Holy Family with Saints
(Venice 1485 - after 1549)
This Sacra Conversazione was a common theme among painters of the schools of Veneto and Lombardy. In this case, it was rendered with the elegance and sereneness typical of Bernardino Licinio’s style. From the left we see Jerome, Catherine of Alexandria, the young John the Baptist, Jesus, Joseph and the Virgin Mary. The natural character of the expressions of both Mary and Catherine have led critics to believe that these two faces are true portraits. By contrast, the figures of Jerome and Joseph show the influence of Tuscan and Roman models and suggest a dating of the work to roughly 1540.
Object details
Inventory
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Provenance
Rome, Borghese Collection, 1693 (Inventory 1693, room VII, no. 24; Della Pergola 1955); Inventario Fidecommissario Borghese the palm branch 1833, p. 22. Purchased by Italian state, 1902.
Commentary
A large painting, the Madonna, Child, St Joseph, the young St John riding a sheep, among other figures holding books, on canvas, no. 318, gilded frame with carved inserts, by Paolo Veronese’ (Inv. 1693; see Della Pergola 1955; 1964): so reads the description of this work of unknown provenance in the 1693 inventory of the Borghese Collection. Although on that occasion it was ascribed to the Veronese painter Paolo Caliari, the compiler of the 1833 Inventario Fidecommissario rightly questioned this name, preferring to list it as a product of the ‘Venetian school’.
In 1893, Adolfo Venturi made a more specific attribution, namely to Polidoro Lanzani. For his part, Giovanni Morelli (1897) proposed the more likely name of Bernardino Licinio, a view accepted by subsequent critics (Modigliani 1903; Longhi 1928; Berenson 1936;), including Venturi himself (in Storia dell'arte italiana 1928). The attribution was further confirmed by Paola Della Pergola, Luisa Vertova (in Pittori bergamaschi 1975) and Kristina Herrmann Fiore (2006).
In this Sacra Conversazione, Bernardino gives expression to his elegant, serene style, in line with his production of the 1540s. It was in this period that he began distancing himself from Titian’s powerful influence and absorbing the ways of contemporary Tuscan and Roman painting. In Vertova’s view (1975), this shift is above all evident in the Mannerist depiction of Jerome. This scholar further proposed that the face of Catherine of Alexandria may be a portrait of the donor, while that of that virgin was perhaps also made from a live model.
Antonio Iommelli
Bibliography
- G. Piancastelli, Catalogo dei quadri della Galleria Borghese, in Archivio Galleria Borghese, 1891, p. 72;
- A. Venturi, Il Museo e la Galleria Borghese, Roma 1893, p. 111;
- G. Morelli, Della Pittura Italiana. Studi Storici Critici: Le Gallerie Borghese e Doria Pamphili in Roma, Milano 1897, p. 247;
- E. Modigliani, La cosiddetta “Famiglia di Bernardino Licinio” alla Galleria Borghese, in “L’Arte”, VI, 1903, p. 381;
- R. Longhi, Precisioni nelle Gallerie Italiane, I, La R. Galleria Borghese, Roma 1928, p. 194;
- A. Venturi, Storia dell'arte italiana, IX, La pittura del Cinquecento, Milano 1928, p. 482;
- B. Berenson, Pitture Italiane del Rinascimento, Milano 1936, p. 243;
- P. della Pergola, La Galleria Borghese. I Dipinti, I, Roma 1955, p. 116, n. 208;
- B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Venetian School, London 1958, p. 98;
- P. della Pergola, L’Inventario Borghese del 1693 (II), in “Arte Antica e Moderna”, XXVIII, 1964, p. 452;
- L. Vertova, Licinio, Bernardino in I pittori bergamaschi dal XIII al XIX secolo, I, Il Cinquecento, Bergamo 1975, p. 430;
- 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. 61.
