly physical dimension as the
Magdalen, with heavily tear-filled eyes, caresses
the small figure of Jesus with her fingers, while
pressing her cheek to the crucifix.

The countenance of the Magdalen is also quite
reminiscent of that of the musical instrument
maker, especially in the way Cecco depicts the receding
three-quarter profile, the large and darkly
defined eyes, the wrinkled brow between the eyes
and the open mouth with the quite pouty lips.
This specific type of face recurs, for example, in
Cecco’s paintings of San Lorenzo in the Stanze
di San Filippo Neri, Santa Maria in Valicella,
Rome; St John the Baptist at the Fountain, in the
collection of Pier Luigi Pizzi, which also shares
its palette of colours with the Nationalmuseum
work; and another painting of the Magdalen,
today in an unknown location (previously Milan,
Gallerie Salamon Agustoni Algranti).⁴

The highly detailed and expertly painted
crucifix of the present painting, presumably one
made of ebony with a gilded figure of Christ, is
very reminiscent of the crucifix found in the San
Francesco Orante in the Agliardi Collection.⁵ The
rendering of the instruments of the Magdalen’s
penitence, such as the glass censer, the scourge
and the tipped-over skull, is highly detailed and
of the highest order, on a par with the work of
the foremost of the Neapolitan still-life painters.
This part of the composition also reminds one
of Cecco’s own mastery of still lifes, exemplified
by the rendition of fruit, musical instruments
and other objects in the Flute Player and the
Instrument Maker. The burgundy of the raiment
draped over the Magdalen’s lower body,
which complements as well as contrasts with the
paleness of her skin, is clearly reminiscent of the
colour of the raiment of the previously mentioned
St John the Baptist at the Fountain.

The particular characteristics of Cecco del
Caravaggio’s work that are present to such a high
degree in the Nationalmuseum painting, and its
generally close affinity to several specific paintings
today considered autograph, lend support to
Ann Sutherland Harris’s attribution.

DP

1 NM Archives, Kongl. Museum, F:1, Catalogue du Cabinet de Martelli (à Rome).

2 NM Archives, Dokumentationsarkivet, Cecco del Caravaggio.

3 Papi 2001, pp. 68–69, 70, 72–73, pl. 12‒13, 14, 16–17.

4 Ibid., pp. 66, 74, 83, pl. 10, 18, 27.

5 Ibid., p. 84, pl. 28.

Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting,
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 4:

FORMER INV. NOS.: 133 (M. 1796–97); 32 (F. 1798); 244 (M. 1804); KM 872.

TECHNICAL NOTES: There have been later additions of
overpaint, particularly in the background which was darkened.
This was probably to highlight the head itself and to lessen the
typical feel of a study. Together with a thick layer of discoloured
varnish, these additions were recently removed, revealing the
original sketch-like feeling of, for example, the contours of the
turban. The support consists of a single sheet of fairly thick
paper.

It has been lined onto a sparsely woven linen fabric
(12 × 12 threads/cm2) and mounted with staples on a Martelli
strainer. This was probably done in Italy before the painting
was shipped to Sweden. The imprimatura is red and covers the whole
support. There are old (previously mended) tears in the paper
and several old retouches. The paint layer is abraded.
Documented conservation: 2012: Removal of discoloured
yellow varnish and overpaintings. Retouching and varnish.

PROVENANCE: Martelli 1804.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Sander 1872–76, III, p. 113, no. 224 (as Barocci);
Prytz 2011, pp. 654–656.

The present painting is a head study in oil for
the priest holding the Christ Child in Federico
Barocci’s The Circumcision in the Louvre, Paris.
In the Martelli Collection, NMDrh 462 forms a pair
with NMDrh 481 (cat. no. 5), which is a head study
in oil for the shepherd in the foreground of the
same painting. The altarpiece of The Circumcision
was commissioned in 1581 by the Compagnia del
Nome di Gesù for the main altar of the oratory of
the Nome di Gesù in Pesaro. The painting was
completed in 1590. It was brought to France in
1797 by the Napoleonic troops, under the
provisions of the Treaty of Tolentino.¹

The painting in the Louvre shows the circumcision
of the Christ Child just completed. A medical
orderly dressed in bright yellow robes is bowed
over and tending to the child, who is held by a
priest wearing light blue, white and rose-tinted
robes. ' 'In the background there is another group
of figures; most prominent of these is a priest
wiping the knife used in the operation. To the
right of the orderly are Mary and Joseph. In the
foreground to the left is a group of spectators,
among them a shepherd. Bending on one knee,
he has brought an offering of a lamb tied at the
feet.

The Nationalmuseum oil study is a highly
sensitive depiction of its subject. Intently
preoccupied with the task in hand, the priest
is watching the child with concern and concentration.
The artist conveys the priest’s absorption through
deceptively simple means: a few brushstrokes
showing his furrowed brow and lowered eyelids
which fix his gaze. Barocci’s bold yet meticulous
execution of the folds of the turban, the thin,
sunken cheeks, the straggly beard and hair
further contributes to an overall sense of realism;
a quality shared, for instance, by the oil study
for the head of the bearer in the Senigallia
Entombment of Christ (1579–82). The priest,
and his specific profile, must be considered a
favourite type of Barocci’s, recurring with close
variations not only in the Senigallia Entombment,
but also in the Presentation of the Virgin to the
Temple (1593–1606), in the Chiesa Nuova,
Rome, and in a few of the artist’s other
compositions.²

The exploration of colour was obviously the main
purpose of this study, especially regarding the skin
tones and the white tones of the folds of the turban.
Interestingly, in the study the topmost part of the
turban seems to have been originally rose-tinted,
in line with Barocci’s other examples of the type,
while in the finished painting it is clear white.
The overall range of colours is similar to the study
for the head of the shepherd and is also familiar
from Barocci’s other known head studies in oil:
the light tan, almost ginger, colour of the beard
and hair and the rose-tinted hue of nose, cheek
and ear, repeated in the colour of the cape,
seen to the right.

Barocci’s head studies are executed either in oil
or in chalk and pastels. There are several examples,
as with the head of the shepherd of the Circumcision,
where Barocci evolved the study of a particular head
in different stages, using both chalk-and-pastel and
oil studies.³

For the major paintings executed at about the
same time as the Circumcision, there are quite a
few known corresponding studies of heads. For
the Senigallia Entombment, for example, five such
studies are known to date, of which three are in oil.
It is important to stress that Barocci received the
commission for the Circumcision as early as 1581,
while he was still working on the Entombment.
Presumably he started work on the Circumcision
around the time he was painting the Chiesa Nuova
Visitation (1583–86), for which there are, as yet,
six known head studies, of which one is in oil.⁴

The number of known head studies for the
paintings should be expected to vary, originally
depending on factors such as the number of figures
in the compositions, and later on circumstances
such as the number of studies that happen to have
been preserved and are documented.

However, compared with the other paintings
completed around the same time, there has,
until now, been a conspicuous dearth of known head
studies for the Circumcision. Before the discovery
of the present work and NMDrh 481, only a chalk
study of the shepherd in the Nationalmuseum,
and two chalk and pastel studies for the head of
St Joseph, to the right in the composition in the
E. B. Crocker Art Gallery, Sacramento, and the
Sammlung Albertina, Vienna, were known.

It seems highly reasonable to assume that there must
have been other head studies for the Circumcision
than the three previously known, not the least for the
shepherd and the priest, who are both principal figures
of the composition. In this respect, the existence
of the two Nationalmuseum oil studies is completely
logical and consistent with Barocci’s working practice
at the time.

Edmund Pillsbury and later Nicholas Turner have
postulated that the head study in oil represents an
auxiliary stage of Barocci’s working practice, which
“would serve him as a guide to painting the
corresponding passage in the final work”.⁵
It embodies the sum of all the preparatory work
(in the preliminary drawings) and is, in a sense,
the definitive, albeit penultimate, depiction of the
particular key figure of the final composition it
corresponds to.⁶ In this respect, the head study
in oil is the idea of the figure it represents,
leaving the artist a degree of final artistic leeway
in the ultimate rendering of the subject.

As Barocci adapts the Nationalmuseum oil studies
in the Circumcision, he retains the immediacy,
presence and sense of realism – “the maximum
degree of spontaneity”⁷ – of the figures, but in
a manner that makes them subservient to the overall
composition. This accounts for the subtle differences
that exist between the head studies in oil and the
finished painting.

Johan Marciari and Ian Verstegen have found that
Barocci worked in accordance with a strict scheme
of interrelated, scaled proportional drawings: from
scale 1:8 to 1:1 in the full-scale cartoon.⁸ In some
cases, visible indentations or incisions have been
found along the outlines of the head studies.
These were in all likelihood made with a stylus as
the outlines of the head were transferred from the
cartoon to the piece of paper on which Barocci
would proceed to draw or paint the study.⁹
If the outlines of the heads of the oil studies were
transferred from the final cartoon, their scale
should also be 1:1 in relation to the final painting.
This is true of the Nationalmuseum oil studies,
and it also explains why the study for the head of
the shepherd, in the foreground of the painting,
is slightly larger than that for the head of the priest.

Marciari and Verstegen conclude that the head
studies are testimony to an intense concern for
the interaction between painting and spectator,
revealing the way Barocci intended his paintings
to be viewed.¹⁰ Given the compositional
importance of the figures they relate to, this is
certainly also true of the Nationalmuseum studies:
as he used the studies to perfect the colour and
profile of the shepherd’s head, and the expression
and colour of the priest’s face, the spectator’s
experience of the Circumcision must have been
foremost in Barocci’s mind.

DP

1 Emiliani 2008, vol. II, p. 89, cat. no. 49; Pillsbury and
Richards 1978, pp. 80–81.

2 Figures similar in appearance and pose include, apart from
the bearers of the Senigallia Entombment, both St Joseph
and St Zechariah in the Chiesa Nuova Visitation, and two
of the apostles in the Last Supper (1590–99) in the cathedral,
Urbino. Emiliani 2008, vol. I, pp. 350–376, cat. nos. 39,
39.12, 39.13; vol. II, pp. 37–57, cat. nos. 45, 45.26, 45.32; pp.
211–239, cat. nos. 66, 66.32, 66.34, 66.40.

3 Emiliani 2008, vol. I, pp. 264–283, cat. nos. 34, 34.12; vol. II,
pp. 284–291, cat. nos. 78, 78.2–78.3, 78.6.

4 The number of head studies refers to large 1:1 scale studies
and is based on those included in Emiliani 2008, vol. I, pp.
350–376, cat. nos. 39.12–39.13, 39.32, 39.34, 39.37, and vol. II,
pp. 37–57, cat. nos. 45.16, 45.19–45.20, 45.24, 45.26, 45.32.
Emiliani cites a letter of 13 August 1584 written by Giulio
Veterani, secretary to Barocci’s patron Duke Francesco
Maria II, on Barocci’s characteristic propensity to take on
several commissions at once and on “the fruitlessness of
calculating a precise delivery date merely on a report that
the painter had … begun the picture”: Emiliani 2008, vol.
II, p. 38. The letter is also cited in Turner 2000, p. 102.
Recently, two additional head studies in oil for the Chiesa
Nuova Visitation have surfaced. Both are for St Joseph in
the foreground of the composition. One is in the collection
of Hester Diamond, New York; the other was sold at
Bonhams, London, Old Master Paintings, 7 July 2010, lot 6,
and was again for sale in 2011 through Jean-Luc Baroni Ltd.

5 Turner 2000, p. 43. See also Pillsbury and Richards 1978,
pp. 80–81.

6 Pillsbury and Richards 1978, pp. 65–67, 76, cat. nos.
43–44, 53.

7 Emiliani 2008, vol. I, p. 176: “allo scopo di ottenere
dall’evidente posa sul naturale il grado massimo di
spontaneità à e immediata restituzione ottica”.

8 Marciari and Verstegen 2008, p. 307.

9 Ibid., p. 309; Turner 2000, pp. 118, 129. As Marciari and
Verstegen point out, it is important to note that in the head
studies Barocci’s colours extend beyond the indented
outlines, where they are visible. This confirms that the
outlines were transferred from the cartoon and not the
other way around. Obviously the indentations or incisions
of the outlines are mainly visible in the chalk and pastel
studies, but in the oil study for the head of St Sebastian
(sold at Agnew’s, London, 2000) for the Crucifixion with St
Sebastian (1590–96) in the cathedral, Genoa, they are just
visible to the naked eye in a few places.

10 Marciari and Verstegen 2008, p. 311.

Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting,
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 5:

FORMER INV. NOS.: 134 (M. 1796–97); 33 (F. 1798); 223 (M. 1804); KM 873.

TECHNICAL NOTES: The original support consists of a single
sheet of fairly thick paper. The painting was probably lined onto
linen fabric in Italy, prior to shipping to Sweden. Later, at the
Nationalmusuem, it was glued onto hardboard. The old stretcher
was retained, although it no longer serves any purpose.
This later treatment has flattened all the impastos, such as
brushstrokes. There is an old tear in the paper (later mended),
but otherwise the painting is in fairly good condition.
Documented conservation: 2012: Removal of overpaintings
and discoloured varnish. Retouching and varnishing.

PROVENANCE: Martelli 1804.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Sander 1872–76, p. 112, no. 223 (as Barocci);
Prytz 2011, pp. 654–656. The present painting is a head study
in oil for the shepherd in the foreground of Federico Barocci’s
The Circumcision in the Louvre, Paris. In the Martelli Collection,
NMDrh 481 forms a pair with NMDrh 462 (cat. no. 4).¹

In the left foreground of the Louvre painting there
is a group of spectators, amongst whom there is
a shepherd. Bending on one knee, he has brought
an offering of a lamb tied at the feet. Together with
the medical orderly in bright yellow robes, who is
bowed over and tending to the Christ Child, the
kneeling figure of the shepherd creates a diagonal
interplay which lends harmony to the composition
and helps the eye to focus on the central scene.
The specific pose of the shepherd’s head
– the profil perdu – adds greatly to this effect.

In view of this, the existence of this oil study for
the head of the shepherd seems logical and could
almost be anticipated. As Nicholas Turner has
pointed out, the figure of the shepherd, and in
particular his profil perdu, is a recurring feature of
Barocci’s paintings and seems to be a favourite
compositional element of his.² Apart from in the
Circumcision, he can be found in the foreground of
the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple
(1592–1603), in the Chiesa Nuova, Rome, and in
slightly different variants in several of the artist’s
other paintings.³

By pure and fortunate coincidence, the collections
of the Nationalmuseum also contain a preparatory
drawing in coloured chalks of the head of the
shepherd of the Circumcision (NMH 402/1863),
with a completely different provenance⁴ Barocci’s
overall diligence and exceptional work ethic is well
documented, and the existence of both the drawing
and the oil study is further confirmation of this, as
well as of the particular importance the artist attached
to this specific figure. Apart from his compositional
significance, there is also a great symbolic gravitas
to the shepherd: in the Circumcision, his offering
of a lamb, in the centre foreground, can be seen
as “an obvious reference to Christ’s future sacrifice”.⁵

The drawing corresponds to the oil study with few,
but clear, exceptions, the most obvious one being
that the shepherd’s staff is missing in the drawing.
The scale of drawing and oil study match – 1:1 in
relation to each other ' and to the finished painting –
and the outlines of the drawing, “vigorously established
in broad strokes”⁶, are mirrored in the brushstrokes
of the oil study. But, while there is a general dynamic
immediacy to the deftly expressive brushstrokes of
the oil study, it is obviously in more of a finished
state, closer to the final painting. This can particularly
be seen in Barocci’s depiction of the thick curls of
the youth’s hair and the hue of his skin: the range and
highlights of colour only hinted at in the drawing are
fully explored in the oil study.

