Adoration of the Child
attivo a Firenze fine XV - inizio XVI secolo
The painter of the panel, generically referred to as ‘Maestro del Borghese Tondo’, is more commonly known as Jacopo del Tedesco, an artist active in Florence in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. The panel depicts the Holy Family and St. John in a hut, beyond which a mountainous landscape full of figures unfolds. Two shepherds arrive from the right, one in an attitude of adoration, the other carrying a lamb.
Object details
Inventory
Location
Date
Classification
Period
Medium
Dimensions
Provenance
Rome, Borghese Collection, 1693 (Inventory 1693, room I, no. 13); Inventario Fidecommissario Borghese 1833, p. 7. Purchased by Italian State, 1902.
Conservation and Diagnostic
- 1900 Luigi Bertolucci (pest control)
- 1941 Carlo Matteucci
Work not currently exhibited
Commentary
The work is first cited in the 1693 inventory as by ‘del Polaiolo’ (Della Pergola 1964). Della Pergola (1959) mentioned painting described in the inventory of Lucrezia d’Este’s collection, expressing doubts as to whether it could be identified with this one. Starting with the 1693 inventory, the attribution to Antonio del Pollaiolo remained unaltered in the Borghese inventories of 1700 (Room I, no. 9) and 1790 (Room I, no. 6) – also being mentioned by Pietro Rossini in Mercurio Errante (1700) – up to G. Piancastelli’s catalogue (1891).
The identification of the painter of the tondo has been controversial ever since Berenson (1897) attributed it to Girolamo di Benvenuto, though this was not endorsed by the critics, including Longhi (1928). Grouping a set of related paintings around the work, De Francovich (1927) suggested assigning it to Jacopo del Tedesco, a pupil of Domenico Ghirlandaio documented in Florence in 1503 around whose name a larger corpus of works would later be gathered by Fahy (1976). Fahy, however, preferred to maintain the more generic label of Maestro del Borghese Tondo. The name Jacopo del Tedesco was used for convenience’s sake by Della Pergola in the catalogue of the paintings of the Galleria Borghese (1959) to designate a Florentine painter active in the 15th century. The artistic personality of the Maestro del Tondo Borghese, further clarified by Venturini (1992), who ascribed to him some of the frescoes in the Borgia Apartment in the Vatican (1492-1494), has recently been identified with that of Michele di Giovanni Scheggini, known as il Graffione (Bernacchioni 2018).
The unknown painter appears to have stylistic affinities with Ghirlandaio, especially in the facial features of the Madonna and Child. The Florentine element is combined with the more North European physical features of St. Joseph and the shepherds on the right (Moreno, Stefani 2000).
Elisa Martini
Bibliography
- P. Rossini, Il Mercurio errante delle grandezze di Roma, tanto antiche, che moderne, Roma 1700, p. 48.
- X. Barbier de Montault, Les musées et galeries de Rome: catalogue général de tous les objets d’art qui y sont exposés, Rome 1870, p. 347.
- G. Piancastelli, Catalogo dei quadri della Galleria Borghese, in Archivio Galleria Borghese, 1891, p. 224.
- A. Venturi, Il Museo e la Galleria Borghese, Roma 1893, p. 171.
- H. Ullmann, Piero di Cosimo, in “Jahrbuch der Preußischen Kunstsammlungen”, 17, 1896, p. 139.
- B. Berenson, The Central Italian painters of the Renaissance, New York 1897 (ed. 1909), p. 182.
- G. Lafenestre, E. Richtenberger, La peinture en Europe. II. Rome. Les musées, les collections particulières, les palais, Paris 1905, p. 62.
- J.A. Rusconi, La Villa, il Museo e la Galleria Borghese, Bergamo 1906, p. 90.
- P.E. Küppers, Die Tafelbilder des Domenico Ghirlandajo, Straßburg 1916, p. 76.
- G. De Francovich, Appunti su alcuni minori pittori fiorentini della seconda metà del XV secolo, in “Bollettino d’arte”, 20, 1926/27 (1927), pp. 536-540, p. 542, fig. 15.
- R. Longhi, Precisioni nelle Gallerie Italiane, I, La R. Galleria Borghese, Roma 1928, p. 211.
- B. Berenson, The drawings of the Florentine painters, I, Chicago 1938, p. 77.
- P. della Pergola, La Galleria Borghese. I Dipinti, II, Roma 1959, pp. 30-31, n. 35.
- P. della Pergola, L’Inventario Borghese del 1693 (I), in “Arte Antica e Moderna”, XXVI, p. 221, n. 13.
- R. Longhi, Edizione delle opere complete. II. Saggi e ricerche 1925-1928, 2 voll., Firenze 1967, I, p. 349.
- E. Fahy, Some Followers of Domenico Ghirlandajo, 1976, pp. 167-168.
- L. Venturini, Un altro pittore fiorentino nell'appartamento Borgia. Il Maestro del tondo Borghese, in Maestri e botteghe, pittura a Firenze alla fine del Quattrocento, catalogo della mostra (Firenze, Palazzo Strozzi, 16 ottobre 1992-10 gennaio 1993), a cura di M. Gregori, A. Paolucci, C. Acidini Luchinat, Cinisello Balsamo, Milano 1992, pp. 283-289, fig. 1.
- P. Moreno, C. Stefani, Galleria Borghese, Milano, 2000, p. 232, n. 20.
- K. Herrmann Fiore, Museo e Galleria Borghese. Roma scopre un tesoro. Dalla pinacoteca ai depositi un museo che non ha più segreti, San Giuliano Milanese 2006, p. 116.
- R. Ciabattini, Maestro del tondo Borghese (attivo a Firenze tra XV e XVI secolo), Firenze 2016, p. 88 n. 43.
- A. Bernacchioni, Cosimo Rosselli a Sant'Ambrogio e una proposta per il Graffione, in Cosimo Rosselli: tre restauri, nuova luce su un maestro del Rinascimento fiorentino, a cura di C. Acidini, N. Rosselli Del Turco, Firenze 2018, pp. 96-96, 104.
