A Birth

Sustris Lambert

(Amsterdam c. 1515 - c. 1590)

This interior scene most likely represents St Elizabeth’s delivery. It is depicted with a sense of domestic intimacy in a style which betrays the influence of Flemish culture together with familiarity with the Venetian school. At the centre of the composition, two women and a small girl are around a table, while behind them an elderly woman – perhaps Elizabeth, or, in the view of some critics, Rachel – is lying on a bed, assisted by an old midwife. Their presence, together with those of a wet nurse with a newborn, of two small boys with a dog, and of several women in the background with a baby, undoubtedly alludes to the theme of infancy, which is here treated in all its guises. While at first critics could not agree on the name of the artist, more recent scholarship attributes the work to the Dutch painter Lambert Sustris.

Object details

Commentary

It is quite probable this work came from the estate of Lucrezia d’Este. Noted by Wilhelm Heinse in his description of the Borghese paintings in 1783 (see Wiecker 1977), the canvas was identified by Paola della Pergola in the following description found in the 1592 inventory of Lucrezia’s possessions: ‘A Nativity, which is a copy of the small canvas in Florence (Inv. Lucrezia d’Este, 1592; Della Pergola 1955). Assuming that we are not dealing here with one more version, the work in question is undoubtedly the one cited in the above-mentioned inventory, namely a derivation of the Birth of a Child currently held in Palazzo Pitti in Florence, which is acknowledged as a work by Friedrich Sustris (Inv. 1912, Palatina 394; A. Tamvaki 1999). If this is indeed the case, then the elusive subject is The Delivery of Saint Elizabeth, whose prototype was present in the 1589 inventory of the Uffizi Tribuna and which is known in two versions, one preserved in Braunschweig and the other in a private collection in Milan. (For a different opinion, see Hoogerwerff (1943), who hypothesised that the Borghese composition derives from a painting held in Blankenburg Castle).

Like the original, the canvas in question has been attributed to a variety of artists. While the 1833 Inventario Fidecommissario ascribed it to the ‘Venetian school’, Giovanni Morelli attributed both the copy and the Florentine Birth of a Child to Scarsellino (see Della Pergola 1959). For his part, Adolfo Venturi (1893) proposed an unknown painter influenced by Parmigianino. The first critic to rightly suggest Lambert Sustris was Alfred Peltzer (1913-14): rejecting Giulio Cantalamessa’s proposal of Bertoja (see Della Pergola 1955), he recognised in the Borghese canvas the hand of a painter of Flemish culture who had been active in Venice for some time, while attributing the prototype in Florence to Friedrich Sustris, Lambert’s son. Peltzer’s opinion was upheld by Baumgart (1931-32) and confirmed by Paola della Pergola (1955); it has not been called into question by critics since (see most recently Herrmann Fiore 2006).

As we have seen, the subject is not clear. Nonetheless, it is possible that like the Florentine canvas it represents the delivery of St Elisabeth. Alternatively – as Marta Privitera suggested with regard to the Pitti Birth of a Child (in Magnificenza alla corte dei Medici 1997) – it might depict Rachel’s delivery of Joseph in the presence of Leah and his brothers. What is certain is that the presence of a wet nurse with a newborn, of two small boys playing with a dog, and of several women in the background washing a baby all allude the theme of infancy, represented here in all its guises.

Several variations of the work, dated to roughly 1550 (see Herrmann Fiore 2006), are held at the Louvre, the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

Antonio Iommelli