Adoration of the Child

Della Porta Bartolomeo called Fra Bartolomeo

(Prato 1472 - Florence 1517)

Of unknown provenance, this painting was mentioned for the first time in the Borghese inventories in 1790. In the past scholars debated its attribution, until Roberto Longhi convincingly proposed the name of Fra’ Bartolomeo (Bartolomeo della Porta), which critics have since accepted. The work dates to the last decade of the Quattrocento: following his apprenticeship in the workshop of Cosimo Rosselli, the young painter looked with interest to the production of such artists as Piero di Cosimo and Leonardo da Vinci during this period.

Object details

Commentary

Painted in oil, this round panel depicts the Adoration of the Child in an outdoor setting, with a broad landscape spreading behind two architectural structures. In the foreground, Mary and Joseph kneel before the Child, who lies naked on a cushion placed on the ground as reaches a hand toward his mother. While the rendering of the vegetation is attentive and detailed, the lines of perspective that join the foreground to the background are not quite exact (Stefani 2000, p. 230).

Of uncertain provenance, the painting is referred to in the entry of the 1790 inventory that reads, ‘Tondo depicting the Holy Family, by Raphael. Unfinished work by Piero di Cosimo’. The 1833 Inventario Fidecommissario described it as ‘a nativity scene by Lorenzo Creti, on panel, round, with a diameter of 3 spans, 11 inches’ (Della Pergola 1959, p. 16). Moving back into the older inventories, the painting may be referred to in that of 1693 as ‘a round painting with the Madonna, the Child and Joseph, with an engraved frame and overlays, 4 spans, no. [sic], by Raphael’. If this entry in fact corresponds to the work in question, it would mean that it had formed part of the Borghese Collection since at least the late 17th century.

The question of the panel’s attribution was much debated by scholars in the past, with most favouring the circle of Lorenzo di Credi, whose name was in fact given in the Inventario Fidecommissario. Cavalcaselle (Crowe, Cavalcaselle 1914, p. 39) noted similarities between the Borghese panel and another painting with the same subject conserved in Palazzo Pitti in Florence, ascribing both works to Lorenzo’s school. Although later critics would continue to point to the connection between these two works, over time they came to believe that they were by two different artists. On the one hand, the Florentine panel came to be ascribed to Cosimo Rosselli (Fahy 1969, p. 143); on the other, scholars gradually abandoned the idea that the work in question revealed the hand of Lorenzo di Credi. Other names were proposed instead, yet the question was only resolved when Roberto Longhi (1928, pp. 36-43, 221; for a summary of the various attributions, see Della Pergola 1959; Padovani 2015, p. 274) had the felicitous intuition that the Borghese panel should be attributed to Fra’ Bartolomeo (Bartolomeo della Porta). Today all critics accept Longhi’s view: as early as 1959, Paola Della Pergola catalogued the work under this artist’s name (see also Bacci 1966, p. 127).

Longhi (1928) further dated the work to roughly 1495, as the panel reveals a style found in other works by Bartolomeo from that period, following the conclusion of his apprenticeship in Rosselli’s workshop. It was in these years that the artist looked with interest at the most innovative painters from Verrocchio’s school, from Leonardo to Ghirlandaio, from Lorenzo di Credi to Piero di Cosimo (Padovani 2015). The influence of Piero, who frequented the same workshop for many years, is evident here in both the landscape and the substantial rendering of the figures, while that of Leonardo is discernible in the chiaroscuro technique used to mould the protagonists as well as in the complex execution of the kneeling Joseph. The choice of a conventional format, similar to the tondo in Palazzo Pitti, appears to be a result of Bartolomeo’s training under Rosselli, a painter of a more traditional orientation (Fahy 1969; Venturini 1992, p. 79; Padovani 2015).

Critics have identified two drawings connected to the painting, one for the figure of the Child (Albertina, Vienna) and another for that of the Virgin (Cabinet des Dessins, Louvre, Paris). In addition, a replica of the Borghese panel is held at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, dating to the same period (Padovani 2014, pp. 21-22). Finally, scholars have noted stylistic similarities with a Nativity conserved at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, which Fahy (1969) considered an autograph work.

Pier Ludovico Puddu