Compared with the two chalk and pastel studies for
the head of St Joseph, to the right in the composition,
in the E. B. Crocker Art Gallery, Sacramento, and
the Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna, the
Sacramento study relates to the Vienna one in much
the same way as the Nationalmuseum’s chalk study
relates to its oil study of the shepherd.⁷
The tentative sketchiness of the former is replaced
with a more assured finish in the latter.

Colour was certainly Barocci’s main concern when
painting the present oil study. The focus is firmly
on establishing its details and nuances: the skin as
it catches the light, the rose-tinted tone of cheek
and ear, highlighted by bold brushstrokes of white,
and the brownish hair highlighted with thin
brushstrokes of white and light tan colours.

In the background there are, apart from dark
browns and ochres, also a greenish colour to
the left of the neck and thick white brushstrokes
to the right of it, colours that directly correspond
with the clothing by the boy behind the shepherd
in the Circumcision. The gnarled shepherd’s staff
is realized with thick, dark brown brushstrokes.
However, the colours of the staff, and of the
background, are much more sketchily executed
than those of the head itself.

In Fredenheim’s catalogue, the two Nationalmuseum
head studies in oil are described simply as
“Frederic Baroche Des Têtes”.⁸ Corvi and Tofanelli,
on the other hand, describe the present painting
more closely on the retained paper label on the
verso: “Barocci. Testa. Studi originali del suo
famoso quadro di Fano”. There seems to have been
some ' confusion as to the original location of the
Circumcision, which was of course in Pesaro.
Fano and Pesaro are quite close to each other.

DP

1 NM Archives, Kongl. Museum, F:1, Catalogue du Cabinet
de Martelli (à Rome).

2 Turner 2000, p. 95. For the compositional importance of
the shepherd, see also Emiliani 2008, vol. II, p. 89: “la
figura del pastore di quinta, la cui spalla segna il repoussoir
dell’intero quadro”.

3 Turner 2000, p. 106; Emiliani 2008, vol. II, pp. 249–267,
cat. nos. 72, 72.34.

4 Bjurström and Magnusson 1998, repr. col. p. XII and pl.
420; Emiliani 2008, vol. II, p. 101, cat. no. 49.19.

5 Turner 2000, p. 95.

6 Bjurström and Magnusson 1998, repr. col. p. XII and pl. 420.

7 Pillsbury and Richards 1978, pp. 80–81, cat. no. 57;
Emiliani 2008, vol. II, p. 102, cat. nos. 49.23–49.24.

8 NM Archives, Kongl. Museum, F:1, Catalogue du Cabinet
de Martelli (à Rome).

Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 40:

FORMER INV. NOS.: 468 (M. 1796–97); 11 (F. 1798); 298 (M. 1804); KM 816.

TECHNICAL NOTES: The support is a single piece of medium-
coarse, plain-weave linen fabric. It has been lined with glue
onto a coarse, densely woven linen canvas and mounted on a
non-original stretcher. The tacking edges have been covered with
paper strips and are probably cropped. The ground is red. In UV
reflectance only a few retouches along the edges can be seen, but
there might be more old retouches covered by the very thick varnish.
The painting is in good condition.

PROVENANCE: Martelli 1804.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Sander 1872–76, III, p. 120, no. 298; Prytz and
Eriksson 2010, pp. 77–78.

Like NM 7209 (cat. no. 39), this cartoon is for
a man holding palm leaves as an offering to the
Lamb to his right in the mosaic decorations of
the vault of the Chapel of St Sebastian in St
Peter’s, Rome.¹ Preserved in this particular part
of the original complete cartoon for the vault
are the head and upper part of the body of the
prominent bearded man placed approximately
in the middle of the procession of those bearing
offerings to the Lamb. Even more so than the
figure found in NM 7209, Cortona’s rendering
and placing of this figure in the composition help
to enhance the quadratura illusion, especially
considering his relationship to the smaller figures
seen next to him in the background, one of which
is also found in the present cartoon. He stands
out in the procession, as well as in the foreground
as a whole, gazing intently towards God and the
Lamb, his compositional purpose seemingly being
to catch the eye of spectators who happen to
be looking at this particular part of the composition
and to lead them eventually to take in the
whole. Again Cortona’s quite thick, yet supple,
brushstrokes are on display, particularly in the
rendering of the man’s profile and his hands.
Peculiarly, Cortona’s painting on this grand scale
is very reminiscent of his faces and figures on a
much smaller scale.²

DP

1 DiFederico 1983, pp. 16, 19–22, 60–61 (The Chapels: B.
Chapel of St Sebastian), pl. 14–15.

2 Such as indeed in the painting of a summer harvest
attributed to Cortona which is also part of the Nationalmuseum’s
collection (NM 28, cat. no. 44).

Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 43:

FORMER INV. NOS.: 469 (M. 1796–97); 12 (F. 1798); 299 (M. 1804); KM 818.

TECHNICAL NOTES: The support consists of three pieces of
coarse, sparsely woven linen fabric, sewn together vertically. It is
mounted on a strainer with staples. The ground is white. There are
three old pieces of linen fabric glued onto the verso. The medium
is probably a certain kind of tempera, “guazzo”. The paint layer
is flaking, with numerous losses. There are many discoloured retouches
in oil paint. The painting is not varnished, and is dirty. It is
in poor condition.

PROVENANCE: Martelli 1804.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Sander 1872–76, III, p. 120, no. 299; Prytz and
Eriksson 2010, pp. 77–78

This cartoon is for the pendentive depicting
King Melchizedek Making an Offering of Bread in
the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament in St Peter’s,
Rome .¹ The crowned king is holding
an amphora, and along the top of the canvas a
surrounding laurel garland is visible, a decorative
motif first used by Cortona in the pendentives in
the Chiesa Nuova and repeated in all his pendentive
designs for the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament.
² According to the Book of Genesis, King
Melchizedek made an offering of bread and wine
to God in thanksgiving for Abram’s victory over
the Persian king Chedorlaomer.³ The subject is
a logical choice for the chapel, as it is in keeping
with the decorations of the other three pendentives,
which also show prefigurations of the
Eucharist: Elijah Restored by an Angel, A Priest
Dispensing Ceremonial Bread and Aaron Filling a
Vase with Manna.⁴

This cartoon, Cortona’s only known preserved
cartoon for a pendentive, has been “squared”
to make it, at least in form, more like a regular
painting and thus more attractive as part of a
collection of paintings. The monumentality of the
king is quite pronounced, and it is enhanced by
the precipitously low viewpoint from which he is
seen, expertly executed by Cortona, whose skill
in solving the problems of quadratura painting
had, by the time of the cartoon’s execution, been
honed for several years.

The present cartoon is not listed in Fredenheim’s
catalogue and was therefore added to the
Martelli Collection and shipped to Sweden after
the catalogue was drawn up.

DP

1 DiFederico 1983, pp. 16, 22–24, 61–62 (The Chapels: C.
Chapel of the Sacrament), pl. 26.

2 Ibid., p. 19.

3 Genesis 14:18.

4 DiFederico 1983, pp. 16, 22–24, 61–62 (The Chapels: C.
Chapel of the Sacrament), pl. 27–29.

Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting,
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 1:

FORMER INV. NOS.: 346 (M. 1796–97); 3 (F. 1798); 481 (M. 1804); KM 962.

TECHNICAL NOTES: The support is a single piece of densely
woven, plain-weave linen fabric. It has a red ground that covers
the whole support. It has been lined with glue and mounted on
a non-original stretcher. The pa int layers are abraded and overcleaned,
and the impasto parts (brushstrokes) are flattened due to
the lining process. There are several discoloured retouches. Documented
restorations: 1835: Restored; 1920: Cleaned, dirt and yellowed
varnish removed. Hole (tear) mended, varnish.

PROVENANCE: Martelli 1804.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Röök 1841, p. 3; NM Cat. 1867, p. 1 (as Alessandro
Allori); Sander 1872–76, III, p. 138, no. 481 (as Sebastiano del Piombo);
NM Cat. 1990, p. 419 (as anonymous, 17th century); Prytz and
Eriksson 2010, p. 82 (as unknown artist, 17th century).

A friar dressed in a black cloak (cappa) over a
white habit of the Dominican order is sitting
with a crucifix in his right hand, against a dark
background. The portrait is first documented in
Fredenheim’s catalogue from 1798, which is based
on Martelli’s original inventory, under the title
“Agnole Bronzino, Portrait d’un Domenicain”,
with the original inventory number 346.¹ As there
is no painting of Bronzino in the catalogue from
1804, it seems probable that Corvi and Tofanelli
had reattributed the portrait to Sebastiano del
Piombo in the late 18th century.² In a list of missing
paintings from 1810, Louis Masreliez mentions
a Bronzino missing from the original catalogue
and a portrait of Sebastiano del Piombo added
to the collection.³ This is in all certainty the same
painting, and it was subsequently given the Royal
Museum number KM 962 in the 1816 catalogue.
The painting was given the present number, NM
10, in 1861.⁴

In the 20th century the painting was attributed
to an anonymous painter, and in the illustrated
1990 Nationalmuseum catalogue European paintings
it was given the title Portrait of a Man. The
dress at any rate points to the earlier and more
precise title of Portrait of a Dominican Friar, and
there is no reason to doubt that it is indeed such a
portrait.

The earlier attributions to Agnolo Bronzino
and later to Sebastiano del Piombo are tempting.
The portrait has some similarities to those of del
Piombo, although it does not share the realism
and presence of most of his portraits. The geometric,
almost oval shape of the friar’s head and
his relatively pale and cold features have more in
common with the Mannerist style of Bronzino
and his workshop.⁵ But as Bronzino mainly painted
members of the Medici court, the Portrait of
a Dominican Friar seems a bit odd and stands
out from his oeuvre of princely portraits. But if
we turn to Bronzino’s pupils, we find painters
who portrayed less prominent individuals. One of
them is Alessandro Allori. In a Self-Portrait, now
in the Galleria degli Uffizi, some characteristics
of the painting of the Dominican friar are found.
Allori has portrayed himself against a very dark
background, and the smooth and calm features
of his face are contrasted with his more elaborate
hands. These characteristics recur in other portraits
by Allori, and an attribution to Bronzino’s
foremost pupil or his circle is thus a more plausible
hypothesis.

DP

1 NM Archives, Kongl. Museum, F:1, Catalogue du Cabinet
de Martelli (à Rome).

2 Prytz and Eriksson 2010, pp. 82–83.

3 NM Archives, Kongl. Museum, F:1, Note des Tableaux
arrivés d’Italie e NM 10 t Deposés au Museum, 1810.

4 Prytz and Eriksson 2010, p. 82.

5 For recent research on Bronzino and his workshop see:
Pilliod 2001; Brock 2002; McCorquodale 2005; Falciani and
Natali 2010, especially the link to his disciple Alessandro
Allori, called the second Bronzino, pp. 323–334.

Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 70:

FORMER INV. NOS.: 144 (M. 1796–97); 185 (F. 1798); 421 (M. 1804); KM 462.

PROVENANCE: Martelli 1804.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: NM Cat. 1867, p. 1 (as Francesco
Albani, John of God) Sander 1872–76, IV, p. 133, no.
421 (as Francesco Albani, St Romuald), Göthe 1887,
p. 2 (as Albani, school of); NM Cat. 1958, p.114
(as Benedetto Luti, St Romuald Healing a Possessed Woman);
NM Cat. 1990, p. 90 (as Placido Costanzi, St Romuald Healing a
Possessed Woman).

In the 18th-century inventory of the Martelli
Collection, this painting was assigned to Francesco
Albani and the subject identified as a deed
performed by St Romuald. As confirmed by their
close numbers in the original inventory, it was
presumed to be a companion piece to St Catherine
(NM 98, cat. no. 7).¹ A later attribution proposed
Benedetto Luti as its author. This was probably
because Luti was originally regarded as the
author of the presumed companion piece NM 98,
and would accordingly have been considered to
have painted both. When Anthony Clark visited
the Nationalmuseum in the mid 1960s for his
research on the Nicola Pio portrait collection,
he probably saw NM 1 and assigned it instead
to Placido Costanzi.² As for NM 98, he rightly
questioned the Luti attribution.³

In 1995, the present painting was recognized
by Dieter Graf as an alternative version of a work
by Antonio Pietro De Pietri, now in the Museé
des Beaux-Arts, Dijon [Fig. 1].⁴ Two preparatory
drawings are preserved, one at Windsor Castle
and the other at Holkham Hall.⁵

The work was originally intended for the
Abbey of Cîteaux, where it hung as a companion
piece to Giuseppe Passeri’s St Bernard Received
into Cîteaux.⁶ Indeed, the present painting, like
the Dijon version, shows a particular episode
in the life of that saint: his interference in the
dispute regarding the simultaneous election of
two popes, Anacletus II and Innocent II. St
Bernard, who was firmly convinced of the rightful
claim of Innocent II, is here shown next to the
Pope, whilst Anacletus’s successor, the antipope
Victor IV, pays his submissive respects. Marguerite
Guillaume has noted that the scene is set in
Milan, as shown by the presence of the standard
of the city, the crowned cross. Milan was indeed
one of the last cities to surrender to the authority
of Innocent II, which makes it a proper context
for this allegorical summit of the schism.

The Dijon version and the present painting differ
greatly in composition, although these differences
are certainly more formal than content-related.
The Allegory of Blasphemy, represented
by the woman turning her eyes and showing her
tongue, is placed on the left- and the right-hand
sides of the paintings, respectively. Furthermore,
in the Stockholm version, the Pope is wearing his
mitre, a detail lacking in the Dijon painting. Other
compositional details and the reversed placement
of the figures distinguish the two paintings
and stress the fact that these are two independent
versions of the same subject.

SNE

1 NM Archives, Kongl. Museum, F :1, Catalogue du Cabinet
de Martelli (à Rome). Recorded under the name of Benedetto
Luti is: Ste Catherine pendent de No 144 par Albane. The
latter is NM 1.

