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Lot Essay
Previously unpublished, this Pietà is a significant addition to Vasari's corpus of paintings. Representing the moment following Christ's Deposition, it shows the Virgin seated before the cross, mourning the loss of her Son. His slumped body is resting at her feet; at his side lies the crown of thorns, one of the instruments of his Passion. As related in the Gospels, the scene is shrouded in darkness with the sun and moon obscured. It is typical of the smaller-scale devotional paintings that Vasari made for friends and private patrons in and outside Florence during the earlier years of his career and in particular prior to his engagement as court artist to Duke Cosimo de' Medici in Florence in 1555. Vasari kept account books, called the Ricordanze, in which he recorded most of his commissions on an annual basis, including brief descriptions of the works and their prices, the earliest entry dating from 1527 and the last from 1572, two years before his death (G. Vasari, op. cit., pp. 874-884.). The descriptions in the Ricordanze - usually more precise and comprehensive when it came to larger or official commissions than smaller private ones - have enabled art historians identify precisely most of Vasari's extant paintings.
This work, too, appears to be documented in Vasari's Ricordanze. More specifically, it is most likely identifiable as one of two paintings that Vasari made in 1549 for Ludovico da Ragugia, or Ragusa, a Florentine merchant, for the price of thirty scudi. Vasari's entry reads:
'I record that on 8 January 1549 I was commissioned two paintings by Messer Ludovico da Ragugia, merchant in Florence, each of them one braccia in height; one of them was to show a Madonna and Child with San Giovanni Battista, San Giuseppe and Santa Anna, and the other Christ Our Lord, lying dead at the feet of our Virgin, who cries over Him, with the obscuration of the sun and the moon' ['Ricordo, come a di 8 di Gennaio 1549 mi fu allogato duo quadri da messer Lodovico da Ragugia, merchante in Fiorenza, duo quadri di braccia uno daltezza luno [=each]. Inequali si aveva a dipignere in una uno la Nostra Donna. Et inell altro il Nostro Signore Giesu X° morto a pie della Nostra Donna, che lo piangessi, con la oscuratione del sole et della luna. E quali finiti che fussero mi promesse dare per pagamento dessi scudi trenta doro.'] (ibid., p. 868, no. 189).
While Vasari's account of the first picture is too vague to identify it with any known work, that of the Pietà, unusually precise in the description of the subject-matter, matches the composition of the present painting exactly. In addition, the measurements mentioned in the Ricordanze (1 braccio fiorentino = approximately 58.3 cm.) correspond closely with those of the picture, thus leaving little doubt as to its identification as the Pietà made for Ludovico da Ragugia in 1549.
A few years earlier, in 1542, Vasari had painted a larger and iconographically more complex version of the Pietà for his friend and patron, the Florentine banker and collector Bindo Altoviti (1491-1557), then living in exile in Rome (fig. 1). A member of the Florentine nobility, Altoviti lived in Rome close to the Vatican, where he was banker of the Curia and also held the post of Depositario della Fabbrica di San Pietro. He was a strong opponent of the Medici in Florence yet at the same time an important collector of works by such Florentine artists as Raphael, Cellini, Vasari, and Salviati (for a comprehensive analysis of this Pietà and Altoviti's role as collector and patron see L. Corti, 'La Pietà di Vasari per Bindo Altoviti' in Ad Alessandro Conti, Quaderni del seminario di storia della critica d'arte, no. 6, Pisa, 1996, pp. 147-164).
In 1540, Altoviti had commissioned from Vasari an altarpiece of the Allegory of the Immaculate Conception for his family chapel in SS. Apostoli, Florence, one of the painter's most successful works (L. Corti, 'Vasari: catologo completo', I gigli dell'arte, 3, Florence, 1989, no. 20). The Altoviti Pietà, itself rediscovered only in recent times (sold Christie's, New York, 27 January 2000, lot 71), greatly helped Vasari establish himself as a leading painter in Rome in the 1540s. Previously, he had worked in Tuscany and northern Italy, and the Altoviti Pietà served to demonstrate the artist's inventiveness and pictorial skills to a wide range of potential clients. His efforts to impress the leading Roman patrons were not made in vain. After seeing the Altoviti Pietà, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese commissioned a large painting from Vasari, an Allegory of Justice, preserved at Capodimonte, Naples, and subsequently entrusted him with the fresco decoration of the Sala di Cento Giorni in the Palazzo della Cancelleria, Rome (L. Corti, ibid., nos. 28, 46).
Vasari took great care in the execution of the Altoviti Pietà and sought iconographic advice from the humanist Paolo Giovio. And so as to pay homage to the most famous Florentine artist then living in Rome, he included several references to works by Michelangelo, such as his Pietà in St. Peter's and the fresco of the Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel, which had been unveiled only about a year earlier. The figure of Christ lying on the ground rather than being supported by the Virgin, however, was a reference to another work whose main figures are based on a design by Michelangelo: Sebastiano del Piombo's famous Pietà at Viterbo of c. 1516-17 (fig. 2).
