Lot Essay
This previously unknown devotional panel, which fuses Italian and northern influences so brilliantly, was first attributed to Antonello on the basis of photographs by Everett Fahy (letter of 22 May 2002), who subsequently inspected it and confirmed his opinion that it is an early work, painted before the artist left Sicily for Venice. He noted that the unusual form of the haloes is very similar to those of the damaged Annunciation of 1474 from Palazzolo Acreide at Syracuse, Museo Regionale di Palazzo Bellomo and suggested a comparison with the Saint Rosalia of Palermo at Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery, in which there are evident parallels both in the handling of the draperies and in the sharpness of silhouette. It may also be observed that the types are precisely conformable with those of the young Antonello. The praying hands and heavy folds of the habit over the arm of the donor find an analogy in the Abraham of the Abraham and the Three Angels recorded in a partial copy by Lieferinxe at Denver (see, for example, F.S. Santoro, Antonello e l'Europa, Milan, 1986, fig. 10), the extant portion of which (Reggio Calabria) is a pertinent parallel for Antonello's exquisite handling of drapery on a small scale. The drapery also compares closely with that on a similar scale in Antonello's London Crucifixion. For the face of Christ on the verso there would seem to be clear parallels in the execution of the eyebrows and contour of the nose - and between the crown of thorns and the stalks of the roses - with the Baltimore picture.
Fahy's attribution of the panel to Antonello has found support, on the basis of photographs, from a number of other scholars. Mauro Lucco fully agrees with the attribution (email of 25 September 2002 from Peter Humfrey) and considers that the picture shows closer links with Provence and Spain than with Flanders, and thus casts new light on Antonello's stylistic origins. Andrea de Marchi (email of 22 October 2002) observes that the quality of the picture is 'vertiginosa', and regards it as a work of fundamental importance of Antonello's pre-Venetian phase. He, however, suggests that although its subject anticipates that of the theme which was to mean much to Antonello, the verso may be by another hand, of the calibre of Tommaso da Vigilia. Carl Brandon Strehlke accepts Antonello's authorship of both recto and verso.
Joanne Wright, who has made a particular study of the young Antonello ('Antonello in formazione: un riesame della "Crocifissione" di Bucarest', Arte Veneta, 45, pp. 20-31 and 'Antonello da Messina, The origin of his style and technique', Art History, 3, 1, 1980, pp. 41-60), has considered the picture in detail, and concludes that this is a very early work, probably from before 1450, by Antonello. Her views are set out in detail below.
Miklos Boskovits (letter of 17 November 2002), had suggested that the recto and verso might be by different hands and finds it difficult to insert the panel in Antonello's oeuvre, noting independently the parallel of both the halo with the Syracuse Annunciation and the resemblance of the framing of the verso to the detail of the Virgin's desk in the same picture. Mauro Natale (letter of 24 February 2002), who noted the similarity of the haloes to those of Colantonio's S. Lorenzo Maggiore retable (Naples, Pinocoteca Nazionale di Capodimonte) and Antonello's Syracuse Annunciation, suggested an attribution to the Neapolitan School, circa 1480-1500. Keith Christiansen is hesitant about the attribution to Antonello, concurring in noting Provencal affinities in the panel, and noting analogies with the haloes of the Syracusa Annunciation and parallels for the types of the Madonna and Child in the San Gregorio altarpiece (letter of 4 November 2002).
David Ekserdjian points to compositional parallels with Benedetto da Maiano's popular relief of the Madonna and Child with the Infant Baptist, but while the resemblance is not so precise that any mutual dependence can be assumed, it is perhaps suggestive that the Tuscan sculptor was in Naples in 1473.
Joanne Wright
A Double-sided devotional panel with Madonna and Child with a Franciscan Donor and Ecce Homo
The first striking thing about this little panel is that the two images (front and back) are oddly dissimilar. This could be used as an argument against their association with one artist, far less one great artist, yet the more one looks, the more one sees elements on both sides of the panel which bring one back and back again to early Antonello. My conclusion, after examining the panel in detail, is that it is a very early work by the artist (perhaps even from before 1450) and is actually a fascinating compendium of the early influences on him. It would make a wonderful subject for a study of the way in which the young artistic identity was formed from a variety of stylistic trials that only later become integrated into the maturing artistic personality.
My first instincts were that it spoke of north Italy or southern France (Provence) more than of Sicily, but as I began to look more closely the attractions of linking it with early Antonello emerged clearly.