2 Bjurström 1995, p. 7.

3 See entry no. 6 in the present catalogue.

4 NM Archives, Dokumentationsarkivet, “Pietro Antonio
De Pietri”; Guillaume 1980, cat. no. 95, pp. 61–62.

5 Blunt and Cooke 1960, no.

Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 80:

FORMER INV. NOS.: 1168 (M. 1796–97); 290 (F. 1798); 93 (M. 1804); S.N. 58.

TECHNICAL NOTES: The support was originally a single panel
of wood, probably poplar, but it is now cracked vertically into two
panels. There is one vertical crack, 9.5 cm long, running from the
upper edge, 10 cm from the left, and two cracks running from the
lower edge, one 14.2 cm long, 3.2 cm from the right, and another,
4.5 cm long. There is no ground and the imprimatura is white. There
are visible tool marks on the verso, and both the structure of the
wood grain and tool marks are visible on the recto through the
thin white imprimatura. There are two battens nailed horizontally
to the panel from the recto, through the panel. The paint is a thin,
fluid sepia. There is no varnish

PROVENANCE: Martelli 1804.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Sander 1872–76, III, p. 101, no. 93
(as Salvator Rosa); Prytz and Eriksson 2010, pp. 82–85.

The present work is very close to Rosa’s famous
etching of the subject, probably executed in
1663. The Oedipus etching and its companion
piece, the etching of the Fall of the Giants, 1663,
are notable not only for their quality, but also
for their unusually large format and the marked
verticality of their compositions. These etchings
are commonly referred to as Rosa’s late prints,
together with The Dream of Aeneas and Jason and
the Dragon, which were executed in 1664. Because
of a thematic similarity, The Abandoned Oedipus
and The Fall of the Giants have also been linked to
the two prints that precede them chronologically:
The Crucifixion of Polycrates (c. 1662) and The
Death of Atilius Regulus (1662).¹

In an often quoted passage from a letter
written by Rosa to his close friend and patron
Giovanni Batista Ricciardi on 21 October 1663,
Rosa claims that he had not made any paintings
related to his etchings since the Atilius print, of
the large ones, and the Democritus and Diogenes
and the Bowl prints, of the medium-sized ones.²
As for the fact that he still had some of his etchings
from the period inscribed “Salvator Rosa
Inv. pinx. Scul”, he writes: “Per sodisfarvi circa a
quell’pinx delle mie carte, ce l’ho messo per mia
cortesia e per far credere ch’io intanto l’ho intagliate,
in quanto l’haverle dipinte”. Concerning the
existence of a possible painting of the Fall of the
Giants, Rosa comments: “Nè è stata bastanta una
fantasia come quella de’ Giganti a movere la voglia
a nessuno di vedersela collorita”.³

These remarks have been taken to mean that
Rosa executed corresponding paintings after, rather
than before, most of his major etchings, and
that he would only paint the Fall of the Giants and
the Abandoned Oedipus if the etchings aroused an
interest amongst patrons in commissioning those
paintings. As Rosa stated in his letter of 1663, he
had failed to generate interest in a painting of
the Giants, and in a letter written on 15 December
1666 he claimed that “I giganti e L’Edipo non
sono stati da me ancora dipinti…”:⁴ “The Giants
and Oedipus have not yet been painted”. Despite
having many traits that would offer evidence to
the contrary, paintings such as those of Glaucus
and Scylla, c. 1662, the Crucifixion of Polycrates, the
Dream of Aeneas and Jason and the Dragon have
often been considered to have been made after the
corresponding etchings, based solely on the information
given in Rosa’s letters. However, this is not
universally accepted and has, most recently been
questioned by Xavier F. Solomon with regard to
the Dream of Aeneas painting.⁵

For The Fall of the Giants, many preparatory
drawings are known, and even a highly finished
cartoon in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon.⁶
The existence of an abundance of drawings seems
natural for such a large and complex composition,
packed with dramatically animated figures. For
the companion piece Oedipus, however, hardly any
preparatory drawings are known. This difference
can possibly be explained by its serene character,
contrasting with and complementing the liveliness
of the Giants print. Rosa chooses here to show
an episode of the Oedipus myth that is seldom
or never depicted, but which is still of the utmost
significance for the actual setting in motion and
eventual outcome of the tragedy. Having learnt
of the future doom over Oedipus’ life, King Laius
decides to abandon him in the forest to die, but
the shepherd’s act of mercy in saving the child
ensures that the evil fate of Oedipus’ adult life is
fulfilled.⁷

Rosa himself claimed that no preparatory
drawings were done for the Oedipus etching.⁸
Even allowing for Rosa’s undeniable sprezzatura,
this seems unlikely, especially concerning the
figures which are of course of particular importance
and the central focus of the composition.
One study for the figures can in fact be linked
to the etching, in the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan.

It is quite exploratory in nature and differs
from the figures of the etching in several ways;
the stance of the shepherd is the same, but he is
shown not just in reverse, which is to be expected
in a preparatory drawing for an etching, but also
with his back turned to the viewer. The Oedipus
child is also depicted lower down than in the
etching, almost resting his hands on the shepherd’s
shoulders.⁹

How, then, does the present work, drawn in
ink with white heightening on wood panel, fit into
this context? If we take Rosa at his word, it has to
have been made after the etching. However, there
are certain features that point to it having been
done before, or at the same time as, the etching.
Although it exhibits quite a high degree of finish,
there is also, in part, an exploratory character to
the present work, which would not be expected of
a drawing, or cartoon for a painting, based on an
etching, even if the artist was seeking to change
various details of the composition in preparation
for the actual painting. The tentative line of the
present work is found in parts of the composition
that seem to be later affirmed and fully established
in the etching. For example, in the depiction
of some of the shorter branches of the tree to
the right of Oedipus, the outlines of the branches
have been drawn across the outline of the trunk,
which is still visible in places where it should have
been obscured in a more finished composition.

However, the tentative line is perhaps most
obvious in the depiction of the shepherd and
the child. Clearly, Rosa was exploring different
solutions for how the hands of the shepherd and
the child meet; the shepherd’s back is not as bent
as in the etching, and Rosa seems to be working
out the placing of his left hand in accordance with
this and with the placement of the child. Rosa has
drawn two positions for the hand and appears to
have settled on the one that is lower and further
back, which has been heightened with white.

Taking the present panel into account, together
with the previously known drawing, Rosa seems
to have worked a great deal on the figures of the
composition. That they posed a particular compositional
challenge is also evidenced by the fact that
the artist adjusts the shepherd’s pose even further
while etching, as seen in the multiple lines etched
for his back in one of the two known versions of
the print, in Boston. Yet, of the two versions, the
other print, in the Louvre, seems to be the earlier,
a trial run which is only known in this particular
copy. The shading in certain areas of this
print is marked with black chalk, which in the
later print found in Boston has been translated
into dry-point. Through the preparatory sequence,
Rosa develops his figures, and it seems he has
still not finally established them when he begins
etching.¹⁰

Despite these facts, there are also features of
the present work that would point to it having
been done after the etching. For instance, the
lighting of the composition compares closely to
that of the etching; it seems to have been clearly
thought out beforehand and is defined to great
effect by the heavy use of white heightening.
There is also the fact that the composition of the
Nationalmuseum work is in the same direction as
the print. However, in Rosa’s oeuvre this cannot
be taken as definitive proof that a drawing or
painting has a later date than the corresponding
etching. The Atilius painting, for example, was
executed several years before the etching, which
is in the same direction as the painting. In that
case, Rosa produced a cartoon for the etching in
reverse to the painting, so that the composition of
the print would face the same way as that of the
painting.¹¹

There are a handful of works by Rosa which,
like the present study, were drawn on simple
wooden boards. The foremost example is, of
course, the Death of Empedocles in the Palazzo
Pitti.¹² This was drawn on the inside of the lid
of a packing crate which was part of a specific
shipment to one Cosimo Fabretti, brother-in-law
of Riccardi, as is proved by the addressee’s name
and address written in Rosa’s hand on the verso.
The crate is mentioned in a letter written by Rosa
to Ricciardi.¹³ According to Rosa, the crate contained
one painting, possibly of the same subject,
now in an English private collection. In the same
letter, the artist also mentions three other crates
that had been sent to Ricciardi himself.¹⁴ Luigi
Salerno believes that the Pitti sketch on wood is
a study for the painting, while Helen Langdon
views it as a reduced monochromatic version of
the motif.¹⁵ Despite the close similarities between
the two works, the Pitti sketch is not as tentative
in execution as the one of Oedipus which reinforces
Langdon’s point of view.

Because of Rosa’s claim that he had still not
been commissioned to paint The Abandoned
Oedipus by 1666, it has been surmised that the
painting was never produced.¹⁶ Yet it seems as
if one crucial mention of the existence of the
painting has been continuously overlooked.
In Lady Morgan’s work on Rosa published in
1822, it is listed under paintings by the artist in
British collections. It is quite clear that it is this
specific painting she is referring to, and not some
other treatment of the Oedipus subject, as it is
described as Oedipus; A Child exposed on a Tree.¹⁷
Based on the information in Lady Morgan’s book,
Salerno, in 1963, listed the painting among lost
works by Rosa.¹⁸

If we accept the present work as a study for a
painting, possibly based on the etching, it could
have been made at any time from 1663 onwards.
If we believe that Rosa would only make preparatory
drawings if he received a commission for
a painting, it must have been done after 1666.
The Nationalmuseum work should probably be
considered a preparatory drawing for a painting,
but because of its specific features it is particularly
difficult to place it before or after the etching.

If we suppose the drawings on wood of the
Death of Empedocles and the Abandoned Oedipus
to be Rosa’s original treatments of their respective
subjects, we can determine the relationship of
each to the corresponding painting and/or etching
and chart a possible creative sequence as follows.
In these drawings, Rosa starts with a concentrated
focus on the figures and later, at the stage of painting
and/or etching, he fills out the background
and the respective compositions become larger,
emphasizing even more the contrast and interplay
between the landscape and the central action of
the solitary figures.

These suppositions, however, can only be more
definitely affirmed or rejected if the lost painting
is found and published. Hopefully, the publication
of the present work can contribute to that end.

DP

1 Wallace 1979, pp. 93–101, 304–307, cat. no. 116
2 Ibid., p. 93, note 1, pp. 102–103, note 21.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Langdon, Volpi and Salomon 2010, pp. 93, 230–232, no. 40
(cat. entry by X. F. Salomon). Of course R. W. Wallace was
also of the opinion that the Aeneas painting preceded the
corresponding print and not vice versa, Wallace, pp.
304–307.
6 The drawings range from early, characteristically sketchy,
studies for different groups of figures in the composition, to
the detailed finish of the cartoon in Dijon and of another
study for the entire composition, in the British Museum
7 In the present sketch, this paradoxical and “Rosaesque”
moment is shown with the concentrated emotion and
compositional brilliance familiar from the Empedocles
sketch and painting and from the etching and painting of
the Cumaean Sybil. Wallace, pp. 100–101.
8 This claim is found in Rosa’s reply to his friend de Rinaldi’s
direct query asking for preparatory drawings for the
Oedipus etching. Rosa writes “Circa all’altro disegno
dell’Edipo, non posso prometervelo per non havervi fatto
disegno, che per esser material di paesi, e ho disegnato
sopra il medaglione di rame”. The fact that Rosa specifically
mentions that there were no preparatory drawings for the
landscape of the composition can possibly be interpereted
as meaning that he actually produced drawings for the
figures, as was his wont. Wallace, pp. 95–97.
9 Wallace, pp. 95–97, pp. 304–307, cat. no. 116 a. Pinacoteca
di Brera, Milan, no. 304.
10 Wallace, pp. 95–97, 304–306, cat. nos. 116/I–II. As Wallace
points out “for the trees and other landscape elements Rosa
seems to have thought of the early states of the etching
itself as being in the nature of preparatory studies for the
final state”. Of course, this would actually give some
additional credence to his claim that he established the
composition while etching.
11 Wallace, pp. 72–79, 275–280, cat. nos. 110, 110 b.
12 Salerno 1975, cat. no 232, plate LXIV.
13 Guratzsch 1999, pp. 198–200.
14 Guratzsch 1999, pp. 198–200; Langdon 2008, p. 140, cat. no.
26; Langdon, Volpi and Salomon 2010, p. 212, cat. no. 34.
15 Salerno 1975, cat. no. 232, plate LXIV; Langdon, Volpi and
Salomon 2010, pp. 212, cat. no. 34; Langdon, 1973, cat. nos.
44–45.
16 Wallace, p 93, note 1.
17 Lady Morgan, The Life and Times of Salvator Rosa, vols.
I–II, vol. II, p. 366.
18 Salerno 1963, p. 151. However, Salerno misinterprets the
triple asterisk next to the description of the painting in
Lady Morgan’s listing as meaning that it belonged to the
Dowager Marchioness Lansdown, marked as the owner of
the two works listed directly before it. I would interpret the
symbol as meaning, in this case, that Lady Morgan had
information that the painting was in Britain although its
whereabouts were unknown, or its owner wished to remain
anonymous, at the time of writing.

Descritption in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting,
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, kat.nr. 3:

FORMER INV. NOS.: 228 (M. 1796–97); 106 (F. 1798); 449 (M. 1804); KM 113.

TECHNICAL NOTES: Labelled on the verso of the canvas
“Amorosi. Putta. Mart. 449”. Painted on a densely woven,
plain-weave linen fabric, on a red ground. The support has been
glue-lined and mounted on a non-original stretcher. There are
some old discoloured retouches. The varnish is slightly yellowed.
Documented restoration: 1983: Removal of old retouches and
yellowed varnish. Retouching. Varnish.

PROVENANCE: Martelli 1804.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: NM Cat. 1867, p. 2 (as Amorosi);
Sander 1872–76, p. 135, no. 449 (as Amorosi); Göthe 1887,
p. 4 (as Amorosi); NM Cat. 1958, p. 2 (as Amorosi);
Faldi Guglielmi 1961, p. 13; Bardin Tognoli 1986, p. 715;
NM Cat. 1990, p. 4 (Amorosi, manner of); La Pittura in Italia.
Il Settecento, 1994, vol. II, p. 603; Maggini 1996, no. 9a, p. 102;
Contini 2002, p. 382, fig. 1 (as Amorosi).

In the earliest list of the Martelli Collection, this
painting was clearly given to Antonio Amorosi.
In the 1990 Nationalmuseum catalogue of European
paintings, its authorship was reduced to manner
of that artist. The 18th-century attribution, as
confirmed by Amorosi scholarship, is nevertheless
entirely correct and leaves no doubt concerning
the painter’s identity. The small-scale genre-related
motif and cheerful characterization of an infant are
typical of Amorosi’s oeuvre. As he often painted
children in intimate domestic interiors, the NM
painting strikes us with its more solemn setting,
defined by an elegant column and drapery –
details that bring to mind the conventional
mise en scène of elite portraiture.