While the present Pietà is loosely based on the Altoviti painting --from it Vasari took, with some variations and in reverse, the reclining figure of Christ--it was, above all, Sebastiano's Pietà upon which Vasari modeled his work. The triangular composition, the pose of the Virgin with her hands folded, and the dark landscape with the obscured sun and moon, reveal the artist's intimate knowledge of Sebastiano's painting. We do not know exactly when Vasari visited Viterbo, yet he is all but certain to have stopped there on one of his trips to Rome in the late 1530s and 1540s. In Sebastiano's Vita, Vasari praises the painstaking execution of the Viterbo Pietà, particularly mentioning the gloomy (tenebroso) landscape, which was already famous at the time (G. Vasari, Le Vite de' più eccellenti Pittori, Scultori ed Architettori, G. Milanesi, ed., Le Opere di Giorgio Vasari, Florence, 1878-1885, V, p. 568: 'Sebastiano [...] vi fece un paese tenebroso molto lodato').
The depiction of night scenes was one of Vasari's specialties. In the summer of 1538, immediately after his return from an extensive study trip to Rome and perhaps after visiting Viterbo, Vasari painted an Adoration of the Shepherds for the monastery of Camaldoli in the guise of a night piece - 'contrafacendovi una oscurit di notte', as he states in the Ricordanze (G. Vasari, 1930, op. cit., no. 94. See also L. Corti, op. cit., no. 9). Subsequently Vasari treated the subject several times on a smaller scale, each time referring to them in the Ricordanze as a night piece, or notte. (ibid., p. 865, no. 166, p. 871, no. 213).
That Vasari's rendering of darkness impressed his contemporaries is further documented by an event that occurred many years later. In 1564, he made a drawing of Judith Holding the Head of Holofernes for his friend and iconographic advisor, Vincenzio Borghini, from which the latter's protégé, Giovanni Battista Naldini, was to execute a now-lost painting. In a letter to the artist, which contained precise instructions concerning the painting's iconography, Borghini asked Vasari specifically to depict the scene as a night piece (notte), like the one he had painted for Camaldoli more than twenty-five years earlier (ibid., p. 101, 'come la vostra note di Camaldoli').
In its subtle rendering of uncanny darkness, this Pietà testifies to Vasari's success in a genre that was highly appreciated already by his contemporaries. In addition, it constitutes an important testament to Vasari's assimilation of one of Sebastiano's major paintings, successfully combining the monumentality of Michelangelesque figures with Sebastiano's painterly treatment of the landscape. At the same time, the classical simplicity of Vasari's composition reveals the painter at his most touching and personal.
Florian Härb, September 2013
(Fig. 1) Giorgio Vasari, Pietà, Christie's, New York, 27 January 2000, lot 71 ($574,500).
(Fig. 2) Sebastiano del Piombo Pietà De Agostini Picture Library V. Pirozzi The Bridgeman Art Library.
This work, too, appears to be documented in Vasari's Ricordanze. More specifically, it is most likely identifiable as one of two paintings that Vasari made in 1549 for Ludovico da Ragugia, or Ragusa, a Florentine merchant, for the price of thirty scudi. Vasari's entry reads:
'I record that on 8 January 1549 I was commissioned two paintings by Messer Ludovico da Ragugia, merchant in Florence, each of them one braccia in height; one of them was to show a Madonna and Child with San Giovanni Battista, San Giuseppe and Santa Anna, and the other Christ Our Lord, lying dead at the feet of our Virgin, who cries over Him, with the obscuration of the sun and the moon' ['Ricordo, come a di 8 di Gennaio 1549 mi fu allogato duo quadri da messer Lodovico da Ragugia, merchante in Fiorenza, duo quadri di braccia uno daltezza luno [=each]. Inequali si aveva a dipignere in una uno la Nostra Donna. Et inell altro il Nostro Signore Giesu X° morto a pie della Nostra Donna, che lo piangessi, con la oscuratione del sole et della luna. E quali finiti che fussero mi promesse dare per pagamento dessi scudi trenta doro.'] (ibid., p. 868, no. 189).
While Vasari's account of the first picture is too vague to identify it with any known work, that of the Pietà, unusually precise in the description of the subject-matter, matches the composition of the present painting exactly. In addition, the measurements mentioned in the Ricordanze (1 braccio fiorentino = approximately 58.3 cm.) correspond closely with those of the picture, thus leaving little doubt as to its identification as the Pietà made for Ludovico da Ragugia in 1549.
