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拍品專文
The present painting is a highly important rediscovery of a work by one of the great masters of the Italian Baroque, Ludovico Carracci. Old labels on the reverse of the stretcher and the frame reveal it to have once hung in 'Casa Tanari', the seat of a noble and ancient family that first settled in Bologna at the beginning of the sixteenth century having fled its native Treviso during the wars between the Republic of Venice and King Ludwig of Hungary (see V. Spreti, Enciclopedia storico-nobiliare Italiana, VI, 1928-32, p. 539). More specifically, the work corresponds very closely to the Pietà recorded and described in the detailed inventory of the paintings belonging to one Marchese Alessandro Tanari, which was drawn up by the painter Vicenzo Pisani (1595-1663) on 9 May 1640, following the latter's death on 21 February 1639. Pisani describes the work thus: 'Una pittura d'un cristo morto la B[eata] V[ergine] S[an] Gio[vanni] e le madelene di Ludovico Carazzi' (F. Varignana, op. cit., p. 208, under 59v).
Pisani's catalogue of the paintings was in fact just part of a larger inventory, compiled under the supervision of one Rinaldo Accursi and listing all the possessions of the Marchese in the family palace located on Via Galleria, in the parish of Santa Maria Maggiore, Bologna. This document is a fascinating account of what was clearly an important collection, which impresses both by the quality and quantity of the works amassed by its creator. An important member of the senatorial branch of the family, Alessandro Tanari made his fortune through money lending and wise investments and became one of the wealthiest property owners in and around Bologna (L. Ciammitti in Bologna 1985, pp. 141-8). His generous support of a number of public building programs led Camillo Borghese, later Pope Paul V, to appoint him Treasurer of the Papal reserves in Bologna in 1586. He married Diana Barbieri, who came from a powerful and ancient family of Bologna with strong senatorial traditions, and certainly some of the paintings in his collection entered as a result of the marriage. Their son and heir, Giovanni Nicola, took over his father's position as Treasurer in 1605 and himself enjoyed a distinguished career in the senate, serving no less than four times as a 'gonfalonier' or magistrate (gonfalconiere) in the years 1631-1656 (see V. Spreti, loc. cit.).
Pisani clearly took great care in compiling his inventory and it is his precise descriptions of many of the pictures that have greatly facilitated the positive identification not only of the present work, but also of a number of important paintings known both in the literature and in the original today. Included among these are (with all references to F. Varignana, op. cit., except where stated otherwise); Guido Reni, Ninus and Semiramus, formerly in the Gemäldegalerie, Dresden, but destroyed during the fire bombing of 1945 (op. cit., p. 206, note 30, and S. Pepper, Guido Reni, 1984, no. 109, p. 255 and pl. 135); Ludovico Carracci, The Kiss of Judas, The Art Museum, Princeton University (op.cit. p.208, note 50); Guercino, The Assumption of the Virgin, The Hermitage, Saint Petersburg, (op. cit., p. 206, note 31, and D.M. Stone, Guercino, catalogo completo, 1991, p. 112, no. 88, illustrated); Ludovico Carracci, Alexander and Thais, with Richard Feigen and Co. (op. cit., p. 204, note 26); Annibale Carracci, The Toilet of Venus, now in the Samuel H. Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington (op. cit, p. 205, note 28); and Guido Reni, The Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist, either destroyed or lost since leaving the Tanari collection in the 1820s (see below), and now only known through an engraving by Mauro Gandolfi (op. cit., p. 206, note 29, and S. Pepper, op. cit., p. 260, no. 122 and pl. 145).
The first of these works - Ninus and Semiramus - left the collection between 1749-52, when it was acquired by Canon Luigi Crespi by papal decree and very much against the wishes of the Tanari, for the Elector of Saxony (see S. Pepper, Guido Reni, 1984, no. 109, p. 255 and pl. 135). The last four in this list are known to have been sold from the collection in the second quarter of the 19th century, with all but the Guercino leaving at the same time and in the same fashion. Hugh Brigstock records how James Irving, a Scottish art dealer and speculator, went to Italy in the first half of the nineteenth century to source Italian pictures for collectors back home in Britain (William Buchanan and the 19th century Art Trade: 100 Letters to his agents in London and Italy, 1982, p. 27ff.). Although Irvine sometimes worked as an agent for William Buchanan, another art dealer of Scottish origin, on this particular occasion he had been entrusted with a sum of £10,000 by Sir William Forbes, who wished to form a small picture collection. Irvine began his search in Bologna and in 1827/8 made his first purchases - the Alexander and Thais, The Toilet of Venus, and The Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist -- from the Tanari collection. All three were subsequently offered in the Forbes estate sale, Rainy, London, 2 June 1842, at which point their paths separated. Also offered in the sale was a Madonna and Child, by Francesco Francia, that carried the Tanari provenance, but which does not appear in Pisani's original inventory.