The little girl’s connection with a higher social class
is shown through the elegant hairdo and
precious jewellery, such as the delicate pearl
earring. The heavy gold chain around her neck holds
a heavy medallion that is given further prominence
by the girl’s gesture. A good comparison may be
made with a Portrait of a Girl (private collection),
which shows great similarities with the NM painting
in the modelling of the face and the design of the
hands, the latter emphasized by the gesture
of showing a pearl necklace.

The outspoken display of the medallion may
allude to the tradition, particularly in evidence
during the Renaissance period in Italy, for children
(and adults) to wear precious stones in order to
protect themselves from harm. Evils such as
diseases, accidents, misfortunes or epidemics
were thought to be kept in check by the wearing
of amulets in the form of different and well-defined
stones.

The motifs engraved on the gemstones enhanced
their purpose of protecting body and mind:
healing animals were scorpions, dragons and serpents.
Counter-Reformation culture did not overcome these
superstitions, although the focus shifted from magical
symbols and animals towards the incorporation of
holy relics or images of Christ, the Virgin or the saints.¹
As a protective amulet, but also a beautiful
piece of jewellery, the necklace and medallion serve
a double purpose in this painting. By showing the
playfulness as well as the fragility of children,
Amorosi links the motif to a slight sense of allegory
that suited both the genre of bambocciate and his
audience.

The smiling child, so frequent in the painter’s oeuvre,
has an interesting connection to High Renaissance
portraiture featuring children, Sofonisba Anguissola’s
Sisters Playing Chess (1555) being the most obvious
example.

Claudio Maggini dates the painting to the 1690s but
not later than 1700.

SNE

1 Cavallo 2006, pp. 186–187.

Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting,
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 7:

FORMER INV. NOS.: 145 (M. 1796–97); 21 (F. 1798); 420 (M. 1804); KM 463.

PROVENANCE: Martelli 1804.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: NM Cat. 1867, p. (as Benedetto Luti);
Sander 1872–76, III, p. 133, no. 419 (as Benedetto Luti);
Göthe 1887, p. 143 (as Benedetto Luti, attributed to);
Macco et al. 1981, pp. 416–417; Clark 1981, p. 6, fig. 12;
NM Cat. 1990, p. 84 (as Sebastiano Conca).

This canvas, attributed to Sebastiano Conca by
Antony Morris Clark in the 1980s and never considered
again by that critic, is an important addition to Marco
Benefial’s oeuvre: the new attribution to that artist, based
on stylistic evidence, is confirmed by a preparatory
drawing for the drapery of the angel at the top left of the
canvas and for the two allegorical figures.¹ The work is
characterized by a pathos as well as a realism that is
rarely found in contemporary Roman painting: the scene
is set on sloping ground, like the stage of a theatre – an
approach typical of Benefial in this kind of representation
– and captures the characters in a passionate dialogue of
gestures and looks. The depiction is ordered by diagonals:
the rendering of the space is highly complex, with a
perspective that extends beyond the limits of the picture,
giving a sense of magniloquence and grandeur. The fluidity
of the brushstrokes and the rapidity in the depiction of
details suggest that this painting is a modello for a larger
work, yet to be discovered.² St Catherine is the protagonist
of the image: she is persuading the Pope to return to Rome
to end the “Avignon Papacy” (the period when Avignon was
the capital of the papal state); the Eternal City appears
as a vision on the horizon.³ The Holy Spirit also appears
from the clouds, surrounded by angels, symbolizing the
divine inspiration of the saint’s proposal. Gregory XI,
marked by finely characterized features, is portrayed with
a hand on his chest, looking down, in the act of making
a solemn resolution before the cardinals in the background,
who are also incisively characterized (which is never the
case in Sebastiano Conca’s oeuvre, where we find a more
idealized rendering of facial features). Clark suggests that
two of these figures, behind the Pope, can be identified as
Anton Felice Zondadari and Melchior de Polignac.⁴
A crowd of people is trying to enter the palace, and an
allegorical depiction (possibly to be identified as Wisdom
overcoming Ignorance) closes the image to the left.⁵
The result is a very original illustration of this important
event both in the life of St Catherine and in the history
of the Church: Marco Benefial, as always in his work,
does not depict it as a history far off in time and space
and distant from the spectator, but in a more familiar way,
as a sort of tranche de vie, as if Gregory XI’s solemn
decision is being taken before our very eyes and the
scene is being played out as we look at
the picture. Benefial thus treats a religious painting
as a historical one, with an absolutely modern idiom,
inviting people to re-experience the event depicted, which
speaks to both the intellect and the heart. This outcome
is surprising, given the rarity of the subject and the
few precedents that the artist could have drawn on as
examples: apart from a Francesco Vanni painting
– preparatory to images in a volume on the saint’s
life – and an engraving by Bernard Van Rantwick, only a
painting by Sebastiano Conca, which we can date to 1731,
has the same subject.⁶ The canvas now in Stockholm is
probably earlier, and may be dated around 1720: a
comparison with The Vision of St Philip Neri (1721, Cambridge,
Fitzwilliam Museum) is enlightening for the detail of the
people in the background – some faces are almost the
same as in the Stockholm canvas – and that of the
celestial glory, where both the robust proportions
and the distinguished facial features bring the divine
apparitions to life.⁷ In addition, the elongated and animated
folds of the drapery and the slender proportions of the
figures, such as those of St Catherine and the Pope,
as well as the brushwork in the rendering of the angels’ hair,
recall very closely works such as San Saturnino rifiuta di
adorare il simulacro di Apollo (1716, Rome,
Basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo) or L’Addolorata con gli
angeli che reggono gli strumenti della passione (1721, Rome,
Convent of Santa Maria dei Sette dolori),
confirming once again the proposed chronology.⁸

AA

1 Clark 1981, p. 6, fig. 12. A photograph of the preparatory
drawing, with no reference to its location, is to be found in
the photographic archive of Giorgio Falcidia. I am most
grateful to Liliana Barroero, who gave me the opportunity
to consult the photographs. Regarding Marco Benefial, the
most recent and important bibliographical references are:
Barroero 2005, and the following articles: Agresti 2007;
Van Dooren 2008; Celeste Cola 2012.

2 Clark considered the picture preparatory to Sebastiano
Conca’s altarpiece of the same subject, now in the house of
St Catherine of Siena. That work differs in many ways from
the Stockholm canvas, and is also chronologically later, as I
will demonstrate.

3 For a description of the event, see Jungmayr 2004, vol. I,
pp. 218 ff.; for the historical importance of the end of the
“Avignon Papacy” (and its reflections in the pictorial art of
the period), see Bianco 2001, in particular the essays of
Cavallini 2001, pp. 1–12; Nardi 2001, pp. 49–66; Giunta
2001, pp. 119–149.

4 This hypothesis is still credible, in spite of the changed
attribution: Benefial painted numerous rooms in the
Chigi-Zondadari Palace in Siena in the fourth decade of
the 18th century, undertaking the most significant part of
that work. For reasons still unknown, the artist could have
met Anton Felice Zondadari some years before starting on
the decoration of the palace.

5 Wisdom wears a crown of laurel (symbol of culture and
power) and a torch (symbol of enlightenment), while the
second allegorical figure covers her ears (to indicate her
rejection of teaching and knowledge).

6 For the iconography of the saint, see Bianchi and Giunta
1988. See also the articles mentioned in note 1; Catherine de
Sienne, exh. cat., 1992, pp. 228, 282.

7 Barroero 2000, pp. 321–322.

8 Barroero 2005, pp. 10–11, figs.

Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 85:

FORMER INV. NOS.: 237 (M. 1796–97); 268 (F. 1798); 344 (M. 1804); KM 829.

TECHNICAL NOTES: The support consists of a single piece of
medium-coarse, densely woven, plain-weave linen fabric. It has
been lined with glue and mounted on a strainer. This was probably
done in Italy before shipping to Sweden. An old tear in the canvas
has been mended from the back with a patch. The ground is red
and covers the entire support. The paint layer is slightly cracked
but otherwise in good condition, with only minor retouches. Some
of the outlines of the figures may have been reinforced. Documented
restoration: 1988: Cleaning. Regeneration of bloomed
varnish.

PROVENANCE: Martelli 1804.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: NM Cat. 1867, p. 12 (as Scarsella); Sander 1872–
76, III, p. 125, no. 344 (as Scarsella); Göthe 1893, p. 295; Novelli 1964,
p. 42, fig. 20a; NM Cat. 1990, p. 326 (as Scarsella); Novelli 2008, p.
314, cat. no. 156.

In Fredenheim’s catalogue, this painting is described
as a St Catherine avec des Philosophes and
attributed to Paul Cagliari, dit Veronese.¹ However,
it was later correctly reattributed by Corvi and
Tofanelli to Scarsellino: on the original Martelli
paper label on the verso they knowledgeably
describe it as Scarsellin da Ferrara ad imitazione
di Paolo V. S.Catarina che disputa con filosofi.² It
is important to note that Corvi and Tofanelli
reattributed the painting, but did not altogether
refute the earlier supposition; if not by Veronese
himself, it was executed by an artist with a distinct
style of his own in an imitation – a description
which in their usage should most certainly be
taken to mean a knowledgeable estimation – of the
older master’s work. Clearly Corvi and Tofanelli
were familiar with Scarsellino’s supposed association
with Veronese, not only as a follower of the
master but also, perhaps, as a student and assistant.
A personal and high-quality work, yet executed
in Veronese’s manner, such as the present
painting, could perhaps only have been produced
by an artist closely familiar with Veronese’s work
and creative process.

Scarsellino combines two episodes from the
legend of the martyr: the dispute of St Catherine
and the philosophers, shown in the centre foreground,
and the interrogation by the Emperor
Maxentius, the crowned figure in the background
to the left. As Maria Angela Novelli has pointed
out, the dramatic positioning and interplay of
the saint and the two philosophers, with their
backs turned to the spectator, lend the composition
a strong mannerist quality.³ These traits
are combined with an equally strong chromatic
sensibility, displaying Scarsellino’s typical colour
scheme of saturated rose-tinted red, warm yellow
and blue. Given these characteristics, the painting
should be dated to the 1590s, when Scarsellino
had returned to Ferrara and was combining
the lessons learnt in Venice with a renewal of his
original influences from the Ferrarese school.⁴

In Martelli’s original catalogue, the present
painting and NM 231 (cat. no. 86) were listed
with consecutive numbers, though they were
attributed to Titian and Veronese respectively.⁵
That the two works belonged together in some
way was obviously clear to Martelli. Since both
have now been firmly attributed to Scarsellino,
and the works are quite similar in nature, there
was in all probability a deeper knowledge as to
the correlation before they became part of the
Martelli Collection, beyond the fact that they
were of a northern Italian school, supposedly
that of Venice, and of similar size. Whether the
present painting should be considered a “study”
by Scarsellino after an earlier master, such as
NM 231, or a work of the artist’s own invention
has yet to be fully established.

DP

1 NM Archives, Kongl. Museum, F:1, Catalogue du Cabinet
de Martelli (à Rome).

2 Novelli 2008, p. 388.

3 Ibid., pp. 180, 314, cat. no. 156.

4 Ibid., p. 388.

5 NM Archives, Kongl. Museum

Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 86:

FORMER INV. NOS.: 238 (M. 1796–97); 257 (F. 1798); 333 (M. 1804); KM 379.

TECHNICAL NOTES: The support is a 1.5 cm thick hardwood board. The panel is not bevelled. The painting may have been
cropped. The ground is thin and red. IR reflectography reveals that Lazarus’s face has been changed. It has been turned more towards
the observer than in the preliminary drawing. UV fluorescence shows overpaintings, mainly in Christ’s cloak and the contours of
the landscape. The varnish is thick and yellowed.

PROVENANCE: Martelli 1804.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: NM Cat. 1867, p. 15 (as anonymous); Sander
1872–76, p. 124, no. 333 (as Tizian); NM Cat. 1990, p. 423 (as anonymous,
17th century).

In Fredenheim’s catalogue the present painting is
attributed to Titian.¹ On the preserved Martelli
paper label on the reverse, Corvi and Tofanelli
attribute it to the same artist. This attribution was
changed to “Unknown Italian artist, 17th century”
some time during the last century, an attribution
that was retained in the 1990 Nationalmuseum
catalogue of European paintings.² Recently, however,
the painting has been firmly attributed to
Scarsellino by both David Ekserdjian and Franco
Moro.³ Ekserdjian also recognized it as a copy by
Scarsellino of the Raising of Lazarus by Ludovico
Mazzolino (1480–c. 1528) in the Pinacoteca di
Brera, Milan.⁴
That Scarsellino should have copied Mazzolino,
who also hailed from Ferrara, shows the importance
of local artistic precedent for the development of his style.
Mazzolino was of the same generation as Dosso Dossi
and probably trained under the same master as
he did: Lorenzo Costa (1460–1535).⁵ Amongst the
artists who influenced Mazzolino were Bevenuto
Tisi, called Il Garofalo (1481–1559), and Ercole
de’ Roberti (c. 1451–1496), who both hailed from
Ferrara as well.⁶ Like Scarsellino, Mazzolino
primarily painted small devotional works and his
main employer was the ducal d’Este family.

Amongst Mazzolino’s more famous works
are frescoes for the church of Santa Maria degli
Angeli, Ferrara, and a painting of the Massacre of
the Innocents in the Uffizi.⁷ While Mazzolino has
been praised for his idiosyncratic and vivid sense
of colour, his figure drawing and composition, at
least as it developed during his mature period,
has been described as somewhat satiated, stiff
and even rough. In paintings such as for example
Christ before Pilate in the Museum of Fine Arts,
Budapest, there is great emphasis on describing
the individual pathos of the many figures, at the
expense of any real dynamic interplay between
them.⁸ “Archaic” characteristics such as these are
present in Mazzolino’s painting of the Raising of
Lazarus as well, and have also been emulated to
great effect by Scarsellino, whose copy is in fact
quite close to the original, despite the presence
of several distinctive traits of his own style and
technique, such as the characteristic wispiness of
his brushstrokes.

Ekserdjian has pointed out that the present
painting forms part of a group of about fifteen
by Scarsellino that were copied from works by
earlier local masters such as Mazzolino.⁹ It seems
that these copies were executed as part of his
studies, and it is quite likely that more of them
will surface in the future. To some extent, the
study of Mazzolino’s work could have contributed
to the somewhat antiquated touch of several of
Scarsellino’s smaller paintings, which, like those
of Mazzolino, are marked by a certain spatial
flatness within groups of figures and between interacting
figures, despite the fully realized depth
and volume of the figures themselves. A colour
scheme reminiscent of Mazzolino’s paintings
also characterizes Scarsellino’s smaller works, in
which the saturated pinkish red, the light blue
and the bright yellow are emphasized. Again, in
a manner that recalls Mazzolino, the interplay
of Scarsellino’s vivid colours seems to accentuate
the surface, lessening the sense of depth in his
compositions. In painting his copy, it even seems
as if Scarsellino sought to highlight and refine
the more archaic elements of the original.

