Holy Family

derivation from Sanzio, Raphael

(Urbino 1483 - Rome 1520)

The painting is a replica of a panel of the same subject made in Raphael’s circle, preserved in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. It is possible that an engraving by Giulio Bonasone, dated around 1563, taken from the Vienna panel, may have been used as a reference for the painting in the Borghese collection and other replicas of the subject.

Object details

Commentary

The scene is set against a background characterised on the left by some trees and rocky relief, while on the right, the palm tree above the figure of St Joseph evokes the setting for the flight into Egypt. The Virgin holds the Child on her lap. He leans out from his mother’s arms towards the kneeling infant St John, girded by a garland of vine leaves around his waist and holding a camel skin. Joseph, in an original and significant gesture, reaches out with his right hand, grasping his arm to help him stand up.

The painting cannot be identified with certainty prior to the 1833 Fideicommissary inventory, where it appears with the attribution to Giulio Romano. This was left out in later printed catalogues of the collection from 1854 onwards, when it appears as “school of Raphael”.

Already in 1839, Passavant, in describing the “Rest in Egypt” at the “Belvedere” in Vienna (today Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gemäldegalerie, 174), judged by the scholar to be an elaboration of an “incomplete sketch” by Raphael and completed by a pupil, had identified the Borghese panel as a copy of the same. He associated it with four other paintings, indicating their presence, respectively, in Madrid (collection of Jose de Madrazo), in Milan (sacristy of Sant’Eustorgio), in Rome (Doria Pamphilj collection), as well as the one already in the Colonna collection (pointed out to him by William Buchanan).

The painting in Vienna, formerly believed to be by Raphael, had belonged to the collection of Cardinal Carlo Borromeo since 1565. In 1584, through a bequest in his will, it passed to the church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli near San Celso in Milan. In 18th-century guides, it was referred to as the Madonna of Divine Love (E. Bianchi, Pinacoteca di Brera. Addenda e apparati generali, 1996, pp. 250-251), and was purchased in 1779 by the Austrian Emperor Joseph II.  While Crowe and Cavalcaselle (1885, II, p. 554), without mentioning the various copies, had associated the painting with the names of Giulio Romano and Giovan Francesco Penni, the work was considered by Dussler (1971) to be an almost paradigmatic case of the use and combination of elements derived from Raphael unrelated to the existence of a composition actually created by the master. Oberhuber’s opinion (1999, p. 247, fig. 228) was different. On the basis of the studies for the figure of the Infant Jesus in the drawing purchased by the Metropolitan Museum in 1997 (New York, Metropolitan Museum, 1997.75), datable to between 1511 and 1512, he identified the hand of the master in the Vienna panel, especially in certain details of St Joseph, the Virgin and the Child, attributing the rest of the composition to the Florentine circle of Andrea del Sarto. It is actually the general harmony of the composition that some critics (Meyer zur Capellen 2005) still have doubts about, leaving open the question of the actual extent of the workshop’s participation.

With regard to the panel under examination, Venturi (1893), noting the poor state of conservation of the painting, shifted its attribution towards the Bolognese sphere, declaring it to be “a blackish copy (from Raphael) with blue tones like those found in Bolognese paintings of the 17th century”; this reference was taken up by Cantalamessa who, in a handwritten note commenting on Venturi (20 April 1912), as well as judging the work to be perhaps inspired by Raphael, but not directly attributable to him, given that “there is no original by the Master that corresponds to this painting and the painting in Vienna is something quite different”, approved its attribution to the Bolognese sphere, at the same time communicating Corrado Ricci’s attribution of the work to Camillo Procaccini. In a note made shortly afterwards (2 May 1912), Cantalamessa added an important observation: ‘I realise today that the painting, although reproduced with freedom of style, is a copy of one by Fra Paolino da Pistoia, which was passed on to Prince Doria in Rome. The artist who made the copy has given St Joseph the beard that is missing in the original, and has made his old age more pronounced; moreover, he has gotten rid of two standing angels, to the right of St Joseph, and changed the background countryside’. The reference of the Holy Family with St John and two Angels (Rome, Doria Pamphilj collection, inv. FC 320) to the Pistoiese friar, which is still accepted today, had been proposed as early as 1892 by Cantalamessa himself (A. G. De Marchi, Collezione Doria Pamphili. Catalogo generale dei dipinti, Cinisello balsamo 2016, p. 183). It is no coincidence that in his “notes” to Venturi (1928), Longhi updated the attribution of the Borghese panel, defining it as “[a copy from Raphael]... Now better defined as a ‘loose copy’ by Frà Paolino da Pistoia”. 

About thirty years later, Paola Della Pergola (1959), who had raised the doubt that the 19th century critics’ references to Paolino da Pistoia were in fact not related to inventory no. 368 but to a copy of the Madonna of Divine Love that had been in the unrestricted holdings of the Borghese collection since 1862 and was sold in the early 20th century, after the general catalogue had been drawn up (1959), proceeded to clean the panel. Under a thick layer of 19th-century repainting, the cleaning restored the original landscape as well as the palm tree visible on the right and a large part of the figure of Joseph.

The engraving made in c.1563 by Giulio Bonasone (Bartsch 1819, XV, p. 126, no. 59) was inspired by the Vienna painting, and the numerous varied replicas, including the Borghese one, may have used that work as a reference (Massari 1983; G. Bernini Pezzini in Raphael invenit, 1985).

Marina Minozzi