As regards the Guercino, Brigstock (op. cit., p. 27, and pp.31-3) records that although Irvine did see it when at the Palazzo Tanari, he nonetheless 'resisted the temptation to add [the] vast picture of the Assumption because of the darkened paint surface'. It was left to Buchanan to try some ten years later to place the painting with a British collector, first with Robert Holford, 'a nouveau riche, who in 1838 had inherited a fortune', and then with George Lucy of Charlecote, Warwickshire. Such was the impressive scale of the work that Buchanan tried to convince the latter to purchase it for his great hall 'for it can be seen in all its parts at a mile's distance'. Lucy, however, declined and the painting was sold directly to the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, in 1844 (see D.M. Stone, loc. cit.). An early catalogue of the museum (Catalogue de la Galerie des tableaux - les écoles d'Italie et d'Espagne, 1869, I, p. 85, no. 239 a) contains the interesting comment that the work was 'painted in 1623 for Alexander Tanari'. This is of some importance in our understanding of Tanari's involvement with the arts, for it clearly suggests his role went beyond that of a collector and came closer to that of a patron, commissioning works directly from the leading artists in Bologna. In this connection it is pertinent to consider the history of the Alexander and Thais by Ludovico Carracci, also in his collection (see above). Dr Gail Feigenbaum suggests in the catalogue for the exhibition, Ludovico Carracci (Bologna and Fort Worth, 1993, p. 139, no. 64), that Alessandro Tanari also commissioned this work as part of a series of three paintings depicting scenes from the life of Alexander the Great - an obvious choice of subject for a patron of the same name.(The other two works, The Birth of Alexander and Alexander with the wife of Darius, are both lost; see Malvasia, op. cit, 1841, I, p. 354). Feigenbaum further notes that Palazzo Tanari was not built until 1632, and so this series would have been commissioned for the previous habitiation of the family in via Avasella. Given the high number of works by the Carracci family listed in Pisani's inventory - there are about ten by Ludovico alone - an image of Alessandro Tanari as an enthusiastic champion of the masters of the local school of painting begins to emerge.
Although we are fortunate to know about the history of these other paintings from the Tanari collection described above, we have less information about that of the present Pietà. If it was, as seems plausible, commissioned by Alessandro, then it cannot have been for the Palazzo Tanari, since Ludovico died in 1619. The format of the painting would suggest it was an overdoor, and indeed the gaze of the woman to the right of the Madonna certainly appears to look out of the composition and down towards the viewer. As such, one can then speculate that it may have commissioned for a private chapel in the family palace in via Avasella. Nor is it known with any certainty when it left the collection: in his book Men, Music, and Manners in France and Italy, 1770, London, 1969, p. 100, Charles Burney records his visit to the Piazza Tanari in 1770, and describes briefly the paintings he saw there, including Annibale Carracci's Toilet of Venus, Reni's Madonna and Child and the lost Birth of Alexander the Great by Ludovico Carracci, along with other works by artists such as Giuseppe Maria Crespi and Marcantonio Franceschini, which clearly postdate Alessandro's collecting. Interestingly he does not mention the Pietà, which might suggest it had already left the collection. Nor does he mention, however, other works that are known to have still been there, including the Alexander and Thais and Guercino's Assumption, which suggests that he did not see the whole collection and that his list is incomplete.