That Martelli, and Corvi and Tofanelli, should
have attributed this painting to Titian was probably
due firstly to the correct belief that it hailed
from the northern Italian school, and secondly
to a highly optimistic assessment of its particular
style. The fact that the painting is an idiosyncratic
copy after a lesser-known artist who,
at least by his association with Dossi, can also
be connected to Titian’s style, probably threw
Corvi and Tofanelli off the right track. For that
reason perhaps, their expert reattribution of the
Veronese-attributed St Catherine and the Philosophers
(NM 176, cat. no. 85) to Scarsellino could
not be repeated in the present case.

DP

1 NM Archives, Kongl. Museum, F:1, Catalogue du Cabinet
de Martelli (à Rome).
2 NM Cat. 1990, p. 423.
3 E-mail correspondence with Franco Moro, May 2011; e-mail
from David Ekserdjian to Magnus Olausson, Director of
Collections and the Swedish National Portrait Gallery,
Nationalmuseum, 12 November 2011.
4 Fondazione Federico Zeri, Università di Bologna, Catalogo
Fototeca, Mazzolino, Ludovico, Resurrezione di Lazzaro,
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milano, numero scheda: 38371, numero
busta: 0418.
5 G. Bolaffi, ed., Dizionario Enciclopedico Bolaffi dei Pittori e
degli Incisori Italiani dal’XI al XX secolo, Turin 1975, vol.
VII (Logli–Monverde), pp. 315–317, Mazzolino, Ludovico
(Ferrara c. 1480–Ferrara 1528/1530).
6 Ibid.
7 Galleria degli Uffizi, Mazzolino, Ludovico, Strage degli
Innocenti, inv. no. 1350.
8 Szépművészeti Múzeum, Budapest.
9 E-mail from David Ekserdjian to Magnus Olausson,
Director of Collections and the Swedish National Portrait
Gallery, Nationalmuseum, 12 November 2011.

Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 95:

FORMER INV. NOS.: 374 (M. 1804); KM 493.

TECHNICAL NOTES: The support is a coarse, plain-weave linen
fabric. The ground is red. It is glue-lined (probably in the 19th century)
and mounted on a non-original stretcher. The paint layers
are slightly abraded (overcleaning), and impastos are flattened due
to the lining. The tacking edges are cropped. UV fluorescence and
raking light reveal that at some point the painting was probably
shown as a smaller work. The lower and lateral parts show signs
of having been folded. When the painting was lined, the “original”
dimensions were restored. Documented restorations: Conservation
in 2012: Removal of yellow varnish and discoloured retouches.
Retouching. New varnish.

PROVENANCE: Martelli 1804.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: NM Cat. 1867, p. 29 (as van Dyck); Sander 1872–
76, p. 128, no. 374; NM Cat. 1958, p. 240 (as anonymous, 17th century);
NM Cat. 1990, p. 439 (as anonymous, 17th century).
The 18th-century attribution assigned this
painting to Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641). Many
stylistic features of the portrait may indeed recall
the Italian legacy of this Flemish artist, but the
attribution is not sustainable today.

The specific technical qualities of the portrait
and the direct setting, with the sitter placed en
face, suggest Francesco Trevisani as its author.¹
The painting bears strong similarities to Trevisani’s
portraits of Sir Edward Gascoigne (Leeds,
City Art Galleries, Lotherton Hall),
painted in the early 1720s, and Jan Jachym, Count
of Pachta (Prague, National Gallery), dated to
1696.² The Gascoigne portrait shares with the
Nationalmuseum painting the delicate mouth,
straight nose, strongly curved eyebrows and a
particular emphasis on the eyes through the
straightforward en face position. The sitters’
hands, always a prominent feature in Trevisani’s
portraits, show strong formal similarities, with
the rather narrow upper parts contrasting with
heavier, curved fingers.

Trevisani’s biographer Nicola Pio stressed the
painter’s abilities as a portraitist by pointing out
his eagerness for fine accessories and his ambitious
approach to realistic and lively representations.
³ One of the pioneers of the Roman Grand
Tour portrait, he worked extensively for the
Stuart Court, where he was rivalled by Antonio
David, also represented in the Martelli Collection
(NM 165, cat. no. 49).

The present portrait is rather unique within
the subgenre of elite nun portraiture in Rome,
and challenges the famous formula invented by
Ferdinand Voet (1639–1689) in his portraits of
the young nuns of the Chigi family.⁴ The threequarter-
length scale, the gilded armchair and
the seated position of the model suggest that
the young nun occupied an important position
within her convent and probably belonged to the
aristocracy. The youth of the sitter is particularly
striking and sheds light on the conditions of
female religious careers, which often began when
a girl was brought to a convent to be properly
educated.⁵ The sitter of this portrait wears a dark
veil, underlining that she is no longer a novice but
a professed nun. It is likely that the portrait was
commissioned with reference to this status.

The partly deep blue colour of the habit,
recently brought to light in the section around
the right hand, suggests that the sitter belonged
to the Order of the Holy Annunciation – also
known as “le Turchine” (the Blue Nuns). The
order’s habit is generally known for its deep blue
cloak worn over a white dress. During the first
years of its establishment, the nuns chose, for
hygienic reasons, to keep the habit completely
blue, accompanied by a black veil.⁶ This explains
the slightly unorthodox representation of the
habit in the Nationalmuseum painting. The
order, regulated by the Augustinian rule, was
founded in Genoa in 1604. Known for its particularly
severe enclosure, the order was dedicated
to contemplation of the Annunciation, the
Nativity and the Incarnation, as well as to prayer
for lost souls. Although it had spread rapidly in
northern Italy, France, Flanders and Germany,
it lacked a convent in Rome. Eventually, one was
established in 1675 by the noblewoman Camilla
Orsini Borghese, and the architect Carlo Rainaldi
(1611–1691) became responsible for its construction
on the Esquiline Hill.⁷

It is impossible at this stage of research to
advance any suggestions as to the sitter’s identity.
The identification of the order to which she
belonged is an important clue that may in time
resolve the question. Trevisani’s first important
Roman benefactor, Cardinal Flavio Chigi
(1631–1693), had ten nieces who entered convents
in Rome and Siena.⁸ However, they belonged to
the orders of Dominicans and the Poor Claves,
which rules out any possible connection between
them and the Nationalmuseum portrait. DiFederico’s
mention of Trevisani as a portrait painter
to the Prince and Princess Borghese and all their
children offers another interesting line of inquiry.
⁹ Prince Marcantonio III (1660–1729) and his
consort Flaminia Spinola had two daughters
who entered a Roman convent in 1714, a period
in which Trevisani was rising on the Roman
artistic scene. Like the Chigi nuns, the Borghese
ladies opted for the Dominican rule, a fact that
again excludes any connection with the unknown
sitter of the present portrait.

The painting’s elegant mixture of religious
gravitas and elite sociability shows to full effect
Trevisani’s original and independent approach to
portraiture. The rather dark palette, recalling his
Venetian training, suggests a date around 1695.

SNE

1 I am very grateful to Karin Wolfe for confirming this
attribution.
2 DiFederico 1977, cat. nos. P10 and P4.
3 Enggass and Enggass 1977, pp. 37–38.
4 Petrucci 2005, pp. 176–178, cat. nos. 93, 94a and 96a.
5 Norlander Eliasson 2010a, pp. 137–148.
6 Rocca 2000, pp. 486–487.
7 Dunn 1997, pp. 176–179.
8 Eszer 1979, pp. 171–196.
9 DiFederico 1977, p. 21.

Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 99:

FORMER INV. NOS.: 66 (B. 1830s); KM 1057.

TECHNICAL NOTES: The support consists of a single board of
wood (hardwood), probably some kind of fruit tree or poplar. The
grain is vertical. The edges are not bevelled and the wood is slightly
worm-eaten. It has been cradled and the painting has probably
been made somewhat smaller. The ground is white and even and
covers the entire support. The paint layers are semi-transparent
and very abraded. The lower part of the painting is badly damaged,
with large fillings and losses of original paint (damage caused by
fire?). Documented restorations: 1978: Superficial inspection and
conservation of surface. 1997: Removal of varnish, old discoloured
retouches and overpaintings (the background and the girl’s hair
were almost completely overpainted). Filling, retouching of losses
and abrasions. Varnish.

PROVENANCE: Byström 1852

BIBLIOGRAPHY: NM Cat. 1867, p. 3 (as Bronzino); Sander 1872–
76, vol. IV, p. 110, no. 6 (as Bronzino); Göthe 1887, p. 3; NM Cat.
1941, p. 7; Sirén 1928, p. 7; Berenson 1932; Sirén 1933, pp. 125–126;
Berenson 1936; Sirén 1941, pp. 8–9; Strömbom 1949, p. 40; Emiliani
1960; Langedijk 1981–87, vol. I, p. 128, vol. II, p. 1094, no. 63,5;
NM Cat. 1990, p. 53 (as Bronzino, attributed to); Langdon 2006,
pp. 108–120; Baldinotti 2010, p. 132; Geremicca 2010, p. 136; Ekman
2011, pp. 74–76 (as Bronzino, attributed to).
EXHIBITED: Ansikte mot Ansikte: Porträtt under fem sekel, Nationalmuseum,
Stockholm, 2001–02.
This portrait of a young girl carries the inscription
“D ISABELLA DE MEDICE”, i.e.
Donna
Isabella de’ Medici, the second daughter
of Grand Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici and Eleonora
of Toledo. She was born in 1542, and in 1553, at
the age of 11, she was betrothed to Paolo Giordano
Orsini d’Aragona, Duke of Bracciano and
Anguillara. The marriage was consummated in
1558, although she remained at the Medici court
for years. She bore a daughter, Francesca Eleonora
(Nora) in 1571, and a son, Virginio in 1572,
who succeeded his father as duke of Bracciano
(1585‒1615). After an affair with her husband’s
cousin, Troilo Orsini, Isabella was murdered on
the orders of her husband in 1576. The couple
is depicted together with their son and other
members of the Medici family representing different
saints in the painting Madonna and Child
with St Anne and St John the Baptist, attributed to
Giovanni Maria Butteri, executed the year before
the murdering (Uffizi Gallery, Inv. 1890, no. 3402)

Isabella is depicted as a blonde girl in her early
teens. She has brown eyes and her skin is pale
against a dark olive-green background, in a similar
way to other portraits of the Medici children,
particularly that of her brother Francesco, now in
the Uffizi Gallery (inv. 1890, no. 1571). She wears
earrings made of gold and pearls, in the form of
cornucopias, a traditional symbol of fertility, but
also alluding to her motto “FLORES FRVCTVSQUE
SIMVL” (Flowering and fruits together)
and to her eloquence and erudition in languages,
philology and especially music.¹ She is dressed
in a wide-necked blue gown (soutane) with a
gorgiera made of bobbin lace, or more plausibly in
the ancient technique of sprang, recognizable by
the sparse pattern.² The lower part of the panel
has some areas of damage, which seem to originate
from a fire, and the blue texture may originally
have had a different appearance. Even so, the
colours are restrained, and they seem to represent
decorum for an unmarried Medici princess.

This painting, together with 29 others, was acquired
from the heirs of the sculptor Johan Niklas
Byström for the sum of 10,000 riksdaler banco.³ A
copy of it is known to exist in a private collection.
That painting may have the very same provenance,
i.e. the Byström Collection, as it was once in the
royal collection of Oscar I and has a signature on
the reverse (F. Müntter / Müller), which in my
opinion may refer to Friedrich Müller.⁴ Müller
was a German artist and art collector in Rome
in the early 19th century and a close friend of
Byström’s. He went to Rome as early as 1778 and
the Nationalmuseum portrait could have been
incorporated in his collection some time between
1778 and 1825, the year he died and left part of his
art collection to Byström.

The present painting is attributed to Agnolo
Bronzino in the early inventories of the new Nationalmuseum
and in the catalogues by Sander
(1876), Göthe (1920), Sirén (1928, 1933, 1941) and
Strömbom (1949). In 1932 Bernard Berenson
was the first outside Sweden to acknowledge the
portrait as an original by Bronzino, with a slight
change later on to “Portrait of Isabella de’ Medici
(st.)”, signifying a studio work.⁵ This attribution
was maintained by Andrea Emiliani in 1960.⁶
In her extensive corpus of the Medici portraits,
Karla Langedijk catalogues the portrait as a
studio work of Bronzino.⁷ The painting is further
discussed by Gabrielle Langdon in her work
from 2006 on the Medici women,⁸ in which she
considers it to be a copy of a now lost original.
The portrait has been neglected in some later
publications,⁹ but has received fresh attention and
is mentioned in the recently published exhibition
catalogue from 2010.¹⁰ Considering the damage,
the many retouches, and the fact that this is the
only known portrait of Isabella as a child, I would
suggest that this may be an authentic portrait by
Bronzino.

Giorgio Vasari mentions that Bronzino painted
“all the Duke’s children, some for the first time
and others for the second, the Lady Maria, a very
great and truly beautiful girl, the Prince Don
Francesco, the Lord Don Giovanni, Don Garzía
and Don Ferdinando in a number of pictures
which are all in the guardaroba of His Excellency”.
¹¹ This indicates that Isabella, too, must have
been portrayed by Bronzino and that a portrait
of her was kept in the guardaroba of Grand Duke
Cosimo I. Furthermore, we know that Bronzino
travelled to Pisa in December 1550 to paint the
portraits of the Medici children. And in a letter
to the duke’s major-domo Pier Francesco Riccio,
dated 1551, Bronzino writes that he had finished
the portraits of Maria and Giovanni, that he was
finishing that of Garzía, and that he was waiting
for Francesco to return from Livorno so that he
could start on a portrait of him,¹² probably followed
by this portrait of Isabella. The portrait has
also been related to what are known as the Medici
miniatures, or quadretti, executed in the 1550s by
the workshop of Bronzino for the Scrittoio di
Calliope in the Palazzo Vecchio.¹³ But this connection
seems less probable, as the Medici miniatures
are painted on tin on a much smaller scale
(15 × 12 cm) and are not of the same high quality
as the Nationalmuseum portrait, and Isabella is
not even represented in the series of 29 portraits
preserved in the Uffizi Gallery.

There are a few surviving portraits of Isabella in
her twenties, painted by the workshops of Bronzino
and Alessandro Allori.¹⁴ While many of the
portraits by Bronzino are easily recognizable, this
particular portrait type was established by the
portrait of Eleonora of Toledo dated 1543, now
in the Národní Galerie in Prague (inv. no. 11971),
and it was reused for her children in the years to
come. This is the only extant portrait of Isabella
as a child, and if we are to trust the inscription,
which may have been added later, and the girl
is portrayed from nature in her early teens, as
stated by Sirén and others,¹⁵ the painting must
have been executed in the early 1550s. We know
from Vasari and even from Bronzino himself that
he painted several portraits of the Medici children
in 1551, and this one may well also have been
executed that year or the year after. And given
the cornucopia earrings and the portrait’s Roman
provenance, it seems reasonable to suggest that
the panel was commissioned for the betrothal of
Isabella de’ Medici and Paolo Giordano Orsini
that took place in early 1553.

