Jesus walking on water
(Cortona 1573 - Rome 1636)
This work on copper, together with Christ and the Samaritan woman (inv. 270), is remembered in the Borghese collection only from the 18th-century inventories and attributed to Domenichino, a name recently changed by critics in favour of Pietro Paolo Bonzi, known as the Gobbo dei Carracci. The subject, variously interpreted as the vocation or calling of Peter (Lk 5: 1-11), instead depicts the miracle of Jesus walking on water, distinguished by a refined play of light and colour.
Object details
Inventory
Location
Date
Classification
Period
Medium
Dimensions
Frame
Salvator Rosa, diameter 39 cm
Provenance
Rome, Borghese Collection, 1790 (Inventory 1790, room IV, nos 54 and 55); Inventario Fidecommissario Borghese 1833, p. 27, no. 34. Purchased by the Italian State, 1902.
Exhibitions
- 1985 Roma, Palazzo Venezia;
- 1996-1997 Roma, Musei Capitolini.
Conservation and Diagnostic
- 1922 Riccardo de Bacci Venuti (fissaggio del colore, riprese pittoriche)
Commentary
This painting, a pendant to Christ and the Samaritan (inv. 270), is first documented in the Borghese Collection in 1790, when it was listed in the inventory for that year with an attribution to Domenico Zampieri, called Domenichino. Shortly after, in 1833, the work was attributed in the fideicommissary lists to Benvenuto Tisi, called Garofalo, an attribution repeated in the handwritten inventory by Giovanni Piancastelli (1891), but rejected by Adolfo Venturi (1893), who saw it as linked to the Flemish School. In 1928, Roberto Longhi attributed the two little paintings on copper to the Bologna School, in particular Giovan Francesco Grimaldi, whereas Leo van Puyvelde (1950), speaking of the pendant painting, instead saw affinities with the later work of Paul Bril. Taking into account an opinion expressed orally by Federico Zeri, Paola della Pergola revived the attribution to Domenichino in 1955, publishing the two paintings on copper with this attribution in the catalogue of the Galleria Borghese’s paintings, reconstructing their history.
The first to propose the attribution to Pietro Paolo Bonzi, called Gobbo dei Carracci, was Clovis Whitfield (1996), who, in the entry for the two tondi in the catalogue on Domenichino and the development of landscape painting in Rome, joined Sir Denis Mahon in adding the two Borghese paintings on copper to the artist’s meagre catalogue. Born in Cortona, the artist had trained in Bologna under the landscape painter and Carracci follower Giovanni Battista Viola and was an active member of Giovanni Battista Crescenzi’s academy in Rome. According to Whitfield, Gobbo painted the work during the period when he was emulating the style of Zampieri, copying the other artist’s subjects, such as, in this particular case, the Calling of the Apostles at the Davis Museum (Wellesley College, Massachusetts). This painting on copper also has links to the seascapes of Agostino Tassi and Filippo Napoletano and reveals the artist’s ability to adopt his colleagues’ methods, attentive in particular to the practice of the Flemish painters, Adam Elsheimer and Paul Bril.
Antonio Iommelli
Bibliography
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- G. Piancastelli, Catalogo dei quadri della Galleria Borghese in Archivio Galleria Borghese, 1891, p. 148.
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