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Lot Essay
The father and teacher of the foremost female artist of the Italian Baroque, Artemisia Gentileschi, to whom the present work was once mistakenly attributed, the Tuscan artist Orazio Gentileschi began his career as a painter in Rome. One of the most peripatetic artists of his century, Orazio later transmitted many of the innovations of early seventeenth-century Roman painting to other European centers, including Florence, the Marches, Genoa, Paris and London, where he became court painter to Charles I in 1626, and remained until his death some thirteen years later. Though Orazio was a close contemporary of Caravaggio, whose extraordinary paintings would ultimately revolutionize artistic practice across the European continent, he was never a fully Caravaggesque painter, as one might call Bartolomeo Manfredi, whose dramatically tenebrist canvases are populated by low-life types. Instead, with an enduring lyricism and vibrant sense of color clearly inspired by his Tuscan beginnings, Orazio was one of the few artists of his generation who succeeded in blending Caravaggesque naturalism with formal sophistication, and in using light to gracefully celebrate beauty rather than as a theatrical device.
Refined in its execution, rich in its use of color and highly unusual owing to the artist’s use of a panel support, this touching and intimate depiction of the Madonna and Child sits within Orazio’s Roman period, and has most recently been dated by Keith Christiansen to around 1607. In his 2002 exhibition catalogue Christiansen notes that the figure types in the present panel are especially close to those in the Circumcision installed on the high altar of the Gesù in Ancona in the same year, and posits that perhaps the same models might even have been used for both works (loc. cit., fig. 1). Furthermore, Christiansen suggests, the unusual yellow textile used in the Child’s garment might anticipate the yellow dress stated to have been worn by the Madonna in a lost picture of 1609 painted for Vincenzo I Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua.
During this first decade of the seventeenth century, as Christiansen notes, ‘Orazio's work shows a persistent conflict between his ingrained habits of painting di maniera – falling back on conventions of representation and composition – and the new, Caravaggesque practice of working from posed models dal naturale. Inevitably, it was in his more informal easel paintings that Orazio best resolved this dilemma.’ Indeed, in the present work, while at first glance the poignant embrace between mother and child seems to owe a great deal to observed reality, closer examination demonstrates a clearer debt to pictorial conventions. The gentle placement of the Virgin’s dimpled hands, her pensively lowered eyelids, the artful disposition of the Child’s garments so as to expose his groin (a reference to his human nature) and his wide-eyed stare are standard visual devices deployed as devotional cues for the viewer, at something of an elegant remove from the everyday realities of childcare. Yet at the same time, the close cropping of the composition around the figures enhances the effect of intimacy and informality, lending a further note of naturalism to what is an essentially highly conventional and confected image. Perhaps the most significantly naturalistic element of the work is the delicate lighting, the figures shimmering with gentle luminosity, the shadows beautifully transparent.
Bissell suggested that Orazio looked specifically to quattrocento Florentine models in works like this one as a sort of nostalgic nod towards his Tuscan roots. Christiansen, however, points out the influence that Counter-Reformation writers, including Giovanni Andrea Gilio da Fabriano and Gabriele Paleotti, might have had upon the artist. Their contention that simplicity and purity were of far more importance than any demonstration of stylistic flair encouraged artists from Scipione Pulzone to Domenichino and Sassoferrato to create images with often combined Raphaelesque compositional models with a Northern emphasis on surface refinement in sweet, intentionally bland visions of domestic intimacy appropriate for use in private devotional practices – what Federico Zeri in his groundbreaking work on Counter-Reformation art termed ‘pittura senza tempo.’ The present panel can clearly be situated within this tradition.
Nevertheless, the influence of Caravaggio even above and beyond the concept of naturalism might still be felt in this work, namely in terms of his penchant for representing a single figure, lost in contemplation, and close to the picture plane, against a spare background. But while Caravaggio was intent on exploring the dramatic potential of a scene, Orazio focused instead on stylistic mannerisms. Orazio’s interest in achieving visual harmony rather than psychological intensity can be traced across his career and is at the heart of his graceful and highly personal Baroque style.
The artist’s use of a panel support is highly unusual – only two other works by Orazio are on panel, the Executioner with the Head of Saint John the Baptist in the Museo del Prado, Madrid (fig. 2) and the late Head of a Woman in the Martha MacGeary Snider collection, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania (fig. 3). Christiansen notes that while paintings of the Madonna and Child by the artist are recorded in the Olgiati and Savelli collections, neither is listed as being on panel and in the case of the Savelli there is no evidence of their patronage of the artist prior to 1613. A more compelling reference may be found in the 1724 post-mortem inventory of Anna Maria Sannesi, which lists a Madonna and Child on panel by the artist, which measured 5 x 3 palmi (111 x 67 cm). Anna Maria Sannesi was the last heir of Cardinal Giacomo Sannesi (1551-1621), who together with his brother the Marchese Clemente Sannesi were major Roman collectors who evidently owned three works by Orazio, the Madonna and Child, a David with the Head of Goliath, and a Saint George on copper, yet another uncharacteristic support for the artist.