JE

1 Langdon 2006, pp. 115–116, 161.
2 Thanks to Dr Lena Dahrén for helping me with the
interpretation and identification of the lace.
3 For recent research on the Byström Collection, see Ekman
2011.
4 A reproduction of this copy is preserved in a letter to the
Museum, under the heading Byström, NM Archives,
Dokumentationsarkivet.
5 Berenson 1932; Berenson 1936.
6 Emiliani 1960.
7 Langedijk 1981–87, vol. II, p. 1094, no. 63,5.
8 The interpretation of the earrings has been suggested by
Langdon 2006, pp. 108–120.
9 For example Brock 2002; McCorquodale 2005.
10 Baldinotti 2010, p. 132; Geremicca 2010, p. 136, in Falciani
and Natali, eds., 2010.
11 Vasari 1568, Bettarini and Barocchi, eds., 1966–87, vol. VI,
pp. 233–234.
12 See Heikamp 1955, p. 137, doc. 1.
13 Langedijk 1981–87, vol. I, p. 128; Ekman 2011, pp. 74–75.
14 Langedijk 1981–87, vol.
15 Sirén 1933, p. 125.

Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, kat.nr. 108:

TECHNICAL NOTES: The support is a single piece of fine, densely
woven, plain-weave linen fabric. It has been lined with glue
and mounted on a non-original stretcher. The tacking edges are
cropped. The ground is beige and covers the whole support. There
are numerous old retouches and overpaintings. Documented restorations:
1920: Cleaned. Dark yellow varnish removed. Varnish;
1955: Remounted. Ironed. Varnish removed. Retouching and varnish;
1987: Cleaned. Retouching. Regeneration of varnish; 1995:
Cleaned. Regeneration of varnish.

PROVENANCE: Byström; Fahlcrantz 1853; Wahlberg; bequest of
Professor P. F. Wahlberg.

EXHIBITED: Stilleben (NM touring exhibition), Hallands länsmuseer,
Museet i Varberg, Varberg, 1987; Älvsborgs länsmuseum,
Vänersborg, 1987–88; Alingsås museum, Alingsås, 1988; Kalmar
Konstmuseum, Kalmar, 1988; Värmlands Museum, Karlstad, 1988;
Landskrona museum, Landskrona, 1988; Blekinge museum, Karlskrona,
1988; Bohusläns museum, Uddevalla, 1988–89; Helsingborgs
museum, Helsingborg, 1989; Hälsinglands museum, Hudiksvall,
1989; Örnsköldsviks museum, Örnsköldsvik, 1989; Sundsvalls
museum, Sundsvall, 1989; Norrbottens museum, Luleå, 1989;
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 1995; Hans Gedda & Mörkrets Mästare,
Kungliga Akademien för de fria Konsterna, Stockholm, 2013–14;
Barockt, Kulturhuset, Stockholm, 2014

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Byström 1853a, p. 5, no. 32; (as anonymous); NM
Cat. 1958, p. 158 (as Paolo Porpora); NM Cat. 1990, p. 277 (as Paolo
Porpora).

The present painting is the companion piece to
NM 5271 (cat. no. 107) and displays the same
kind of ingenious and powerful contrast between
the beauty and ugliness of nature, although the
contrast here is of a more subtle nature. The
viper poised to strike at the butterfly is the focus
of the composition, clearly elaborating on the
theme of evil, innocence, and the inevitability
of life and death. The picture’s pervasive gloom
contrasts nicely with Porpora’s distinct depiction
of the textures and hues of the viper’s skin, the
butterfly’s wings, the slime of the snail, the shine
of the shells, and the unevenness of the thistles
and the stone, gravel and sand. The warm red
and textured white of the funghi are conspicuously
and effectively set off against the dark areas
surrounding them. The depiction of the funghi
has a great illusionistic realism, the artist managing
to convey through quite broad brushstrokes
both their sponginess and their brittleness. The
viper in the background seems to be attacking
the funghi in an act of pronounced viscousness,
further enhancing the composition’s contrast
between light and darkness.

DP

Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 108:

TECHNICAL NOTES: The support is a single piece of fine, densely
woven, plain-weave linen fabric. It has been lined with glue
and mounted on a non-original stretcher. The tacking edges are
cropped. The ground is beige and covers the whole support. There
are some old retouches. Documented restorations: 1920: Cleaned.
Dark yellow varnish removed. Varnish; 1955: Remounted. Ironed.
Varnish removed. Retouching and varnish; 1994: Reduction of yellowed
varnish. Old discoloured retouches adjusted. Varnish

PROVENANCE: Byström; Fahlcrantz 1853; Wahlberg; bequest of
Professor P. F. Wahlberg.

EXHIBITED: Stilleben (NM touring exhibition), Hallands länsmuseer,
Museet i Varberg, Varberg, 1987; Älvsborgs länsmuseum,
Vänersborg, 1987–88; Alingsås museum, Alingsås, 1988; Kalmar
Konstmuseum, Kalmar, 1988; Värmlands Museum, Karlstad, 1988;
Landskrona museum, Landskrona, 1988; Blekinge museum, Karlskrona,
1988; Bohusläns museum, Uddevalla, 1988–89; Helsingborgs
museum, Helsingborg, 1989; Hälsinglands museum, Hudiksvall,
1989; Örnsköldsviks museum, Örnsköldsvik, 1989; Sundsvalls
museum, Sundsvall, 1989; Norrbottens museum, Luleå, 1989;
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 1995; Hans Gedda & Mörkrets Mästare,
Kungliga Akademien för de fria Konsterna, Stockholm, 2013–14;
Barockt, Kulturhuset, Stockholm, 2014.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Byström 1853a, p. 5, no. 32; (as anonymous); NM
Cat. 1958, p. 158 (as Paolo Porpora); NM Cat. 1990, p. 277 (as Paolo
Porpora).

The present painting is the companion piece to
NM 5271 (cat. no. 107) and displays the same
kind of ingenious and powerful contrast between
the beauty and ugliness of nature, although the
contrast here is of a more subtle nature. The
viper poised to strike at the butterfly is the focus
of the composition, clearly elaborating on the
theme of evil, innocence, and the inevitability
of life and death. The picture’s pervasive gloom
contrasts nicely with Porpora’s distinct depiction
of the textures and hues of the viper’s skin, the
butterfly’s wings, the slime of the snail, the shine
of the shells, and the unevenness of the thistles
and the stone, gravel and sand. The warm red
and textured white of the funghi are conspicuously
and effectively set off against the dark areas
surrounding them. The depiction of the funghi
has a great illusionistic realism, the artist managing
to convey through quite broad brushstrokes
both their sponginess and their brittleness. The
viper in the background seems to be attacking
the funghi in an act of pronounced viscousness,
further enhancing the composition’s contrast
between light and darkness.

DP

Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 110:

FORMER INV. NOS.: 32 (B. 1830s); KM 1053.

TECHNICAL NOTES: The painting support is a thin, plain-weave
linen fabric (24 x 22 threads/cm2), lined onto fairly coarse canvas.
It is mounted on a strainer. The painting is probably cropped. It was
probably lined in Italy before being shipped to Sweden. Impasto
parts of the paint layers (brushstrokes) were flattened in the lining
process. The ground is red. UV fluorescence reveals some old retouches;
some details are reinforced, such as locks of hair, eyes and
laces. The varnish is slightly yellowed

PROVENANCE: Byström 1852.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: NM Cat. 1867, p. 12 (as Scarsella); Sander 1872–
76, IV, p. 110, no. 2 (as Scarsella); NM Cat. 1990, 422 (as anonymous,
16th century).

In the catalogue of the Byström Collection from
the 1830s, the present painting is attributed to
Scarsellino. This attribution was changed to
“Unknown Italian artist, 17th century” some time
during the last century, an attribution which it
retained in the 1990 Nationalmuseum catalogue
of European paintings.¹ The work is not included
in Maria Angela Novelli’s recent catalogue
raisonné on Scarsellino. However, in 1995 Carel
van Teyl attributed it to Scarsellino and in 2011
Franco Moro confirmed this attribution.² There
is a marked Ferrarese presence in the Byström
Collection as, apart from an established painting
by Scarsellino, it also contains a singular work by
Benvenuto Tisi, called il Garofalo (1481–1559).³

Despite the fact that half-length figures of
saints are quite rare in Scarsellino’s oeuvre, there
seems to be no question as to the accuracy of
van Teyl’s and Moro’s attribution. Hallmarks
of Scarsellino’s style and technique are present,
such as a certain wispiness to the brushstrokes
even in the quite thickly applied pastose areas of
paint. There is also the marked contrast between
the pronounced, warm, rose-tinted red of the
saint’s robes, her pale countenance and the murky
background, a contrast typically achieved by Scarsella
despite his tendency to let the bright colours
of the figure and its contours dissipate into the
background.

Details of the face, such as the somewhat pursed
lips and the longish nose, are similar to other depictions
of female saints by Scarsellino, like the St
Cecilia in the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Ferrara, and
Mary in the two versions of the Adoration of the
Magi in the Pinacoteca Capitolina, Rome, and in
the Sacred Family in the Galleria Borghese, Rome.⁴
The sensitive manner in which the delicate hands
are realized, especially their distinctive gesture and
positioning, is also commonly found in Scarsellino’s
other paintings of female saints, as indeed it
is in the Nationalmuseum’s own St Catherine and
the Philosophers (NM 176, cat. no. 85) and in for
example The Madonna and Child with St Catherine
and in the Sacred family with an Angel, both in the
Galleria Nazionale, Parma.⁵

Compared to Scarsella’s oeuvre as a whole,
the present work must be considered one of his
more typical Ferrarese-style paintings, betraying
a strong influence from Dosso Dossi, especially
in the distinctly chromatic and sfumato-like
delineation of the saint. But because these traits
are handled with a self-assurance which Scarsellino
could only have attained by familiarizing
himself with Dossi’s own Venetian influences,
the present painting should be dated to the 1590s;
Scarsellino had by this time matured as an artist
and established himself anew in Ferrara after his
sojourn in Venice, letting the Ferrarese influences
take centre stage in a more refined way than
before.⁶

DP

1 NM Archives, Kongl. Museum, F:1, Catalogue du Cabinet de
Martelli (à Rome).

2 NM Archives, Dokumentationsarkivet, Ippolito Scarsella,
NM 177. E-mail correspondence with Franco Moro, May 2011.

3 See cat. nos. 102, 111.

4 Novelli 2008, pp. 63, 161, 177, 297, 311–312, 314, cat. nos. 44,
135, 152–153.

5 Ibid., pp. 148, 309.

Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 111:

FORMER INV. NOS.: 68 (B. 1830s); KM 1058.

TECHNICAL NOTES: The support is a piece of twill-weave linen
fabric. It has been lined with glue and mounted on a non-original
stretcher. The ground is beige. There are scratches in the paint layer
and many old retouches. The varnish is yellowed. Documented
restorations: 1947: Cleaning and varnish. 1977: Stretched. Cleaning.
Varnish.

PROVENANCE: Byström 1852.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Borsetti 1670, p. 48; Brisighella 1704–27 (ed.
1991), pp. 115–116; Baruffaldi 1720 (ed. 1846), vol. II, p. 84; Scalabrini
[c. 1755], p. 32; Barotti 1770, p. 65; Scalabrini 1773, p. 57; Cittadella
1783, III, p. 91; Frizzi 1787, p. 97; Petrucci 1844–46 [1848], II, p. 84;
NM Cat. 1867, p. 12 (as Scarsella); Sander 1872–76, IV, p. 111, no. 7 (as
Scarsella); Göthe 1893, pp. 294–295; Sirén 1928, p. 31; Novelli 1955,
pp. 29, 69, fig. 52; NM Cat. 1958, p. 181 (as Scarsella, manner of);
Novelli 1964, p. 42, cat. no. 180; Mezzetti and Mattaliano 1981, II,
p. 49; NM Cat. 1990, p. 327 (as Scarsella, manner of); Novelli 1991,
pp. 115–116, no. 1; Giumanini 1999, pp. 85, 184, (doc. 1), 197 (doc. 5);
Ghelfi 2005, pp. 263, 267.

The present work was originally the altarpiece in
the small church of Santa Croce in Ferrara. The
church was granted to the inquisitors in 1614 and
subsequently called the Oratorio della Crocetta
dell’Inquisizione. The last time the painting was
recorded as located in the church was in 1787. In
1798, during the time of the Napoleonic requisitions,
it was listed as a work of precious artistry
singled out for special protection. It was subsequently
“lost” until it resurfaced as part of the
Byström Collection. The painting shows the Byzantine
emperor Heraclius carrying the great relic,
which had fallen into the hands of the Persians,
back to Jerusalem in the year 629. Considering its
subject, Maria Angela Novelli views the painting
as perhaps the best example of the spirit of the
Counter-Reformation in Scarsellino’s oeuvre.¹

DP

1 Novelli 2008, pp. 181, 315, cat. no. 158.

Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 118:

TECHNICAL NOTES: The support consists of a single hardwood
board (poplar), which has been glued to a secondary board of
wood. The painting is cropped at the right edge. The gesso ground
is white, with a layer of red bole under the gilding. There is green
earth underpainting under the flesh colours. The gilded background
is slightly abraded, while the paint layer is in good condition, with
just a few retouches. Documented restorations: 1974: Consolidation
of flaking colour. Retouching of abrasions; 1988: Consolidation
of flaking colour. Retouching

PROVENANCE: Agnew’s Art Gallery, London 1947; Gift of the
Friends of the Nationalmuseum, 1947.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Coor-Achenbach 1956–57, pp. 19–21; NM Cat.
1958, p. 3 (as Andrea di Bartolo); Coor-Achenbach 1961, pp. 55–60;
Zeri 1977, pp. 87–88; NM Cat. 1990, p. 4 (as Andrea di Bartolo); Af
Burén 2011, pp. 97–98; Weppelmann 2011, p. 367; Sidén and Herder
2012, p. 214.

EXHIBITED: Mariabilder, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 1988; Passioner:
Konst och känslor genom fem sekler, Nationalmuseum,
Stockholm, 2012.

The scene, representing the Lamentation of
Christ, is depicted according to a pictorial tradition
that extends from early medieval representations
to Giotto and Duccio, with the body of
Christ taken down from the cross and mourned
by his friends and family. In the centre of the
scene Mary holds her son in her arms, accompanied
by the three Marys and John the Apostle.
From the left, Joseph of Arimathea enters with
the shroud to wrap around Christ’s body. The
bright and vivid colours of the panel contrast with
the raised hands and the powerful expressions of
the mourners’ faces.

