Christ in the house of Martha and Mary

When the drawing was first published, it was considered a work by Andrea Michieli Vicentino (1542-1617), but later recognized by Julien Stock as a work by Alessandro Maganza, following a suggestion of James Byam Show (in exhib. cat., 1980, op. cit.). Maganza was the most prominent member of a large family workshop active in Vicenza for several generations over fifty years. Many of the works produced in the bottega were signed collectively by Alessandro and his four sons with the signature ‘Alexander Maganza et filii fecerunt’ (S. Mason, ‘Per la grafica dei Maganza’, Arte e Documento, XIII, 1999, p. 211), which can make it difficult to distinguish the different hands within the workshop. Alessandro was an extremely prolific draftsman and his drawings, many of them in private and public collections, express his artistic abilities better than his painted works. This outstanding example cannot be connected to any of the known paintings by the artist and its subject remains elusive. Formerly called the Marriage at Cana, more recently it has been interpreted as Christ in the house of Martha and Mary (E. Baseggio Omiccioli in exhib. cat., 2011, op. cit.). The moment depicted by the artist is when Christ enters the two sisters’ house, here represented as an elegant Venetian palazzo. It was Maganza’s predilection to choose his subjects from rare episodes in the Gospel and interpret them in unusual ways.

The drawing can be compared with other similarly large compositions by the artist, such as the Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence in the British Museum (inv. 1910,0212.38; see O. Matarrese, ‘Appunti sulla Formazione di Alessandro Maganza disegnatore e qualche aggiunta di Giambattista il Giovane’, Association des historiens de l’art italien, IV, 1997-1998, pp. 25-28, fig. 2).