Adam and Eve
(Bologna 1612 - 1659)
Once ascribed to Giuseppe Cesari, called Cavalier d’Arpino, this refined miniature on parchment is now attributed to the Bolognese miniaturist Bonaventura Bisi, known as Padre Pittorino. It was first mentioned in connection with the Borghese Collection in 1693. The work shows Adam and Eve, depicted naked in the Garden of Eden. Behind them rises the tree of knowledge and of good and evil: according to the Book of Genesis, God ordered the couple to nourish themselves on all the fruit present in the garden with the exception of that from the forbidden tree. Eve, though, was tempted by a serpent, and together with Adam she ate one of the apples, thus bringing original sin upon them.
Object details
Inventory
Location
Date
first half of the 17th century
Classification
Period
Medium
Dimensions
Provenance
Rome, Borghese Collection, 1693 (Inventory 1693, room XI, no. 647; Della Pergola 1965); Inventory 1700, room VIII, no. 20; Inventory 1790, room VII, no. 6; Inventario Fidecommissario Borghese 1833, p. 30. Purchased by Italian state, 1902.
Commentary
This painting was first mentioned in connection with the Borghese Collection in 1693. Paola della Pergola (1965) identified it in the inventory of that year as the ‘small oval work with a frame with gilded copper hangers, containing Adam and Eve with the serpent, no., by Cav. Giuseppe’. The attribution to Giuseppe Cesari is repeated in all later Borghese inventories (1790; Inventario Fidecommissario 1833), with the exception of that of 1700, which ascribed the miniature to Raphael.
Adolfo Venturi (1893) was the first critic to attribute the parchment to Bonaventura Bisi, the Bolognese miniaturist mentioned in our sources as having executed a Virgin and Child based on an exemplar by Raphael (for the most recent discussion of Padre Pittorino, see Stone 2020, with an updated bibliography). This view was accepted by Roberto Longhi (1928) and Della Pergola (1955); the latter scholar suggested that the work may be a vague allusion to one of the three large canvasses that disappeared during the 18th century depicting Eve Offering the Apple to Adam, The Creation of Adam and Eve, and The Expulsion from Earthly Paradise, executed respectively by Giovanni Baglione for Scipione Borghese, by Cavalier d’Arpino, and by Domenico Passignano. By contrast, Herwarth Röttgen (2002) claimed that the work in question was not inspired by the Creation – which according to Giovanni Baglione was executed by Cavalier d'Arpino in 1609 for the funeral of Giovanni Battista Borghese and confused by Della Pergola with The Creation of Adam and Eve – but rather by a painting with a similar subject belonging to a different collection; indeed, no Original Sin by Cesari is documented in the Borghese inventories. Röttgen (2002) identified the prototype as a panel whose present location is not known; dating to roughly the 1620s, this work appeared on the antiques market in 1970.
Antonio Iommelli
Bibliography
- G. Piancastelli, Catalogo dei quadri della Galleria Borghese, in Archivio Galleria Borghese, 1891, p. 336.
- A. Venturi, Il Museo e la Galleria Borghese, Roma 1893, p. 223.
- R. Longhi, Precisioni nelle Gallerie Italiane, I, La R. Galleria Borghese, Roma 1928, p. 224.
- P. della Pergola, La Galleria Borghese. I Dipinti, I, Roma 1955, pp. 61-62, n. 104.
- P. della Pergola, L’Inventario Borghese del 1693 (III), in “Arte Antica e Moderna”, XXX, 1965, p. 212, n.647.
- R. Galleni, Bonaventura Bisi e il Guercino, in “Paragone”, XXVI, 307, 1975, pp. 80-82.
- R. Galleni, Il bolognese Bonaventura Bisi frate e pittore tra i Medici e gli Este, in “Il Carrobbio”, V, 1979, pp. 175-188.
- H. Rôttgen, Il Cavalier Giuseppe Cesatri D’Arpino. Un grande pittore nello splendore della fama e nell’inconsistenza della fortuna, Roma 2002, p. 441, n. 211.
- K. Herrmann Fiore, Galleria Borghese Roma scopre un tesoro. Dalla pinacoteca ai depositi un museo che non ha più segreti, San Giuliano Milanese 2006, p. 170.
- D.M. Stone, Il frate con l’orecchino d’oro: Bonaventura Bisi, pittore e mercante d’arte, e un nuovo ritratto del Guercino, in Nuovi studi sul Guercino. Da Cento a Roma, da Piacenza a Bologna, a cura di D. Benati, D.M. Stone, Piacenza 2020, pp. 57-71, in part. p. 68, n. 20.