The painting was purchased in 1947 on the
initiative of Crown Prince Gustav Adolf and on
the recommendation of Kenneth Clark, Lionello
Venturi and Bernard Berenson,¹ and was the
last of the early Italian paintings paid for by the
Nationalmusei Vänner. It was attributed to the
Sienese painter Andrea di Bartolo, and although
the attribution has been questioned by Giuseppe
Fiocco, who has suggested a contemporary of
Andrea’s, Taddeo di Bartolo (1362–1422),² there
seems to be no reason to question it being a
work of Andrea, as it shows great similarities
to the rest of his oeuvre, and especially to his
predella piece Christ on the Road to Calvary in
the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection in Pedralbes,
dated 1415–20 . As early as 1961, Gertrude
Coor-Achenbach connected that panel with the
present painting. Linking the two works to The
Crucifixion in the Metropolitan Museum of Art
and The Resurrection in the Walters Art
Gallery in Baltimore [Fig. 4], she proposed a
reconstruction of a predella for a large altarpiece,
presumably for the church of San Donato in Siena.
³ In 1977 Federico Zeri suggested a painting
of The Betrayal of Judas, on the Paris art market
some years earlier, as the first picture of this narrative
sequence.⁴

As the measurements of the present painting
(54 x 49 cm) correspond almost exactly to the
Christ on the Road to Calvary (55 x 49 cm), and as
both scenes are surrounded by similar punched
ornamentation and have similar punched haloes
around their figures, these panels must have a
common origin in a narrative predella depicting
the Passion of Christ. The main scene of the
altarpiece is not known, but may have represented
the Coronation of the Virgin, as in Andrea’s
father’s altarpiece in Montalcino or his own
version of the scene in the Galleria Franchetti at
the Ca’ Dario, Venice.

JE

1 Af Burén 2010, pp. 97–98.

2 NM Archives, Nationalmusei Avdelningar, D4 eca:16,
“Måleri- och skulptursamlingens huvudinventarium över
oljemålningar”, NM 4463.

3 Coor-Achenbach 1961, pp. 55–60.

4 Zeri 1977, pp. 87–88.

Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, kat.nr. 120:

TECHNICAL NOTES: The support consists of two panels of wood
(poplar).There is one vertical crack running from the upper edge
from the left. There are tool marks on the verso. The gesso ground
is white and covers the whole surface. The original paint layer is
badly damaged and there is extensive retouching

PROVENANCE: San Francesco della Vigna, Venice; Louis XII of
France; Brugoli, Brescia; Charles Eastlake, London; Charles Butler
of Warren Wood, Hatfield; Christie’s London 1911; purchased 1911

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Vasari 1550, 1568; Sirén 1928, pp. 32–35; Berenson
1932, p. 34; Sirén 1933, pp. 89–91; Van Marle 1935; Gamba 1937,
p. 161; Pallucchini 1949, pp. 375–378; Berenson 1957; Pallucchini
1959; Grate 1962, pp. 64–65; Heinemann 1962; Bottari 1963; Robertson
1968; Ghiotto 1969; Pignatti 1969; Goffen 1989, pp. 83–88;
NM Cat. 1990, p. 21; Bjurström 1992, p. 187; Tempestini 1988; Lucco
and Villa 2008, p. 33.

EXHIBITED: Giovanni Bellini, Palazzo Ducale, Venice, no. 111, 1949;
Konstens Venedig, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm 1962–63; Giovanni
Bellini: Restaurering av ett mästerverk, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm,
1991–92; Passioner: Konst ochkänslor genom fem sekler, Nationalmuseum,
Stockholm, 2012.

In this late painting by Giovanni Bellini, the
body of Christ is depicted as if he is sitting in a
landscape, leaning against a rock formation with
plants growing out of the rocks. Christ is crowned
with thorns and has a halo of radiant rays of gold.
A white loincloth with detailed borders covers the
lower parts of his body. Although the painting is
in a rather poor condition due to earlier damage,
probably caused by fire, the features of the dead
Christ really express death and sorrow, and this is
a very good example of Bellini’s late style. On the
lower part of the rocks there is a painted paper
label with a signature, a typical sign of Bellini’s
paintings, but unfortunately now unidentifiable
owing to the severe damage.

The panel was acquired on the German art
market in 1911 on the initiative of Thorsten
Laurin. When it was incorporated in the Nationalmuseum’s
collection of Italian paintings,
the painting was attributed by Georg Goethe
to Bellini or his followers. It was in a very poor
condition at that time, with huge areas of overpainting,
probably carried out by the previous
owner Charles Eastlake (1836–1906). Bernard
Berenson once attributed the panel to Marco
Basaiti,¹ a follower of Bellini who also executed
similar paintings, now in the Galleria Carrara
in Bergamo and the Szépművészeti Múzeum in
Budapest. Although Basaiti’s paintings are very
close in subject and composition to the Nationalmuseum
panel, they are much harder and drier
in style and were probably executed after the
version in the Nationalmuseum. After extensive
restoration work on the initiative of Osvald Sirén,
undertaken by Gustaf Jaensson in 1927, much of
the original paint was revealed and the painting
was attributed with more certainty to Giovanni
Bellini.² This attribution has subsequently been
accepted by the research community, and there
is now a total consensus that this is an autograph
work by Bellini. In 1991 the painting underwent
a new restoration, this time carried out by David
Bull. This last renovation involved the removal of
previous overpaintings, and, though left in a partly
ruined state, the naked painting is now visible in
its full potential.

The subject follows a theme in Bellini’s oeuvre,
as several versions of Christ Crowned with Thorns
or the Pietà have been preserved. Among the earlier
versions we can count the Dead Christ Supported
by Two Putti in the Museo Correr in Venice and
the Dead Christ in the Museo Poldi-Pezzoli
in Milan, both showing Christ standing in a tomb
and dated to the 1450s. The version of the Dead
Christ in the crowning cimasa of the Pesaro altarpiece,
now in the Pinacoteca Vaticana, has some
resemblances to the present version, especially as
regards the composition of the dead body, as has
the grisaille painting of The Lamentation over the
Body of Christ in the Uffizi Gallery. Two other
prominent examples are the version of the Dead
Christ with Two Angels, now in the Gemäldegalerie,
Berlin, and the Dead Christ with Four Angels,
also called the Rimini Pietà, now in the Musei
Comunali, Rimini. I have argued that the
Rimini Pietà may have been executed as early as
the year of Sigismondo Malatesta’s death in 1468,³
and decades later the same theme was revived and
developed in the Nationalmuseum panel. In the
two earlier versions, the body of Christ is supported
by wonderful young angels or putti, but in the
Nationalmuseum painting he is left all alone, “and
it is the Lord himself who compels us to share his
pain and sorrow”,⁴ as Rona Goffen describes the
scene. The only living things present here are the
plants growing out of the rock, perhaps alluding to
the resurrection of Christ. As Goffen also points
out, the zigzag posture of the dead Christ suggests
the breaking of his body on the cross,⁵ and the
ruined state of the painting in some way even
intensifies the feeling of sorrow and compassion.

The painting was earlier identified with a
“Cristo morto” from the Palladio church of San
Francesco della Vigna, which according to Vasari
was given to the French king Louis XII by the
Franciscan frati minori.⁶ That painting must have
been presented to the king before 1507. But as the
Nationalmuseum panel has subsequently been
dated very late in Bellini’s career, this identification
has been questioned.⁷ Based on comparisons
with the earlier versions of the subject and the
close resemblances with, for example, the Baptism
of Christ in the church of Santa Corona in Vicenza
and the Head of Christ now in the National
Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, discussed in the
entry concerning NM 208 (cat. no. 6), together
with dates suggested by Goffen and Tempestini,⁸
this provenance can now be re-established and
the painting dated to 1507 as terminus ante quem.

JE

1 Berenson 1932.

2 Sirén 1933, pp. 89–91.

3 The provenance from the Tempio Malatestiano was

mentioned already by Vasari in 1550, but has been questioned

by more recent scholars. I have recently argued for

an early date and connected the commission with the death

of Sigismondo Malatesta in 1468, Eriksson 2002, p. 140.

4 Goffen 1989, p. 86.

5 Ibid., p. 84.

6 Vasari erroneously writes Louis XI: “Una similmente n’è in
San Michele di Murano, monasterio de’ monaci camaldolensi;
et in S. Francesco della Vigna, dove stanno frati del
Zoccolo, nella chiesa vecchia, era in un qudro un Cristo
morto, tanto bello que’ signori, essendo quello molto
celebrato a Lodovico Undicesimo re di Francia, furono
quasi forzati, domandolo egli con istanza, se ben mal
volentieri, a compiacernelo”, Vasari 1550; Vasari 1568. The
identification was launched by Gamba (1937), and later
accepted by Pallucchini (1949 and 1959), Berenson (1957),
Bottari (1963), Robertson (1968), Pignatti (1969) and
Tempestini (1998).

7 Bjurström 1992, p. 187.

8 Goffen 1989, p. 82; Tempestini 1998, p. 228 (no. 111).

Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 135:

TECHNICAL NOTES: The support is a single board of hardwood.
The board has been thinned and another thin board of wood
glued to the verso; later, a cradle has been attached. The panel is
cropped at the lower and upper edges. The panel is worm-eaten.
The gesso ground is white. The paint layer is partly overpainted,
and the retouches and overpaintings have been repeated on several
occasions. The paint layer in the Virgin’s dress is very thick
and there is a dense network of drying cracks that have been retouched
(shows clearly in infrared reflectography). The paint layer
is generally abraded. The varnish is very thick and yellowed. Documented
restorations: 1927: The thin panel reinforced. Removal of
varnish; 1934: Consolidation of flaking colour. Treatment of verso;
1978: Consolidation of paint layer. Filling and retouching. Adjustment
of cradle; 2012: Cleaning. Retouching and partial varnish.

PROVENANCE: Gift of Herman Rasch, 1927.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Sirén 1933, pp. 133–134; NM Cat. 1958, p. 74
(as Francesco Napoletano); Marani 1987; NM Cat. 1990, p. 135 (as
Francesco Napoletano); Fiorio 1998.

EXHIBITED: Passioner: Konst och känslor genom fem sekler,
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2012.

The Madonna and Child are seated on a throne
in front of a cloth of honour in a secular room.
She is dressed in a red robe and a blue mantle, the
latter turned dark and thick owing to the original
wax ground. The naked Christ Child turns his
eyes towards the viewer. Two angels are entering
the background of the scene, the one to the right
looking straight at the beholder. The room is
drawn in linear perspective, and the detailed windows
and a cupboard with bowls on a linen cloth
create a typical domestic setting of the early 16th
century, reminiscent of the interiors executed by
Flemish masters such as the Van Eyck brothers
and Rogier van der Weyden. As Sirén has stated
before, this is a clearly Northern setting, with
Leonardesque figures.¹

The painting was given to the Museum by
Herman Rasch in 1927 and attributed to Francesco
Napoletano some years later, an attribution
that is maintained in the 1990 Nationalmuseum
catalogue of European paintings.² Napoletano’s
best-known works are the Madonna and Child
with SS John the Baptist and Sebastian in Zürich,
the Madonna and Child in the Pinacoteca di
Brera, and the Madonna and Child, known as the
Madonna Lia, in the Castello Sforzesco in Milan.
As a close follower of Leonardo, he has
also been suggested as the painter of one of the
angels once surrounding the Virgin of the Rocks
altarpiece, now in the National Gallery in London.
This angel is similar in appearance to those
of the Nationalmuseum panel, although they are
executed on a much smaller scale.

As mentioned above, Francesco combines
Northern art with the new imagery of Leonardo
da Vinci. But in the present panel we can also
find details related to the Venetian art scene,
such as the throne and the cloth of honour, and
possibly also the relatively rich colours. As we
now know from archival sources that Francesco
died in Venice in 1501, this painting can be dated
to the late 1490s, with 1501 as terminus ante quem.
It may have been executed in Venice as one of his
final commissions.

JE

1 Sirén 1933, p. 133.

2 Ibid.; NM Cat. 1990, p. 135.

Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 136:

TECHNICAL NOTES: The painting support originally consisted of
two hardwood boards, glued together vertically. It was later transferred
to canvas. The lining canvas is glued to a hardwood panel,
to which a non-original stretcher is attached. The support has
a convex warp, probably after warping of the original panel. The
ground is white. On the arrow to the left of St Sebastian is the
signature “Petrus Perusinus pinxit”. There are many old retouches
and overpaintings, some of them probably due to damage caused
when the painting was transferred to canvas. There is a 3 cm wide
black painted border along the edges. The varnish is slightly yellowed.
Documented restorations: 1958: Removal of varnish and
overpaintings. Retouching. Varnish; 1974: Retouching of scratches.
Filling and retouching. Regeneration of varnish.

PROVENANCE: Private collection, Yorkshire c. 1750; Art dealer
Arthur Sully, London 1923; gift of the Friends of the Nationalmuseum,
1928.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Venturi 1923, pp. 265–268; Sirén 1929, pp. 22–
27; Rutter 1930, p. 62; Canuti 1931, p. 144; Van Marle 1933, p. 317;
Sirén 1933, pp. 79–84; Camesasca 1959, p. 56; Berenson 1968, p.
332; Castellaneta and Camesasca 1969; 90; Ferino Pagden 1982,
pp. 206–207; Ferino Pagden 1984, p. 119–122; Scarpellini 1984, p.
85; Wood 1988, pp. 162–165, 243–245; Wood 1989, pp. 8–18; NM
Cat. 1990, p. 271; Bjurström 1992, p. 259; Becherer 1997, pp. 77–81;
Garibaldi 1999, p. 110; Garibaldi 2004, pp. 115 f.; Af Burén 2011, p. 64;
Hojer 2012, p. 202.

EXHIBITED: Rafaels teckningar, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm,
1992; Kroppen: Konst och vetenskap, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm,
2005; Perugino: Raphael’s Master, Alte Pinakothek, Munich,
2011–12.

St Sebastian stands with both hands tied to a
tree, gazing up towards heaven. He is depicted
naked, except for a loincloth hanging loosely from
his hips. Only two arrows are shown, in his back
and his thigh, the latter carrying the signature
“PETRV S PERSVINVS PINXIT” in gold letters.
The saint’s left foot is shown in front of his right,
which together with his tied hands and S-curved
pose almost recalls a dance position. In the foreground,
several flowers and plants are reproduced
in a very accurate and realistic manner, all of them
probably symbolic representations of his martyrdom,
with the anemones and lilies standing for
the passion and martyrdom but also the triumph
of the saint. Sebastian is depicted in what seems
to be a Northern landscape with a background
painted in aerial perspective, with lighter shades
and the mountains painted in a light green-blue
tone; an early example of sfumato technique
achieved by the artist’s skills in oil painting. The
flowers in the foreground and the landscape in
the background indicate substantial inspiration
from Flemish paintings, and especially from
Hugo van der Goes’s important Portinari Altarpiece
(now in the Uffizi Gallery), which arrived
in Florence in 1483 and was installed in the
Portinari chapel in the Hospital of Santa Maria
Nuova the very same year. The impact of this
altarpiece was immense, and I would suggest that
Perugino’s painting of St Sebastian is one the first
examples of its influence.

