拍品专文
Dating the works of the Venetian master Paris Bordone has confounded scholars due to the lack of a documented chronology or clear stylistic development; however, it is evident that this painting is a rare survival from the earliest moment of Bordone’s career. In the early twentieth century Sir Claude Phillips wrote ‘I am unable in the life-work of Bordone to point to anything earlier…’ (loc. cit.), Giordana Mariana Canova’s catalogue raisonné places the composition among Bordone’s earliest productions in the 1520s, and Andrea Donati dates the painting to circa 1520 (loc. cit.). Bordone began his artistic career in the workshop of Titian, probably in 1516, and by 1518 their relationship had soured – according to Vasari, the young artist’s uncanny ability to imitate his master caused jealousy and an early end to his apprenticeship (Vite, VII). The present composition is clearly influenced by both Titian and another Venetian master in the young artist’s orbit, Giorgione. The sacre conversazioni, a genre which places the Madonna and Child in arcadian landscapes or architectural fantasies among informal groups of saints and donors, were popularised in Venice at the end of the fifteenth century by Bordone’s predecessors.
Between 1520 and 1530 he experimented with this compositional type, combining Titian-esque landscapes with the soft light and poetic figure groups of Giorgione. Another version of the present composition dated to the same period and signed in the same manner, the Virgin Mary and Child with Saints Jerome and Anthony Abbot and a Donor now in the Glasgow Museums, Scotland, repeats the figural group of Saint Anthony Abbot and donor. The beginnings of Bordone’s mature style, marked by the attention paid to the rich textiles and the graceful elegance of the figures, can be found in the donor’s puffed sleeve and in the lyrical diagonals formed by the figure groups.