Madonna and Child with Franciscan donor
The head of the Virgin has something in common with that of the tiny Magdalen in the Bucharest Crucifixion (they almost look like sisters) and she is also similar in type to the Virgin from the Annunciation in Syracuse (Palazzo Bellomo) and the Annunciata at Munich (Alte Pinakotek). There seems to be a penchant for a particular physiognomic type that links all four of these very differently-scaled female figures. There are two sheets of drawings, too (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lehmann Collection, and Paris, Louvre, Cabinet des Dessins), that are associated with Antonelllo's early career and that show a group of heavily-draped women. The figure types are similar here also.
The hands of the Virgin, tiny with spindly fingers as she holds the baby almost nervously, also show similarities to those in the Bucharest Crucifixion - in this case perhaps particularly the outstretched hands of the grieving Saint John. The drapery covering the Virgin's head also bears similarities to those of the female mourners at the Crucifixion. But the "crumpled drapery " style of the outer mantle, which obscures rather than defines the form beneath, is fussier than that of the Bucharest picture, although highlights along the edges of the folds are defined in a similar way. It is, in some ways, more like the unworn cloak of Saint Jerome (Reggio Calabria) in its complexity of folds. The Christ Child's toes catch the light in exactly the same way as the toes of Christ in the Bucharest Crucifixion too; this handling of light also recurs in the late Crucifixions (London and Antwerp).
The baby's proportions are very odd, but that is a charge that can also be brought against the baby in the S. Gregorio polyptych - although I suspect there has been a lot of fairly imaginative repainting in that work, as the panels are in extremely unfortunate condition. But if one focuses on the set of the features, there is something not dissimilar to the S. Gregorio or the S. Cassiano babies or even the Benson/Mackay one in Washington - again, almost as if they belong to the same family. As for the baby in the Madonna and Child in the National Gallery, London, which is supposed to be an early work - it is not at all like the others, with its fully dressed Christ a mannikin rather than a 'real' baby, and I have long held doubts about the attribution of that work. It looks more Spanish than anything else and I suspect that it is a later provincial variant, with the Madonna modelled on The Benson/Mackay Madonna (Washington)of the mid-1470s.
The Virgin is dressed in a pink mantle with a dark green dress beneath. These colours are generally rather uncommon but they are used by Antonello for his San Gregorio Madonna, although in reverse (the outer mantle is green and the under-dress is pink). Are we here looking at a palette the artist was fond enough of to choose to use it again later and on a grander scale? The edge of the sleeve is handled in a comparable way to that of Santa Rosalia (Baltimore). The Child's drapery across his loins catches the light beautifully and creates the effect of a flimsy translucent material.
The handling of certain details has similarities to the little Ecce Homo discovered by Zeri in a private collection in New York and announced at the Antonello conference in Messina in 1981; it, too, is tiny - about 15 x 10 cm. The hair of the baby falling onto his forehead and the wisp of escaping hair from under the Virgin's veil are not unlike the details of Christ's hair on the brow and as it falls loosely onto his shoulders. It is perhaps odd to compare the torso of an Ecce Homo with that of an infant Christ but I note, en passant, that the painting of the nipples and the navel too (in the case of the baby) are very understated (though this could, of course, be because of surface losses). Zeir's Ecce Homo has a parapet in front of him very similar to that which sets the Madonna, Child and donor back in space with the same high-ish viewpoint with the light falling on the flat surface from above.
As for the little Franciscan donor there is nothing really comparable in Antonello's acknowledged oeuvre because all the extant portraits are on a quite different scale, three-quarter face, and bust-length with no arms. But he is certainly very strongly characterised with his long nose and sloping profile and one feels that he must be a good likeness of the sitter. Antonello developed a recorded reputation for being able to take a good likeness.
Furthermore, Antonello was, throughout his life, associated with his local Franciscan convent at Santa Maria del Gesù Superiore. He is believed to have been a lay brother of the order and he was buried in their habit at their monastery church of Santa Maria del Gesù Inferiore, inside the city walls. So if we give the panel to him, it is possible that the donor here was someone he knew personally - maybe even the Father Superior of the local convento at Santa Maria del Gesù itself.
The haloes of both the Madonna and Child and Christ in the Ecce Homo are similar to those of the Syracuse Annunciation, the only other Antonellian example of that heavily-gilded halo style. The halo of the Child and of the Ecce Homo on the verso are 'quartered' and coloured with red as well as gilding whilst that of the Madonna is of a different, more uniform, design.
