The Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist

This hitherto unpublished painting constitutes an interesting addition to the relatively small corpus of Bartolomeo Schedone. Born in Modena, Schedone divided his activity between Parma, where he worked for the Farnese Court, and his nearby hometown of Formigine, where he was mostly engaged by the Estense Court. At the beginning of his short career, Schedone (or Schedoni, as he is also known) was involved together with Ercole dell'Abate in the decoration of the Palazzo Comunale in Modena town center. The recently restored frescoes are on the ceiling of the Sala del Vecchio Consiglio and depict a number of allegorical figures and stories from the Life of Coriolanus. The works, begun around 1605, were completed by August 1607. Around this time Schedone also produced a few small panels for the Estense Court, like this one, which is to be identified as the painting mentioned in the 1685 inventory of the Collection of Prince Cesare Ignazio d'Este: 'la Vergine, e il Bambino che tiene una Croce e S. Giovannino che fa cenno col dito' (The Madonna and Child holding a cross and the Infant John the Baptist pointing with a finger) (see G. Campori, Raccolta di cataloghi ed inventari inediti, Modena, 1870, p. 322). The very rare, preparatory drawing, formerly in the Collection of Padre Sebastiano Resta, is at Chatsworth in the Devonshire collection (fig. 1).