Holy Family
(Como c. 1515 - Rome 1579)
This painting has been ascribed to Marcello Venusti since its mention in the 19th-century Borghese inventory. It shows clear similarities with other works of his oeuvre, evident above all in his mode of representing the figures and their diagonal arrangement in the composition. Nonetheless, the poor state of the work’s conservation caused this attribution to be forgotten, in favour of an anonymous painter immersed in Mannerist culture after Michelangelo, who drew inspiration from Buonarroti’s magnified images and his way of simulating and colouring the drapery. It depicts the Holy Family, made up of the Virgin Mary, the elderly Joseph and the Christ Child.
Object details
Inventory
Location
Date
Classification
Period
Medium
Dimensions
Frame
Salvator Rosa, 130.5 x 106.5 x 7 cm
Provenance
Rome, Borghese Collection, 1833 (Inventario Fidecommissario Borghese 1833, p. 21; Della Pergola 1959). Purchased by Italian state, 1902.
Conservation and Diagnostic
- 1969 Oddo Verdinelli;
- 2007 Paola Tollo;
- 2008 ENEA (diagnostics).
Commentary
The provenance of this panel is still unknown. It first appears in connection with the Borghese Collection in the Inventario Fidecommissario of 1833, where it is ascribed to Marcello Venusti. While Adolfo Venturi (1893) and Roberto Longhi (1928) accepted this attribution, Paola della Pergola (1959) called it into question, claiming that Raphael’s Orléans Madonna (Musée Condé, Chantilly) was its prototype. She therefore proposed locating the work in question in Roman Mannerist circles, suggesting an anonymous follower of Michelangelo as the painter and a date of roughly the mid-16th century.
In 2006, Kristina Herrmann Fiore took up the traditional attribution to Venusti, dating the work to the first half of the 1560s. Two years later, following another round of restoration work, this scholar confirmed the name of the artist from the Valtellina, while moving up the date of its execution to 1550-55, the period in which Venusti began producing works for private worship, based on the models of Michelangelo (Marongiu 2020).
A copy of the original by Raphael, similar to the work in question, was identified in the sanctuary of Vergine delle Grazie in Grosotto (Della Pergola 1959).
Antonio Iommelli
Bibliography
- G. Piancastelli, Catalogo dei quadri della Galleria Borghese, in Archivio Galleria Borghese, 1891, p. 90;
- A. Venturi, Il Museo e la Galleria Borghese, Roma 1893, p. 190;
- G. Cantalamessa, Note manoscritte al Catalogo di A. Venturi del 1893, Arch. Gall. Borghese, 1911-1912, n. 392;
- R. Longhi, Precisioni nelle Gallerie Italiane, I, La R. Galleria Borghese, Roma 1928, p. 215;
- A. Venturi, Storia dell'Arte Italiana, IX, Roma 1933, 6, p. 494, nota 1;
- P. della Pergola, La Galleria Borghese. I Dipinti, II, Roma 1959, pp. 101-102;
- K. Rozman, Painter Franc Kavčič/caucig and his drawings of old masterpieces, in “Zbornik za umetnostno zgodovino”, XI-XII, 1974-1976, p. 63;
- K. Herrmann Fiore, Galleria Borghese Roma scopre un tesoro. Dalla pinacoteca ai depositi un museo che non ha più segreti, San Giuliano Milanese 2006, p. 129;
- K. Herrmann Fiore, Perin del Vaga, Giovanni da Udine, Marcello Venusti. MAdonne in Galleria Borghese. Studi e restauri, Roma 2008, pp. 17, 25, 28-31, 87-88,
- A. Donati, Ritratto e figura nel manierismo a Roma. Michelangelo Buonarroti, Jacopino del Conte, Daniele Ricciarelli, Repubblica di San Marino 2010, p. 139, fig. 159;
- M. Marongiu, Venusti, Marcello, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, XCVIII, 2020, ad vocem.