A few years earlier, in 1542, Vasari had painted a larger and iconographically more complex version of the Pietà for his friend and patron, the Florentine banker and collector Bindo Altoviti (1491-1557), then living in exile in Rome (fig. 1). A member of the Florentine nobility, Altoviti lived in Rome close to the Vatican, where he was banker of the Curia and also held the post of Depositario della Fabbrica di San Pietro. He was a strong opponent of the Medici in Florence yet at the same time an important collector of works by such Florentine artists as Raphael, Cellini, Vasari, and Salviati (for a comprehensive analysis of this Pietà and Altoviti's role as collector and patron see L. Corti, 'La Pietà di Vasari per Bindo Altoviti' in Ad Alessandro Conti, Quaderni del seminario di storia della critica d'arte, no. 6, Pisa, 1996, pp. 147-164).
In 1540, Altoviti had commissioned from Vasari an altarpiece of the Allegory of the Immaculate Conception for his family chapel in SS. Apostoli, Florence, one of the painter's most successful works (L. Corti, 'Vasari: catologo completo', I gigli dell'arte, 3, Florence, 1989, no. 20). The Altoviti Pietà, itself rediscovered only in recent times (sold Christie's, New York, 27 January 2000, lot 71), greatly helped Vasari establish himself as a leading painter in Rome in the 1540s. Previously, he had worked in Tuscany and northern Italy, and the Altoviti Pietà served to demonstrate the artist's inventiveness and pictorial skills to a wide range of potential clients. His efforts to impress the leading Roman patrons were not made in vain. After seeing the Altoviti Pietà, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese commissioned a large painting from Vasari, an Allegory of Justice, preserved at Capodimonte, Naples, and subsequently entrusted him with the fresco decoration of the Sala di Cento Giorni in the Palazzo della Cancelleria, Rome (L. Corti, ibid., nos. 28, 46).
Vasari took great care in the execution of the Altoviti Pietà and sought iconographic advice from the humanist Paolo Giovio. And so as to pay homage to the most famous Florentine artist then living in Rome, he included several references to works by Michelangelo, such as his Pietà in St. Peter's and the fresco of the Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel, which had been unveiled only about a year earlier. The figure of Christ lying on the ground rather than being supported by the Virgin, however, was a reference to another work whose main figures are based on a design by Michelangelo: Sebastiano del Piombo's famous Pietà at Viterbo of c. 1516-17 (fig. 2).
While the present Pietà is loosely based on the Altoviti painting --from it Vasari took, with some variations and in reverse, the reclining figure of Christ--it was, above all, Sebastiano's Pietà upon which Vasari modeled his work. The triangular composition, the pose of the Virgin with her hands folded, and the dark landscape with the obscured sun and moon, reveal the artist's intimate knowledge of Sebastiano's painting. We do not know exactly when Vasari visited Viterbo, yet he is all but certain to have stopped there on one of his trips to Rome in the late 1530s and 1540s. In Sebastiano's Vita, Vasari praises the painstaking execution of the Viterbo Pietà, particularly mentioning the gloomy (tenebroso) landscape, which was already famous at the time (G. Vasari, Le Vite de' più eccellenti Pittori, Scultori ed Architettori, G. Milanesi, ed., Le Opere di Giorgio Vasari, Florence, 1878-1885, V, p. 568: 'Sebastiano [...] vi fece un paese tenebroso molto lodato').
The depiction of night scenes was one of Vasari's specialties. In the summer of 1538, immediately after his return from an extensive study trip to Rome and perhaps after visiting Viterbo, Vasari painted an Adoration of the Shepherds for the monastery of Camaldoli in the guise of a night piece - 'contrafacendovi una oscurit di notte', as he states in the Ricordanze (G. Vasari, 1930, op. cit., no. 94. See also L. Corti, op. cit., no. 9). Subsequently Vasari treated the subject several times on a smaller scale, each time referring to them in the Ricordanze as a night piece, or notte. (ibid., p. 865, no. 166, p. 871, no. 213).
That Vasari's rendering of darkness impressed his contemporaries is further documented by an event that occurred many years later. In 1564, he made a drawing of Judith Holding the Head of Holofernes for his friend and iconographic advisor, Vincenzio Borghini, from which the latter's protégé, Giovanni Battista Naldini, was to execute a now-lost painting. In a letter to the artist, which contained precise instructions concerning the painting's iconography, Borghini asked Vasari specifically to depict the scene as a night piece (notte), like the one he had painted for Camaldoli more than twenty-five years earlier (ibid., p. 101, 'come la vostra note di Camaldoli').
In its subtle rendering of uncanny darkness, this Pietà testifies to Vasari's success in a genre that was highly appreciated already by his contemporaries. In addition, it constitutes an important testament to Vasari's assimilation of one of Sebastiano's major paintings, successfully combining the monumentality of Michelangelesque figures with Sebastiano's painterly treatment of the landscape. At the same time, the classical simplicity of Vasari's composition reveals the painter at his most touching and personal.
Florian Härb, September 2013
(Fig. 1) Giorgio Vasari, Pietà, Christie's, New York, 27 January 2000, lot 71 ($574,500).
(Fig. 2) Sebastiano del Piombo Pietà De Agostini Picture Library V. Pirozzi The Bridgeman Art Library.