Lot Essay
This is perhaps the most ambitious of the later altarpieces of Marco Palmezzano, the leading Romagnol painter of the High Renaissance, whose evolution can be followed in a series of signed and dated works. A small panel of the same year is at Lovere and the only later dated work is the Nativity of 1542 in the Brera, Milan. The inscription establishes that the altarpiece was commissioned by Lucia, widow of Giovanni Calzolari.
It was originally in the chapel of that family in the church of Sant'Agostino at Cesena, the strategically placed town on the Via Emilia between Bologna and Rimini. This housed two major cinquecento altarpieces, the present work and an earlier polyptych of the Madonna and Child and Saints of 1513-4 by Girolamo Genga, of which the main panel is now in the Brera. The conscious classicism of Palmezzano's composition may well represent a reaction to the crowded arrangement of that by Genga. With the Presentation by Francia in the church of the Madonna del Monte, these were the most significant altarpieces supplied for Cesena in the cinquecento. The church was rebuilt between 1747 and 1778 (or 1782), and the Genga polyptych was subsequently dismembered. Like so many pictures from the Romagna and the Marche, the main panel was appropriated after the French occupation of the Papal States and sent to Milan, then the capital of the Cisalpine Republic. The Palmezzano was presumably alienated at the same time. It is not known how this reached England, but it may be presumed to have been acquired by Alexander Baring, 1st Lord Ashburton, or his son William, 2nd Lord Ashburton; the former certainly made significant purchases in Italy, his taste in contrast to that for Dutch pictures of other members of his family. The collection inherited in 1864 by the 2nd Lord Ashburton's widow, born Louisa Stewart MacKenzie, included a notable group of Italian pictures, most notably the Mantegna Adoration of the Magi and the Pan and Echo by Dosso Dossi, both now in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, and the Bellini Madonna and Child (Cardiff, National Museum of Wales, on loan).
It was originally in the chapel of that family in the church of Sant'Agostino at Cesena, the strategically placed town on the Via Emilia between Bologna and Rimini. This housed two major cinquecento altarpieces, the present work and an earlier polyptych of the Madonna and Child and Saints of 1513-4 by Girolamo Genga, of which the main panel is now in the Brera. The conscious classicism of Palmezzano's composition may well represent a reaction to the crowded arrangement of that by Genga. With the Presentation by Francia in the church of the Madonna del Monte, these were the most significant altarpieces supplied for Cesena in the cinquecento. The church was rebuilt between 1747 and 1778 (or 1782), and the Genga polyptych was subsequently dismembered. Like so many pictures from the Romagna and the Marche, the main panel was appropriated after the French occupation of the Papal States and sent to Milan, then the capital of the Cisalpine Republic. The Palmezzano was presumably alienated at the same time. It is not known how this reached England, but it may be presumed to have been acquired by Alexander Baring, 1st Lord Ashburton, or his son William, 2nd Lord Ashburton; the former certainly made significant purchases in Italy, his taste in contrast to that for Dutch pictures of other members of his family. The collection inherited in 1864 by the 2nd Lord Ashburton's widow, born Louisa Stewart MacKenzie, included a notable group of Italian pictures, most notably the Mantegna Adoration of the Magi and the Pan and Echo by Dosso Dossi, both now in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, and the Bellini Madonna and Child (Cardiff, National Museum of Wales, on loan).