Conversion of Saul
(Garofalo or Ferrara 1476 - Ferrara 1559)
The document is listed in the Borghese inventory of 1693 with an attribution to Garofalo. The painting is now agreed to have been made by a follower of the artist. The number of works by Garofalo and his followers in the Borghese Collection is appreciable.
Object details
Inventory
Location
Date
Classification
Period
Medium
Dimensions
Provenance
Borghese collection, documented in Inventory 1693, room IX, no. 487; Inventory 1790, room of the Hermaphrodite, no. 48; Inventario Fidecommissario Borghese 1833, p. 22, no. 34. Purchased by the Italian state, 1902.
Conservation and Diagnostic
- 1903 Luigi Bartolucci (pest control)
- 2000 Carlo Festa
- 2019 Laura Cibrario
- 2020 Measure3D di Danilo Salzano (laser scan 3D)
- 2020 Erredicci (diagnostics)
- 2021 IFAC-CNR (diagnostics)
- 2021/2022 ArsMensurae di Stefano Ridolfi (diagnostics)
Commentary
The episode depicted in this painting, drawn from Acts 9, concentrates on the wonder and fear of the conversion of the soldier Saul, future Apostle of the people, Paul. Christ, accompanied by an angel, parts the clouds and directs his light and strength towards the armoured soldier dressed in blue, who has been unhorsed, while his companions, blinded by what is happening, flee on their crazed horses. ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ Christ asks the soldier, who, covering his eyes with his hand, blinded by the glare, tips back his head so that his helmet almost slips off, the feathers ruffled by a strong wing that also blows his drapery and his fellow soldiers’ mantles.
The serenity and calm of the typical Ferrara landscape are interrupted by the agitated religious scene in the foreground, enlivened by dramatic, theatrical poses.
The old inventories of the Borghese Collection, which list this painting starting in 1693, all attribute the small work to Garofalo, with the exception of the document of 1790, which instead lists its author as Bellini. Although the weak rendering of the scene makes it more likely to have been painted by a follower (Della Pergola 1955), the attribution to Garofalo was unanimously accepted (Platner 1842; Venturi 1893; Longhi 1928). As for the dating, Venturi saw this work as evidence of Garofalo’s assimilation of the ‘aberrations’ of Giulio Romano’s manner in Mantua, dating it to the 1540s on this basis. In the catalogue of the Galleria Borghese’s paintings edited by Paola Della Pergola (1955), the scholar advanced the idea that this is the painting of the same subject listed in the inventory of Lucrezia d’Este with an attribution to Ludovico Mazzolino, although that work is actually understood to be the painting now attributed to Giacomo Panizzati (active c. 1524–1540) in the National Gallery, London (inv. NG73; Tarissi de Jacobis 2002).
Lara Scanu
Bibliography
- E. Platner, Bes Chreibung der Stadt Rom, III.3. Das Marsfeld, die Tiberinsel, Trastevere und der Janiculus, III, Stuttgart 1842, p. 288
- A. Venturi, Il Museo e la Galleria Borghese, Roma 1893, p. 135
- R. Longhi, Precisioni nelle gallerie italiane. Galleria Borghese, Roma 1928, n. 246
- P. Della Pergola, La Galleria Borghese. I Dipinti, I, Roma 1955, n. 67
- S. Zamboni, Ludovico Mazzolino, Ferrara 1968, n. 40
- A. Pattanaro, La maturità del Garofalo. Annotazioni ad un libro recente, «Prospettiva», 79, 1995, p. 53 nota 60
- S. Tarissi de Jacobis, in Il museo senza confini. Dipinti ferraresi del Rinascimento nelle raccolte romane, a cura di J. Bentini e S. Guarino, Milano 2002, pp. 184-185, scheda 33
