Child Jesus
The panel has been in the collection since at least the end of the 17th century; in old inventories and until the end of the 19th century, the work was ascribed to Andrea del Sarto. Later attributed more generically to the Florence school, the picture is not considered to be of great merit, perhaps due in part to its poor state of conservation.
Object details
Inventory
Location
Classification
Period
Medium
Dimensions
Provenance
Inventory 1693, room VI, no. 44; Inventory 1790, room VII, no. 50; Inventario Fidecommissario Borghese 1833, p. 30. Purchased by the Italian State, 1902.
Conservation and Diagnostic
Commentary
Undoubtedly the work of a painter who studied the Florentine artist Andrea del Sarto cited in the inventory documents, one might consider this panel as belonging to the devotional genre, inspired by the iconography of the Child Jesus seen in the Borgherini Holy Family in the Metropolitan Museum in New York (inv. 22.75), or a preparatory piece, a sort of sketch, for a more complex work. In fact, the small panel, which is difficult to decipher due to deep scratches and holes produced by woodworm, shows a small Jesus seated with a globe in his hand. This feature recalls the figure of Christ known as “Salvator Mundi” (Saviour of the World), a widespread tradition in Northern European Renaissance painting, where the globe is surmounted by a cross, with the hand of Jesus in the act of blessing. This type of image was often displayed in pendant with a depiction of the Virgin.
Lara Scanu
Bibliography
- G. Piancastelli, Catalogo dei quadri della Galleria Borghese in Archivio Galleria Borghese, 1891, p. 240
- A. Venturi, Il Museo e la Galleria Borghese, Roma 1893, p. 208
- R. Longhi, Precisioni nelle gallerie italiane. Galleria Borghese, Roma 1928, p. 228
- P. Della Pergola, La Galleria Borghese. I Dipinti, I, Roma 1955, p. 146, n. 268
- K. Hermann Fiore, Roma scopre un tesoro. Dalla Pinacoteca ai depositi, un museo che non ha più segreti, Roma 2006, p. 147
