Holy Family

Machuca Pedro

(Toledo c. 1490 - c. Granada 1550)

This panel depicting the Holy Family was painted by Pedro Machuca, a Spanish painter who lived in the first half of the 16th century and who is documented as having been in Italy at the end of the 1510s. From a compositional point of view, the work was apparently inspired by several well-known works by Raphael, including the Madonna della Tenda (Munich) and especially the Madonna della Seggiola (Florence). The question of the attribution of this work of unknown provenance was only resolved in the 1980s by Nicole Dacos

Object details

Commentary

This Holy Family was executed by the Spanish painter and architect Pedro Machuca during a stay in Italy. His presence in the country is indeed documented from at least 1517, when he painted The Virgin and the Souls of Purgatory (Museo del Prado, Madrid), one of his most important works. He remained in Italy until 1520, when he returned to Spain.

The provenance of this panel is unknown. It is nearly impossible to identify it in any of the historic Borghese inventories, given the generic descriptions of works with this subject, which are all attributed to Raphael or his school. The only plausible correspondence may be with an item in the Inventario Fidecommissario which reads, ‘Virgin and Child, by Giulio Romano, 2 ½ spans wide, 3 spans 7 inches high, on panel’. If this description indeed refers to the work in question, then the year 1833 would represent the only terminus ante quem for the painting’s entry into the Borghese Collection (Della Pergola 1959, p. 127). The attribution of the panel to Giulio Romano was accepted by Giovanni Piancastelli (1891, p. 324) but rejected by Adolfo Venturi (1893, p. 112) shortly after. The question of the artist’s identity was still open in the 1950s, when Paola Della Pergola (1959) listed the work as a ‘derivation from Raphael’, pointing to similarities with the Madonna della Tenda (Alte Pinakothek, Munich) and the Madonna della Seggiola (Palazzo Pitti, Florence). The debate was only concluded in 1984, when Nicole Dacos (p. 332), building on a hypothesis that had been put forth by Longhi (1967, p. 341; 1969, pp. 34-39), definitively ascribed the painting to the Spanish painter on the basis of a stylistic comparison with the above-mentioned Virgin and the Souls of Purgatory.

Evident similarities between our panel and the works by Raphael cited above include the motif of Mary’s arms wrapped around the Child and that of the proximity of their faces, especially with regard to the Madonna della Seggiola. The position of the two protagonists is inverted here compared to Raphael’s compositions, suggesting that Machuca may have been familiar with engravings of the latter (Della Pergola, 1959). On the other hand, the dynamic of the two figures differs in the work in question: holding the symbolic goldfinch in his hand, Jesus almost seems to wish to escape his mother’s embrace; the Virgin, meanwhile, presses her son closely to her, as if to reassure him. Their respective movements create a sense of unease, which contrasts with the harmonious bond that characterises Mother and Child in the work in Palazzo Pitti.

In addition, while the relationship between the two protagonists follows a circular rhythm in Raphael’s painting, creating a perfect formal balance, here the bodies seem to be joined linearly along a diagonal (Costamagna 1984, p. 135).

In addition to connections to Raphael’s works, Kristina Herrmann Fiore (2011, p. 283) noted iconographic allusions to Michelangelo and Sebastiano del Piombo: on the one hand, the image of the Mother holding the Child in her arms recalls that of The Deluge of the Sistine Chapel, especially the tension transmitted by the position of the bodies in the Borghese panel; on the other hand, the head of Joseph – bearded and bald on the top – seems to evoke the man behind Christ in Sebastiano’s Raising of Lazarus (National Gallery, London). Both the solid volumes and the use of colour, furthermore, show the influence of Michelangelo’s painting.

The light-coloured flesh of the Virgin and Child are exalted by the light, which strikes them directly. The figure of Joseph, by contrast, is left in shadow; only his head and one of his hands are visible, while his gaze is directed away from the scene.

Machuca, then, combines a series of elements deriving from the works of the great masters, interpreting them in a highly personal way. His style is characterised by a dramatic vein, a trait that is more marked in works executed following his return to Spain.

The deep and suggestive dark eyes of the figures are typical of his oeuvre, serving to highlight that sense of unease that pervades the work.

Pier Ludovico Puddu