The present composition can be dated to the early maturity of the artist circa 1585 by comparison with a number of other works by Ludovico dated to this time: the somewhat adolescent, almost doll-like faces and expressions of the Magdalene and Saint John the Evangelist here find parallels in both the Archangel Gabriel and the Madonna in the Annunciation, Pinacotoeca Nazionale, Bologna (dated to 1583-4 by Feigenbaum, in the exhibition catalogue Ludovico Carracci, 1993, p. 12, no. 6) and also in the figures of Saint Catherine and the attendant angels in the Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine in the Konstmuseum, Göteborg, (dated by Feigenbaum to the first half of the 1580s, op. cit., p. 26, no. 12). The powerful and intense depiction of Christ also recalls the treatment of the same figure in the famous Flagellation of Christ, (Musée de la Chartreuse, Douai, dated by Feigenbaum to circa 1585, op. cit., pp. 15-17, no. 7), while the placing of his legs (with one resting upon the other) is the same (in reverse) as that of Isaac in the Sacrifice of Isaac in the Vatican Museums (dated by Feigenbaum to circa 1584-6, op. cit., p. 40, no. 18).
The most striking feature of this composition is the dominant figure of Christ, which stretches the full width of the canvas and thereby unifies the background figures into a group. Before this wall of figures, the body of Christ is pushed dramatically into the viewer's space. Equally engaging is the undulating rhythm created by the series of curves of his lifeless body. The movement follows Jesus's left arm down to his crowned head, along the arch of his torso and down to his waist. This powerful sense of movement across the canvas results in a bold lack of spatial clarity between Christ and the background figures to the right. Although it is clear that the body of Christ rests on the lap of the swooning Madonna, it is less obvious how the space to the right is constructed. Judging from the position of his raised hands, St. John appears to be standing and yet the presence of some kind of support beneath the knees of Christ would suggest that the saint is in fact seated and it is his raised knee that bears the weight of Christ's legs. Also intriguing is the somewhat isolated triangle of brilliant red paint in the lower right corner, which, on closer inspection, is probably the robe of the saint. Though somewhat flat in application, this area of color serves as a chromatic foil to the firey landscape in the upper left corner.
There are a number of touches that reveal the hand of a master: the superb still life quality of the crown of thorns; the richly impasted topmost corner of the shroud that is pulled back under the weight of Christ's body; and the mysterious presence of the woman supporting the Madonna, dramatically lit by a streak of light across her forehead. Arguably the most impressive passage lies at the center of the composition. The artist has boldly foreshortened the Madonna's left arm, the crisp folds of her sleeve contrasting with the soft flesh of her hand. Hanging limply her index finger and thumb rest lightly on the hand of Jesus. However, it is not the lifeless hand of a dead man that she touches but the dislocated wrist of the crucified Christ, rendered with great naturalism. It is through this powerful, yet subtle motif that Carracci captures the essence of the Pietà - the brutality of Christ's suffering and Mary's anguished response to it -- and depicts it with the greatest pathos.
We are grateful to Dr. Gail Feigenbaum for her assistance in cataloguing this lot and for confirming the attribution having examined the painting in the original. Our thanks as well to Carol Togneri of the Getty Provenance Index for her assistance in documenting this painting's early history.
Pisani's catalogue of the paintings was in fact just part of a larger inventory, compiled under the supervision of one Rinaldo Accursi and listing all the possessions of the Marchese in the family palace located on Via Galleria, in the parish of Santa Maria Maggiore, Bologna. This document is a fascinating account of what was clearly an important collection, which impresses both by the quality and quantity of the works amassed by its creator. An important member of the senatorial branch of the family, Alessandro Tanari made his fortune through money lending and wise investments and became one of the wealthiest property owners in and around Bologna (L. Ciammitti in Bologna 1985, pp. 141-8). His generous support of a number of public building programs led Camillo Borghese, later Pope Paul V, to appoint him Treasurer of the Papal reserves in Bologna in 1586. He married Diana Barbieri, who came from a powerful and ancient family of Bologna with strong senatorial traditions, and certainly some of the paintings in his collection entered as a result of the marriage. Their son and heir, Giovanni Nicola, took over his father's position as Treasurer in 1605 and himself enjoyed a distinguished career in the senate, serving no less than four times as a 'gonfalonier' or magistrate (gonfalconiere) in the years 1631-1656 (see V. Spreti, loc. cit.).