Ecce Homo
The halo design here is very sculptural and employs a motif used on the priedieu of the Syracuse Virgin Annunciate. My first impression was that this was very French-gothic in character. Christ is much more passive than in any of the Antonello Ecce Homo group, which all have a more agonised, recently-flagellated look. Their direct gaze confronts the spectator directly with the notion of His sacrifice. But they are all much later - the larger ones, all measuring approximately 40 cm. (New York, Genoa, Paris), are all from the early-mid 1470s. The tiny one mentioned above (Private Collection, New York), which is on almost exactly the same scale as this image, is certainly much earlier, from somewhere in the 1450s.
If one looks at the present panel alongside Antonello's early works I think Christ here is not dissimilar in type to the Christ figure in the Bucharest Crucifixion - He, too, has a rather French-gothic appearance (although His head is only millimetres high). The Christ on the Cross in the Saint Jerome at Reggio Calabria is also gothic in character. But one of the most striking things is how much the Christ here resembles the Norman Sicilian physiognomically - the fairish-haired, aquiline-featured, light-bearded type one still sees today in Sicilian towns and villages alongside their swarthier, more southern mediterranean compatriots. The Baltimore Santa Rosalia also resembles this type.
And there does seem to be a similarity (although again on a very different scale) between this figure and Santa Rosalia (which is the only one of the early images of single female figures - saints and Virgins - that rings true for me). The set of the features seems comparable (but that may be largely because of the downward gaze), as does the relationship between the head and the shoulders (superior I think in the little Christ, but Santa Rosalia is fairly badly rubbed). The features are small and neat and a very delicate incised line defines the outline of the features. The eyebrows in both are suggested with great subtlety. The male figure by Antonello that this Christ most closely resembles physiognomically, with his downcast eyes and small mouth is San Gregorio (Palermo - one of the three panels of the Church Doctors).
The crown of thorns is very "expressionist", spiky and wounding, organically green which tonally blends beautifully with the rest of the image.
The treatment of the trompe l'oeil stone surround might be likened to the later usage of this device for the Saint Jerome (London, National Gallery) and the interest in the spatial organisation of the figure behind the picture plane through the use of the surround (and indeed the parapet on the other side of the panel) is, of course, very Antonellian.
This is an exquisite little image and the figure does seem to fuse that northern gothic-ness with an instinctive feel for the volume of the head and shoulders that even early on in his career characterises Antonello's individual style.
At first I was perplexed that the two sides did not altogether add up as a completely unified devotional image, but I believe that this may well be a consequence of the artist's youth. The complete work seems to me to read like a compendium of all the issues that interest the young Antonello and all the influences he has been looking at and absorbing, that need time to mature before they become fully integrated into an individual artistic personality. So to convince as an Antonello it has to be from very early in his career. I would suggest circa 1450 or perhaps even earlier.
Fahy's attribution of the panel to Antonello has found support, on the basis of photographs, from a number of other scholars. Mauro Lucco fully agrees with the attribution (email of 25 September 2002 from Peter Humfrey) and considers that the picture shows closer links with Provence and Spain than with Flanders, and thus casts new light on Antonello's stylistic origins. Andrea de Marchi (email of 22 October 2002) observes that the quality of the picture is 'vertiginosa', and regards it as a work of fundamental importance of Antonello's pre-Venetian phase. He, however, suggests that although its subject anticipates that of the theme which was to mean much to Antonello, the verso may be by another hand, of the calibre of Tommaso da Vigilia. Carl Brandon Strehlke accepts Antonello's authorship of both recto and verso.
Joanne Wright, who has made a particular study of the young Antonello ('Antonello in formazione: un riesame della "Crocifissione" di Bucarest', Arte Veneta, 45, pp. 20-31 and 'Antonello da Messina, The origin of his style and technique', Art History, 3, 1, 1980, pp. 41-60), has considered the picture in detail, and concludes that this is a very early work, probably from before 1450, by Antonello. Her views are set out in detail below.
