The Baptism of Christ

Bathed in soft light, Christ’s lofty figure dominates this graceful composition capturing the moment of his baptism in the River Jordan. Preparing for this holy rite, Christ inclines his head toward Saint John, who genuflects before his Savior while collecting water in a dish. The saint’s red cloak acts as a vibrant foil to the cool yellow and blue tonalities of the garments worn by the angels at left, whose disrobing of Christ takes on the elegance of a carefully choreographed dance. The coat of arms at upper left attests to the early history of this painting made by the Bolognese Mannerist, Orazio Samacchini. In the late seventeenth century, it belonged to Johann Caspar Brücker of Altdorf in the Swiss canton of Uri, who gifted it to his daughter, the abbess of the Capuchin monastery of Altdorf. The painting stayed in the monastery until the early twentieth century, when it was sold and eventually passed through the Gloggner gallery in Lucerne. The early Swiss provenance of this work is also attested to by a copy of it in the Sankt Lazarus convent of Seedorf, equally situated in the canton of Uri.

An autograph version preserved in the Muso Lázaro Galdiano in Madrid is nearly identical in composition to the present work, with minor variations in the background details. The Madrid painting was until recently misattributed to Pedro de Campaña (see A. Pérez Sánchez, Madrid 2002, pp. 148-149) and can be traced back to 1857, when it was acquired by the Duke of Newcastle. It closely corresponds to an engraving that records a version of Samacchini’s Baptism in the Giustiniani collection, published in London in 1812 with an attribution to 'Vanni' (fig. 1). Allowing for artistic license on the part of the engraver, it is possible that version formerly in the Giustiniani collection is the one now in Madrid (see S.D. Squarzina, 2003, I, pp. 9-11). A third version, executed on a smaller scale and on panel, is in the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg (fig. 2), and is perhaps a modello for the two larger, autograph paintings.

As Carl Strehlke has observed (private communication), for his muscular figure of Christ, Samacchini drew inspiration from Michelangelo’s Risen Christ in Santa Maria sopra Minerva, while the angel in yellow at left recalls the kneeling woman in the foreground of Raphael’s Transfiguration in the Pinacoteca Vaticana. It is likely that Samacchini also had in mind Pellegrino Tibaldi’s Baptism of Christ in the Church of San Francesco alle Scale in Ancona (fig. 2), which he would have known through a preparatory drawing (A. Bliznukov, op. cit., p. 212). This is suggested in particular by such details in Samacchini’s painting as the bending of Christ’s torso and the inclination of his head, as well as Saint John resting his knee on a rock, the foreshortened dove, and the composition’s overall facial typologies. A final source, as Miklós Boskovits noted (ibid.), may have been Prospero Fontana’s Baptism of Christ, which shows the Baptist in a similar pose and features an angel with nearly the same profile.

The present altarpiece, whose attribution has also been endorsed by David Ekserdjian (loc. cit.), dates to the mid-1560s, reflecting the moment in which Samacchini began to move away from his early Mannerist style, but before he returned to it in the extreme in his Parma and Cremona works. A finished 'Battesimo di Gesù' is documented in the inventory of Samacchini’s workshop drawn up after his death. While it is impossible to definitively link the present work with that painting, as Bliznukov has argued (ibid., p. 213), it seems likely that the artist painted two completely autograph versions of the composition. The first was made in Rome and found its way to the Giustiniani collection before travelling to Madrid, where it remains today. The second may have been commissioned shortly after the first, but for some reason remained in the artist’s possession until his death. It would have then remained in Bologna until it was acquired by the Brücker family.