Pisani clearly took great care in compiling his inventory and it is his precise descriptions of many of the pictures that have greatly facilitated the positive identification not only of the present work, but also of a number of important paintings known both in the literature and in the original today. Included among these are (with all references to F. Varignana, op. cit., except where stated otherwise); Guido Reni, Ninus and Semiramus, formerly in the Gemäldegalerie, Dresden, but destroyed during the fire bombing of 1945 (op. cit., p. 206, note 30, and S. Pepper, Guido Reni, 1984, no. 109, p. 255 and pl. 135); Ludovico Carracci, The Kiss of Judas, The Art Museum, Princeton University (op.cit. p.208, note 50); Guercino, The Assumption of the Virgin, The Hermitage, Saint Petersburg, (op. cit., p. 206, note 31, and D.M. Stone, Guercino, catalogo completo, 1991, p. 112, no. 88, illustrated); Ludovico Carracci, Alexander and Thais, with Richard Feigen and Co. (op. cit., p. 204, note 26); Annibale Carracci, The Toilet of Venus, now in the Samuel H. Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington (op. cit, p. 205, note 28); and Guido Reni, The Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist, either destroyed or lost since leaving the Tanari collection in the 1820s (see below), and now only known through an engraving by Mauro Gandolfi (op. cit., p. 206, note 29, and S. Pepper, op. cit., p. 260, no. 122 and pl. 145).
The first of these works - Ninus and Semiramus - left the collection between 1749-52, when it was acquired by Canon Luigi Crespi by papal decree and very much against the wishes of the Tanari, for the Elector of Saxony (see S. Pepper, Guido Reni, 1984, no. 109, p. 255 and pl. 135). The last four in this list are known to have been sold from the collection in the second quarter of the 19th century, with all but the Guercino leaving at the same time and in the same fashion. Hugh Brigstock records how James Irving, a Scottish art dealer and speculator, went to Italy in the first half of the nineteenth century to source Italian pictures for collectors back home in Britain (William Buchanan and the 19th century Art Trade: 100 Letters to his agents in London and Italy, 1982, p. 27ff.). Although Irvine sometimes worked as an agent for William Buchanan, another art dealer of Scottish origin, on this particular occasion he had been entrusted with a sum of £10,000 by Sir William Forbes, who wished to form a small picture collection. Irvine began his search in Bologna and in 1827/8 made his first purchases - the Alexander and Thais, The Toilet of Venus, and The Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist -- from the Tanari collection. All three were subsequently offered in the Forbes estate sale, Rainy, London, 2 June 1842, at which point their paths separated. Also offered in the sale was a Madonna and Child, by Francesco Francia, that carried the Tanari provenance, but which does not appear in Pisani's original inventory.
As regards the Guercino, Brigstock (op. cit., p. 27, and pp.31-3) records that although Irvine did see it when at the Palazzo Tanari, he nonetheless 'resisted the temptation to add [the] vast picture of the Assumption because of the darkened paint surface'. It was left to Buchanan to try some ten years later to place the painting with a British collector, first with Robert Holford, 'a nouveau riche, who in 1838 had inherited a fortune', and then with George Lucy of Charlecote, Warwickshire. Such was the impressive scale of the work that Buchanan tried to convince the latter to purchase it for his great hall 'for it can be seen in all its parts at a mile's distance'. Lucy, however, declined and the painting was sold directly to the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, in 1844 (see D.M. Stone, loc. cit.). An early catalogue of the museum (Catalogue de la Galerie des tableaux - les écoles d'Italie et d'Espagne, 1869, I, p. 85, no. 239 a) contains the interesting comment that the work was 'painted in 1623 for Alexander Tanari'. This is of some importance in our understanding of Tanari's involvement with the arts, for it clearly suggests his role went beyond that of a collector and came closer to that of a patron, commissioning works directly from the leading artists in Bologna. In this connection it is pertinent to consider the history of the Alexander and Thais by Ludovico Carracci, also in his collection (see above). Dr Gail Feigenbaum suggests in the catalogue for the exhibition, Ludovico Carracci (Bologna and Fort Worth, 1993, p. 139, no. 64), that Alessandro Tanari also commissioned this work as part of a series of three paintings depicting scenes from the life of Alexander the Great - an obvious choice of subject for a patron of the same name.(The other two works, The Birth of Alexander and Alexander with the wife of Darius, are both lost; see Malvasia, op. cit, 1841, I, p. 354). Feigenbaum further notes that Palazzo Tanari was not built until 1632, and so this series would have been commissioned for the previous habitiation of the family in via Avasella. Given the high number of works by the Carracci family listed in Pisani's inventory - there are about ten by Ludovico alone - an image of Alessandro Tanari as an enthusiastic champion of the masters of the local school of painting begins to emerge.