Miklos Boskovits (letter of 17 November 2002), had suggested that the recto and verso might be by different hands and finds it difficult to insert the panel in Antonello's oeuvre, noting independently the parallel of both the halo with the Syracuse Annunciation and the resemblance of the framing of the verso to the detail of the Virgin's desk in the same picture. Mauro Natale (letter of 24 February 2002), who noted the similarity of the haloes to those of Colantonio's S. Lorenzo Maggiore retable (Naples, Pinocoteca Nazionale di Capodimonte) and Antonello's Syracuse Annunciation, suggested an attribution to the Neapolitan School, circa 1480-1500. Keith Christiansen is hesitant about the attribution to Antonello, concurring in noting Provencal affinities in the panel, and noting analogies with the haloes of the Syracusa Annunciation and parallels for the types of the Madonna and Child in the San Gregorio altarpiece (letter of 4 November 2002).
David Ekserdjian points to compositional parallels with Benedetto da Maiano's popular relief of the Madonna and Child with the Infant Baptist, but while the resemblance is not so precise that any mutual dependence can be assumed, it is perhaps suggestive that the Tuscan sculptor was in Naples in 1473.
Joanne Wright
A Double-sided devotional panel with Madonna and Child with a Franciscan Donor and Ecce Homo
The first striking thing about this little panel is that the two images (front and back) are oddly dissimilar. This could be used as an argument against their association with one artist, far less one great artist, yet the more one looks, the more one sees elements on both sides of the panel which bring one back and back again to early Antonello. My conclusion, after examining the panel in detail, is that it is a very early work by the artist (perhaps even from before 1450) and is actually a fascinating compendium of the early influences on him. It would make a wonderful subject for a study of the way in which the young artistic identity was formed from a variety of stylistic trials that only later become integrated into the maturing artistic personality.
My first instincts were that it spoke of north Italy or southern France (Provence) more than of Sicily, but as I began to look more closely the attractions of linking it with early Antonello emerged clearly.
Madonna and Child with Franciscan donor
The head of the Virgin has something in common with that of the tiny Magdalen in the Bucharest Crucifixion (they almost look like sisters) and she is also similar in type to the Virgin from the Annunciation in Syracuse (Palazzo Bellomo) and the Annunciata at Munich (Alte Pinakotek). There seems to be a penchant for a particular physiognomic type that links all four of these very differently-scaled female figures. There are two sheets of drawings, too (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lehmann Collection, and Paris, Louvre, Cabinet des Dessins), that are associated with Antonelllo's early career and that show a group of heavily-draped women. The figure types are similar here also.
The hands of the Virgin, tiny with spindly fingers as she holds the baby almost nervously, also show similarities to those in the Bucharest Crucifixion - in this case perhaps particularly the outstretched hands of the grieving Saint John. The drapery covering the Virgin's head also bears similarities to those of the female mourners at the Crucifixion. But the "crumpled drapery " style of the outer mantle, which obscures rather than defines the form beneath, is fussier than that of the Bucharest picture, although highlights along the edges of the folds are defined in a similar way. It is, in some ways, more like the unworn cloak of Saint Jerome (Reggio Calabria) in its complexity of folds. The Christ Child's toes catch the light in exactly the same way as the toes of Christ in the Bucharest Crucifixion too; this handling of light also recurs in the late Crucifixions (London and Antwerp).
The baby's proportions are very odd, but that is a charge that can also be brought against the baby in the S. Gregorio polyptych - although I suspect there has been a lot of fairly imaginative repainting in that work, as the panels are in extremely unfortunate condition. But if one focuses on the set of the features, there is something not dissimilar to the S. Gregorio or the S. Cassiano babies or even the Benson/Mackay one in Washington - again, almost as if they belong to the same family. As for the baby in the Madonna and Child in the National Gallery, London, which is supposed to be an early work - it is not at all like the others, with its fully dressed Christ a mannikin rather than a 'real' baby, and I have long held doubts about the attribution of that work. It looks more Spanish than anything else and I suspect that it is a later provincial variant, with the Madonna modelled on The Benson/Mackay Madonna (Washington)of the mid-1470s.
The Virgin is dressed in a pink mantle with a dark green dress beneath. These colours are generally rather uncommon but they are used by Antonello for his San Gregorio Madonna, although in reverse (the outer mantle is green and the under-dress is pink). Are we here looking at a palette the artist was fond enough of to choose to use it again later and on a grander scale? The edge of the sleeve is handled in a comparable way to that of Santa Rosalia (Baltimore). The Child's drapery across his loins catches the light beautifully and creates the effect of a flimsy translucent material.