Not only is the surrounding landscape based
on Northern art. Jeryldene Wood has also shown
that the composition of the painting and the pose
of the saint are based on a woodcut by Martin
Schongauer.¹ Perugino’s St Sebastian has more
of a central Italian lightness and a pose referring
to the dance of that time, but the overall composition
is certainly inspired by Schongauer or
by other Northern representations of the saint.
Another inspiration for the gentle S-curve of the
torso may be found in early representations of
the Flagellation, such as the Flagellation with Two
Angels by the Master of the Gubbio Cross.² Three
sketches of the saint exist in a book called “Perugino’s
sketchbook”, now in the Biblioteca Marciana
in Venice. These sketches seem to be
executed after Perugino’s original and now lost
sketches for the present painting, by an Umbrian
artist and possible follower of Perugino some time
in the early 16th century.³

St Sebastian (256–288) was a Roman soldier,
and was later appointed as captain of the Praetorian
Guard under the Emperors Diocletian and
Maximian. Sentenced to death for his Christian
faith, he was tied to a tree and shot with arrows
until he looked like an urchin, according to the
Legenda Aurea. He was rescued and presented
himself to Diocletian, who immediately had him
clubbed to death. Sebastian was buried outside
Rome, in a location that is now the site of the
church of San Sebastiano fuori le mura, where
he has been venerated as both a patron saint of
soldiers and a protector against the plague. There
are some early Christian representations of him
in mosaics in Rome and Ravenna, but it is not
until the Renaissance that he becomes a common
subject in the visual arts and is represented by
masters such as Antonello da Messina, Andrea
Mantegna and Sandro Botticelli, to mention just
a few.

St Sebastian is also quite a common motif in
Perugino’s oeuvre, and the very first work definitely
attributed to him is in fact a representation
of St Sebastian, a fresco in the church of Santa
Maria Assunta in Cerqueto near Perugia, dated
1478, and a precedent for his future commissions
for Pope Sixtus IV. Perugino represented the
saint in at least eleven different paintings, other
important examples being the Madonna with
Saints John the Baptist and Sebastian, formerly in
the church of San Domenico in Fiesole but now
in the Uffizi; St Sebastian in the Louvre and a
Bust of St Sebastian in the Hermitage Museum
in St Petersburg, both dated around 1495; and
an illumination on vellum in the British Library,
dated around 1500.

The Nationalmuseum St Sebastian was also
dated around the year 1500 by Venturi, Sirén
and others in the 1920s and 1930s,⁴ but in recent
publications the date has been changed to around
1485.⁵ And it is a matter of fact that the painting
is more rooted in the second half of the quattrocento,
a probable date for its execution being after
1483, when the Portinari Altarpiece was installed
in Florence, and most probably around the year
1485. The original provenance of the Nationalmuseum
panel is not known, but its relatively
tall, narrow format may indicate that it originally
served as a side wing of a polyptych or a pillar
decoration in a church, just like a St Sebastian by
Sandro Botticelli, now in the Gemäldegalerie in
Berlin.⁶

The painting has a British provenance going
back at least to the 1750s.⁷ In 1927 Osvald Sirén
found the panel on the British art market, and on
the recommendation of Sir Charles Holms and
Lionello Venturi it was acquired by the Museum
in 1928, with funding from the Friends of the
Nationalmuseum.⁸

JE

1 Wood 1989; Hojer 2012, p. 202.
2 Antenucci Becherer 1997, p. 150.
3 Two of these sketches were already mentioned by Venturi
1923, pp. 267–268.
4 Venturi 1923; Sirén 1933, pp. 79–84.
5 Scarpellini 1984, p. 85; Wood 1988, pp. 162–165; Wood 1989,
pp. 8–18; Hojer 2012, p. 202.
6 The original function of the painting has already been
proposed by Hojer 2012, p. 202.
7 Venturi 1923.
8 Af Burén 2011, p. 64.

Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 141:

TECHNICAL NOTES: The painting support is a hardwood board
(poplar). On the verso, two crossbars have been inserted horizontally
into the original board. There are some old cracks in the panel.
The gesso ground is white and covers the whole support. The paint
layer is abraded, with extensive retouching, in particular on the
figures. The background with architecture is well preserved. The
varnish is very thick and yellowed. Documented restoration: Consolidation
of flaking colour. Filling and retouching. Varnish.

PROVENANCE: Gift of Axel Beskow, 1926.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Sirén 1928, pp. 31–32; Sirén 1933, p. 30; Suida
1936, p. 534; Benezit 1957, p. 725; Mazzini 1957, p. 577; NM Cat.
1957, p. 39; Precerutti Garberi and Mucchi 1972, p. 36; Perissa Torrini
1980, pp. 78, 95; Bora 1982, p. 175; Giusti Leone and De Castris
1985, pp. 144, 169; Sricchia Santoro 1986, p. 227; Marani 1987, p. 130;
Marani 1988, p. 101; Giusti Leone and De Castris 1988, pp. 113, 127,
272; Carminati 1989, pp. 360, 365; NM Cat. 1990, p. 333; Morandotti
1991, p. 178; Perissa Torrini 1992, pp. 402, 412; Carminati 1994, pp.
180–182; Carminati 1998, pp. 305–324.

St Jerome is kneeling before a crucifix that is lying
on a cloth and two books, probably referring to
the Bible he translated from Greek and Hebrew
into Latin and carried with him in the desert.
He holds a stone with which to beat himself on
the chest. The vegetation is rich, profuse and
quite Leonardesque, far from the barren desert
landscape St Jerome is often portrayed in, as for
example in the version by Jacopo del Sellaio in the
Nationalmuseum (NM 2366, cat. no. 140).

The panel was given to the Museum in 1926
by Axel Beskow and subsequently attributed to
Cesare da Sesto by Osvald Sirén in 1928. In 1933
Sirén changed the attribution to Cesare da Sesto
in collaboration with Cesare Bernazzano, in
view of the Northern landscape with its Gothic
architecture in the background. This was widely
accepted and is still maintained in the 1990 Nationalmuseum
catalogue o f European paintings.¹
Annalisa Perissa Torrini has identified a preparatory
drawing for the St Jerome at Windsor Castle
[Fig. 1] and Marco Carminati has proposed a
drawing at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice
to be a preparatory drawing for the left arm of
the saint.²

Cesare da Sesto painted three different versions
of St Jerome. Apart from the Nationalmuseum
panel, there is one in the Pinacoteca di
Brera in Milan and another in the Southampton
Art Gallery. There are several copies of all three,
and at least five different 16th-century copies
of the Nationalmuseum panel,³ all painted on
canvas, which also suggests that the present panel
is the original. The original provenance of this
St Jerome is not known, but its Leonardesque appearance
points to it originating in Milan in the
early 1500s. It has earlier been linked to a short
visit to Milan in 1513–14, but is now considered to
have been painted in 1516 or 1517.⁴ In his monographic
study on Cesare, Carminati discusses the
dating of the Nationalmuseum panel at length
and maintains a date after the artist’s return to
Milan late in 1515.⁵

JE

1 For example, Suida 1936, p. 534; NM Cat. 1990.

2 Perissa Torrini 1980, pp. 78, 95; Carminati 1989, p. 365.

3 Carminati 1994, p. 182.

4 Perissa Torrini 1980, pp. 78, 95.

5 Carminati 1994, p. 181.

Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 143:

TECHNICAL NOTES: The support is a single thick hardwood
board (poplar), vertical in grain and slightly worm-eaten. The verso
and the edges are painted grey. The gesso ground is white and
there is a layer of red bole under the gilding. There is underpainting
with green earth under the flesh tones. The haloes of the saint and
bishop are incised. The painting is in good condition. Documented
restoration: 1950: Consolidation of paint layer.

PROVENANCE: Capella di San Lorenzo, Monastery Church of
Galuzzo; Art collector Edward Solly; gift of Herman Rasch, 1928.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Sirén 1929, pp. 13–18; Sirén 1933, pp. 27–28; Pudelko
1938, pp. 47–63; Oertel 1964, pp. 205–220; Van Waadenoijen
1974, pp. 82–91; Syre 1979; Van Waadenoijen 1983, p. 38; NM Cat.
1990, p. 339 (as Gherardo Starnina); Lenza 2011.

This is a fragment which originally formed a
part of a polyptych consisting of a corpus with
two wings. Judging from the angle at which St
Benedict is standing, it probably served as the
right wing, as the saint seems to be turning to
the central scene of the corpus. The two saints
are standing on a golden carpet or gold brocade,
achieved by sgraffito technique, and against a
gilded background. The bishop saint is dressed
in pontificals and a mitre, holding a crozier in his
left hand and raising his right hand in a blessing
gesture. He is wearing a white Carthusian cloak
and a mantle made of ultramarine blue with a
pattern of golden crosses and a green border with
plant ornamentation punched into the surface
of the painting, which gives the dress a plastic
texture. He has no significant attributes, but as
he has much in common with the depiction of St
Donatus of Arezzo (?–362) in Pietro Lorenzetti’s
Tarlati Polyptych in Santa Maria della Pieve in
Arezzo, dated around 1320, it has been suggested
that it is a depiction of the same saint.¹ Subsequently,
the saint has been suggested to be St Zenobius
(337–417), the first bishop of Florence and
a patron saint of the city.² But as St Zenobius did
not belong to any monastic order, the Carthusian
cloak he is wearing has always been confusing to
researchers, and the recent identification of the
saint with one of the first Carthusian saints, St
Hugh of Lincoln (1135–1200), seems to be most
convincing.³ Although we can now identify the
figure with St Hugh, the painter seems to have
been inspired by Lorenzetti’s depiction of St Donatus
in Arezzo.

In contrast to St Hugh of Lincoln, the saint
to the right of him is easier to identify. As one of
the most important saints for the entire monastic
community, St Benedict of Nursia (480–543) is
holding a book in his left hand and a birch rod in
his right, common attributes in other depictions
of this saint.⁴ St Benedict has the same features
and follows the same type as the depiction of the
saint in a pinnacle attributed to the Master of the
Fogg Pietà (NM 6862, cat. no. 130) and Nardo di
Cione’s depiction of St Benedict in the Nationalmuseum
(NM 2259, cat. no. 122), although he is
dressed in a dark cloak instead of the white one he
is wearing in the version by Nardo.

When the painting was donated to the Museum
in 1928 it was attributed by Osvald Sirén
to the anonymous Maestro del Bambino Vispo
(Master of the Lively Child).⁵ As early as 1904,
Sirén had attributed a number of paintings with
a conspicuously lively Christ Child to an artist
he named the Maestro del Bambino Vispo,
described as a pupil of Lorenzo Monaco.⁶ The
attribution was widely accepted, and in an article
from 1964, Robert Oertel connected the painting
to the Laurentius altarpiece, which he thought
was commissioned by Cardinal Pietro Corsini
in 1391 and executed for the cathedral of Santa
Maria del Fiore in Florence some thirty years
later.⁷ The panels from the Laurentius altarpiece
are dispersed between several European museums
and the central piece is only preserved in
two fragments, depicting the Virgin’s head and a
head of an angel.⁸ Based on the punched brocade
pattern and other stylistic evidence, Oertel made
a plausible reconstruction of the altarpiece.⁹ In
that reconstruction, the Nationalmuseum panel
serves as the right wing and the panel with SS
Mary Magdalene and Lawrence and the patron
himself, now in Berlin, is presented as the left
wing. Since then, Jeanne van Waadenoijen
has identified the Maestro del Bambino Vispo
with the Florentine painter Gherardo Starnina,
and the altarpiece and the Nationalmuseum panel
have subsequently been re-attributed to him.¹⁰
As mentioned above, there are great similarities
between the depictions of St Benedict by Starnina
and Nardo di Cione, and Starnina seems to
have been inspired by the work of Nardo, Agnolo
Gaddi and Spinello Aretino. After a sojourn in
Valencia he was influenced by the Spanish tradition
and became an important exponent of the
International Gothic Style in Florence.¹¹

Based on the fact that the original polyptych
must have been about 2.40 metres wide and the
width of the pillar under which Cardinal Corsini
obtained the right to erect the altar is only 1.13
metres, Waadenoijen has also questioned whether
the altarpiece was in fact commissioned for the
Duomo in Florence. With the representation of
the Carthusian St Hugh in mind, she suggests an
original provenance in the Carthusian monastery
of San Galuzzo, south of Florence.¹² The monastery
was founded by the Acciaiuoli family in the
12th century and the church was dedicated to the
patron St Lawrence. An altarpiece which Vasari
attributed to Fra Angelico seems to correspond
to the present one, although he confused St
Hugh with the Florentine St Zenobius.¹³ The
altarpiece was commissioned by Cardinal Angelo
Acciaiuoli and the work was initiated in 1404 and
paid for in 1407.¹⁴ With this change of date, the
identification of the Maestro del Bambino Vispo
with Gherardo Starnina (1387–1412) is further
strengthened, and with the recent identification
of St Hugh, the Nationalmuseum panel in fact
becomes the main key to the original provenance
of this important altarpiece.

JE

1 Sirén 1929, pp. 13–18; Sirén 1933, pp. 27–28.
2 This was proposed by as early a writer as Pudelko 1938, pp.
47–63.
3 Van Waadenoijen, 1983.
4 St Benedict founded twelve communities for monks at
Subiaco before moving to Monte Cassino in southern Italy.
He is considered to be one of the most important saints for
the monastic orders, and although he did not found any
monastic order himself, his rule became one of the most
influential religious rules in western Christendom.
5 Sirén 1929, pp. 13–18; Sirén 1933, pp. 27–28.
6 Osvald 1904b, pp. 349 ff.
7 Oertel 1964, pp. 205–220.
8 The three predella panels are dispersed between the
Galleria Colonna, Rome, the Musée Municipal, Douai, and
the Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan; a panel with Sts Mary
Magdalene and Lawrence is in the Staatliche Museen,
Berlin; three panels for the cimasa are preserved in
Städelsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt, and the fragment
with the head of the Madonna is in the Staatliche Gemäldegalerie
in Dresden. See Oertel 1964, pp. 205–220.
9 Oertel 1964, pp. 205–220.
10 Van Waadenoijen 1974, pp. 82–91. For Starnina’s oeuvre, see
also Syre 1979; Van Waadenoijen 1983; Weppelmann 2005,
pp. 143–147.
11 For recent research on Starnina, see Lenza 2011.
12 Van Waadenoijen 1983, pp. 55–57.
13 Giorgio Vasari, Le Vite…, “Vita di Fra Angelico”.
14 ASF, Conventi Soppressi, nos. 51 f., 226. See also Van
Waadenoijen 1983, p. 56.