Although we are fortunate to know about the history of these other paintings from the Tanari collection described above, we have less information about that of the present Pietà. If it was, as seems plausible, commissioned by Alessandro, then it cannot have been for the Palazzo Tanari, since Ludovico died in 1619. The format of the painting would suggest it was an overdoor, and indeed the gaze of the woman to the right of the Madonna certainly appears to look out of the composition and down towards the viewer. As such, one can then speculate that it may have commissioned for a private chapel in the family palace in via Avasella. Nor is it known with any certainty when it left the collection: in his book Men, Music, and Manners in France and Italy, 1770, London, 1969, p. 100, Charles Burney records his visit to the Piazza Tanari in 1770, and describes briefly the paintings he saw there, including Annibale Carracci's Toilet of Venus, Reni's Madonna and Child and the lost Birth of Alexander the Great by Ludovico Carracci, along with other works by artists such as Giuseppe Maria Crespi and Marcantonio Franceschini, which clearly postdate Alessandro's collecting. Interestingly he does not mention the Pietà, which might suggest it had already left the collection. Nor does he mention, however, other works that are known to have still been there, including the Alexander and Thais and Guercino's Assumption, which suggests that he did not see the whole collection and that his list is incomplete.
The present composition can be dated to the early maturity of the artist circa 1585 by comparison with a number of other works by Ludovico dated to this time: the somewhat adolescent, almost doll-like faces and expressions of the Magdalene and Saint John the Evangelist here find parallels in both the Archangel Gabriel and the Madonna in the Annunciation, Pinacotoeca Nazionale, Bologna (dated to 1583-4 by Feigenbaum, in the exhibition catalogue Ludovico Carracci, 1993, p. 12, no. 6) and also in the figures of Saint Catherine and the attendant angels in the Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine in the Konstmuseum, Göteborg, (dated by Feigenbaum to the first half of the 1580s, op. cit., p. 26, no. 12). The powerful and intense depiction of Christ also recalls the treatment of the same figure in the famous Flagellation of Christ, (Musée de la Chartreuse, Douai, dated by Feigenbaum to circa 1585, op. cit., pp. 15-17, no. 7), while the placing of his legs (with one resting upon the other) is the same (in reverse) as that of Isaac in the Sacrifice of Isaac in the Vatican Museums (dated by Feigenbaum to circa 1584-6, op. cit., p. 40, no. 18).
The most striking feature of this composition is the dominant figure of Christ, which stretches the full width of the canvas and thereby unifies the background figures into a group. Before this wall of figures, the body of Christ is pushed dramatically into the viewer's space. Equally engaging is the undulating rhythm created by the series of curves of his lifeless body. The movement follows Jesus's left arm down to his crowned head, along the arch of his torso and down to his waist. This powerful sense of movement across the canvas results in a bold lack of spatial clarity between Christ and the background figures to the right. Although it is clear that the body of Christ rests on the lap of the swooning Madonna, it is less obvious how the space to the right is constructed. Judging from the position of his raised hands, St. John appears to be standing and yet the presence of some kind of support beneath the knees of Christ would suggest that the saint is in fact seated and it is his raised knee that bears the weight of Christ's legs. Also intriguing is the somewhat isolated triangle of brilliant red paint in the lower right corner, which, on closer inspection, is probably the robe of the saint. Though somewhat flat in application, this area of color serves as a chromatic foil to the firey landscape in the upper left corner.
There are a number of touches that reveal the hand of a master: the superb still life quality of the crown of thorns; the richly impasted topmost corner of the shroud that is pulled back under the weight of Christ's body; and the mysterious presence of the woman supporting the Madonna, dramatically lit by a streak of light across her forehead. Arguably the most impressive passage lies at the center of the composition. The artist has boldly foreshortened the Madonna's left arm, the crisp folds of her sleeve contrasting with the soft flesh of her hand. Hanging limply her index finger and thumb rest lightly on the hand of Jesus. However, it is not the lifeless hand of a dead man that she touches but the dislocated wrist of the crucified Christ, rendered with great naturalism. It is through this powerful, yet subtle motif that Carracci captures the essence of the Pietà - the brutality of Christ's suffering and Mary's anguished response to it -- and depicts it with the greatest pathos.
We are grateful to Dr. Gail Feigenbaum for her assistance in cataloguing this lot and for confirming the attribution having examined the painting in the original. Our thanks as well to Carol Togneri of the Getty Provenance Index for her assistance in documenting this painting's early history.