The handling of certain details has similarities to the little Ecce Homo discovered by Zeri in a private collection in New York and announced at the Antonello conference in Messina in 1981; it, too, is tiny - about 15 x 10 cm. The hair of the baby falling onto his forehead and the wisp of escaping hair from under the Virgin's veil are not unlike the details of Christ's hair on the brow and as it falls loosely onto his shoulders. It is perhaps odd to compare the torso of an Ecce Homo with that of an infant Christ but I note, en passant, that the painting of the nipples and the navel too (in the case of the baby) are very understated (though this could, of course, be because of surface losses). Zeir's Ecce Homo has a parapet in front of him very similar to that which sets the Madonna, Child and donor back in space with the same high-ish viewpoint with the light falling on the flat surface from above.
As for the little Franciscan donor there is nothing really comparable in Antonello's acknowledged oeuvre because all the extant portraits are on a quite different scale, three-quarter face, and bust-length with no arms. But he is certainly very strongly characterised with his long nose and sloping profile and one feels that he must be a good likeness of the sitter. Antonello developed a recorded reputation for being able to take a good likeness.
Furthermore, Antonello was, throughout his life, associated with his local Franciscan convent at Santa Maria del Gesù Superiore. He is believed to have been a lay brother of the order and he was buried in their habit at their monastery church of Santa Maria del Gesù Inferiore, inside the city walls. So if we give the panel to him, it is possible that the donor here was someone he knew personally - maybe even the Father Superior of the local convento at Santa Maria del Gesù itself.
The haloes of both the Madonna and Child and Christ in the Ecce Homo are similar to those of the Syracuse Annunciation, the only other Antonellian example of that heavily-gilded halo style. The halo of the Child and of the Ecce Homo on the verso are 'quartered' and coloured with red as well as gilding whilst that of the Madonna is of a different, more uniform, design.
Ecce Homo
The halo design here is very sculptural and employs a motif used on the priedieu of the Syracuse Virgin Annunciate. My first impression was that this was very French-gothic in character. Christ is much more passive than in any of the Antonello Ecce Homo group, which all have a more agonised, recently-flagellated look. Their direct gaze confronts the spectator directly with the notion of His sacrifice. But they are all much later - the larger ones, all measuring approximately 40 cm. (New York, Genoa, Paris), are all from the early-mid 1470s. The tiny one mentioned above (Private Collection, New York), which is on almost exactly the same scale as this image, is certainly much earlier, from somewhere in the 1450s.
If one looks at the present panel alongside Antonello's early works I think Christ here is not dissimilar in type to the Christ figure in the Bucharest Crucifixion - He, too, has a rather French-gothic appearance (although His head is only millimetres high). The Christ on the Cross in the Saint Jerome at Reggio Calabria is also gothic in character. But one of the most striking things is how much the Christ here resembles the Norman Sicilian physiognomically - the fairish-haired, aquiline-featured, light-bearded type one still sees today in Sicilian towns and villages alongside their swarthier, more southern mediterranean compatriots. The Baltimore Santa Rosalia also resembles this type.
And there does seem to be a similarity (although again on a very different scale) between this figure and Santa Rosalia (which is the only one of the early images of single female figures - saints and Virgins - that rings true for me). The set of the features seems comparable (but that may be largely because of the downward gaze), as does the relationship between the head and the shoulders (superior I think in the little Christ, but Santa Rosalia is fairly badly rubbed). The features are small and neat and a very delicate incised line defines the outline of the features. The eyebrows in both are suggested with great subtlety. The male figure by Antonello that this Christ most closely resembles physiognomically, with his downcast eyes and small mouth is San Gregorio (Palermo - one of the three panels of the Church Doctors).
The crown of thorns is very "expressionist", spiky and wounding, organically green which tonally blends beautifully with the rest of the image.
The treatment of the trompe l'oeil stone surround might be likened to the later usage of this device for the Saint Jerome (London, National Gallery) and the interest in the spatial organisation of the figure behind the picture plane through the use of the surround (and indeed the parapet on the other side of the panel) is, of course, very Antonellian.
This is an exquisite little image and the figure does seem to fuse that northern gothic-ness with an instinctive feel for the volume of the head and shoulders that even early on in his career characterises Antonello's individual style.
At first I was perplexed that the two sides did not altogether add up as a completely unified devotional image, but I believe that this may well be a consequence of the artist's youth. The complete work seems to me to read like a compendium of all the issues that interest the young Antonello and all the influences he has been looking at and absorbing, that need time to mature before they become fully integrated into an individual artistic personality. So to convince as an Antonello it has to be from very early in his career. I would suggest circa 1450 or perhaps even earlier.