The success of the composition found in this work is suggested by the existence of two early copies, one formerly in the collection of Vincenzo Bonello, La Valletta, the other with Finarte, Milan in 1983. Both were also incorrectly attributed to Orazio’s remarkable daughter Artemisia, to whom Mary S. Garrard had once incorrectly assigned the present panel (loc. cit.).
Please note there is additional literature for this lot, in which the author proposes the subjects depicted may be identified as the artist's wife, Prudentia di Ottaviano Montoni and his son, Marco. P. Matthiesen,
Artemesia Gentileschi - A Venetian Lucretia, London, 2020, p. 11.
Refined in its execution, rich in its use of color and highly unusual owing to the artist’s use of a panel support, this touching and intimate depiction of the Madonna and Child sits within Orazio’s Roman period, and has most recently been dated by Keith Christiansen to around 1607. In his 2002 exhibition catalogue Christiansen notes that the figure types in the present panel are especially close to those in the Circumcision installed on the high altar of the Gesù in Ancona in the same year, and posits that perhaps the same models might even have been used for both works (loc. cit., fig. 1). Furthermore, Christiansen suggests, the unusual yellow textile used in the Child’s garment might anticipate the yellow dress stated to have been worn by the Madonna in a lost picture of 1609 painted for Vincenzo I Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua.
During this first decade of the seventeenth century, as Christiansen notes, ‘Orazio's work shows a persistent conflict between his ingrained habits of painting di maniera – falling back on conventions of representation and composition – and the new, Caravaggesque practice of working from posed models dal naturale. Inevitably, it was in his more informal easel paintings that Orazio best resolved this dilemma.’ Indeed, in the present work, while at first glance the poignant embrace between mother and child seems to owe a great deal to observed reality, closer examination demonstrates a clearer debt to pictorial conventions. The gentle placement of the Virgin’s dimpled hands, her pensively lowered eyelids, the artful disposition of the Child’s garments so as to expose his groin (a reference to his human nature) and his wide-eyed stare are standard visual devices deployed as devotional cues for the viewer, at something of an elegant remove from the everyday realities of childcare. Yet at the same time, the close cropping of the composition around the figures enhances the effect of intimacy and informality, lending a further note of naturalism to what is an essentially highly conventional and confected image. Perhaps the most significantly naturalistic element of the work is the delicate lighting, the figures shimmering with gentle luminosity, the shadows beautifully transparent.
Bissell suggested that Orazio looked specifically to quattrocento Florentine models in works like this one as a sort of nostalgic nod towards his Tuscan roots. Christiansen, however, points out the influence that Counter-Reformation writers, including Giovanni Andrea Gilio da Fabriano and Gabriele Paleotti, might have had upon the artist. Their contention that simplicity and purity were of far more importance than any demonstration of stylistic flair encouraged artists from Scipione Pulzone to Domenichino and Sassoferrato to create images with often combined Raphaelesque compositional models with a Northern emphasis on surface refinement in sweet, intentionally bland visions of domestic intimacy appropriate for use in private devotional practices – what Federico Zeri in his groundbreaking work on Counter-Reformation art termed ‘pittura senza tempo.’ The present panel can clearly be situated within this tradition.
Nevertheless, the influence of Caravaggio even above and beyond the concept of naturalism might still be felt in this work, namely in terms of his penchant for representing a single figure, lost in contemplation, and close to the picture plane, against a spare background. But while Caravaggio was intent on exploring the dramatic potential of a scene, Orazio focused instead on stylistic mannerisms. Orazio’s interest in achieving visual harmony rather than psychological intensity can be traced across his career and is at the heart of his graceful and highly personal Baroque style.
The artist’s use of a panel support is highly unusual – only two other works by Orazio are on panel, the Executioner with the Head of Saint John the Baptist in the Museo del Prado, Madrid (fig. 2) and the late Head of a Woman in the Martha MacGeary Snider collection, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania (fig. 3). Christiansen notes that while paintings of the Madonna and Child by the artist are recorded in the Olgiati and Savelli collections, neither is listed as being on panel and in the case of the Savelli there is no evidence of their patronage of the artist prior to 1613. A more compelling reference may be found in the 1724 post-mortem inventory of Anna Maria Sannesi, which lists a Madonna and Child on panel by the artist, which measured 5 x 3 palmi (111 x 67 cm). Anna Maria Sannesi was the last heir of Cardinal Giacomo Sannesi (1551-1621), who together with his brother the Marchese Clemente Sannesi were major Roman collectors who evidently owned three works by Orazio, the Madonna and Child, a David with the Head of Goliath, and a Saint George on copper, yet another uncharacteristic support for the artist.
The success of the composition found in this work is suggested by the existence of two early copies, one formerly in the collection of Vincenzo Bonello, La Valletta, the other with Finarte, Milan in 1983. Both were also incorrectly attributed to Orazio’s remarkable daughter Artemisia, to whom Mary S. Garrard had once incorrectly assigned the present panel (loc. cit.).
Please note there is additional literature for this lot, in which the author proposes the subjects depicted may be identified as the artist's wife, Prudentia di Ottaviano Montoni and his son, Marco. P. Matthiesen,
Artemesia Gentileschi - A Venetian Lucretia, London, 2020, p. 11.