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Lot Essay
A younger contemporary of Giorgio Vasari, Mirabello Cavalori was a key exponent of the Florentine High Renaissance. As one of the founding members of the Accademia del Disegno in Florence (1563), he contributed to the decorative schemes of several important civic projects under Vasari’s direction, including Michelangelo’s catafalque in San Lorenzo. The artist also worked for the Medici family, producing pictures for the studiolo of Francesco I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, in the Palazzo Vecchio. This was perhaps the most important commission of his career (1570-1572), and that in which the influence of Andrea del Sarto and Pontormo are the most profoundly felt.
In this panel, Cavalori illustrates one of the great miracles of the New Testament, when Christ brings his friend Lazarus back from the dead, foreshadowing his own resurrection. Following a well-established Renaissance convention, Cavalori depicts Lazarus rising from a tomb set on the ground, his legs and hands being unbound by attendants. Cavalori here references specific figures from at least two of Raphael’s most important commissions. Seen from behind, the kneeling woman lower left – identifiable as Mary Magdalene borrows from the startled figure seen on the left in Raphael’s 1511 fresco of The Expulsion of Heliodorus in the Vatican. The crouching man, who loosens Lazarus’s bindings, is inspired by Raphael’s 1515 tapestry of the Miraculous Draught of Fishes (Vatican Museums), where Saint John is shown in an analogous pose. Furthermore, the half-bent young man in a dark blue shirt to the middle left is reminiscent of Pontormo’s graceful youth, seen upper right of his celebrated Deposition (Florence, Santa Felicita). While the artificial palette and stylised figures are typical of the Florentine maniera, passages of painterly naturalism –such as the closely observed hands and feet of Lazarus, reddened from their tight bindings – signal an incipient interest in a greater realism, which would come to dominate Florentine painting in the subsequent century.
Carlo Falciani dates the picture to circa 1560, just before Cavalori began working on the decorations for the studiolo. He has also noted similarities with Cavalori’s famous Wool Factory (from the studiolo cycle in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence), such as the man releasing Lazarus’s feet, whose head is tucked against his shoulder in a manner nearly identical to that of the man stirring the cauldron in the studiolo panel. Falciani has tentatively identified a preparatory drawing for this painting in the Uffizi (no. 6678 Fr), in which Cavalori appears to be working out the pose of the nude child who appears in the lower left corner.
In this panel, Cavalori illustrates one of the great miracles of the New Testament, when Christ brings his friend Lazarus back from the dead, foreshadowing his own resurrection. Following a well-established Renaissance convention, Cavalori depicts Lazarus rising from a tomb set on the ground, his legs and hands being unbound by attendants. Cavalori here references specific figures from at least two of Raphael’s most important commissions. Seen from behind, the kneeling woman lower left – identifiable as Mary Magdalene borrows from the startled figure seen on the left in Raphael’s 1511 fresco of The Expulsion of Heliodorus in the Vatican. The crouching man, who loosens Lazarus’s bindings, is inspired by Raphael’s 1515 tapestry of the Miraculous Draught of Fishes (Vatican Museums), where Saint John is shown in an analogous pose. Furthermore, the half-bent young man in a dark blue shirt to the middle left is reminiscent of Pontormo’s graceful youth, seen upper right of his celebrated Deposition (Florence, Santa Felicita). While the artificial palette and stylised figures are typical of the Florentine maniera, passages of painterly naturalism –such as the closely observed hands and feet of Lazarus, reddened from their tight bindings – signal an incipient interest in a greater realism, which would come to dominate Florentine painting in the subsequent century.
Carlo Falciani dates the picture to circa 1560, just before Cavalori began working on the decorations for the studiolo. He has also noted similarities with Cavalori’s famous Wool Factory (from the studiolo cycle in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence), such as the man releasing Lazarus’s feet, whose head is tucked against his shoulder in a manner nearly identical to that of the man stirring the cauldron in the studiolo panel. Falciani has tentatively identified a preparatory drawing for this painting in the Uffizi (no. 6678 Fr), in which Cavalori appears to be working out the pose of the nude child who appears in the lower left corner.