Holy Family

copy after Pippi Giulio called Giulio Romano

(Rome c. 1499 - Mantua 1546)

This painting has been held in a storeroom of the church of Santo Spirito in Urbino since 1916. Executed by an anonymous artist in the mid-16th century, it is a variation of Raphael’s Madonna of Loreto.

The canvas depicts Jesus reclining on a small bed while Mary covers his tender little body with a delicate veil; she is observed by Joseph and the young John the Baptist.

Object details

Commentary

The provenance of this painting is still unknown. It was first mentioned in connection with the Borghese Collection in the Inventario Fidecommissario of 1833, which described it as a work by an unknown artist. While Giovanni Piancastelli (1891) maintained the ‘anonymous’ attribution, it was Adolfo Venturi who first proposed the name of Giulio Romano, the painter active in the first half of the 16th century who has always been considered one of Raphael’s most faithful students and collaborators.

By contrast, in the view of Paola della Pergola (1959) the painting is a variation of Raphael’s Madonna of Loreto (Musée Condé, Chantilly, inv. no. PE40), executed in her opinion by the same ‘coarse hand’ which painted the Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist; the latter work is also in the Borghese Collection (inv. no. 428) and was published by Della Pergola in 1959 as a ‘copy after Giulio Romano’. As this scholar suggested, it is quite probable that the artist of this canvas based this composition on a lost original by Giulio Romano, who in turn interpreted and made variations to the painting in Chantilly. The latter is in fact documented as having been in the basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome until the early 17th century, from where it was taken by Cardinal Paolo Emilio Sfondrati, who in turn ceded it to Scipione Borghese, together with other paintings (see Deldicque 2020).

Antonio Iommelli