Landscape with Saint Christopher
(Bouvignes? 1475-80 - Antwerp 1524)
Once attributed to Joachim Patinir, this work is mostly likely by an anonymous painter who was active in one of the numerous workshops in Antwerp and well-versed in the style of the Flemish master. The panel depicts one of the most famous episodes in the legend of the Christian martyr Christopher, whose existence is summarised in his name: according to tradition, Christopher, which in Greek means ‘he who carries Christ’, helped a young man to cross a river by carrying him on his shoulders. Yet when the weight of the mysterious wayfarer’s body brought Christopher close to drowning, he was saved by the man: shortly afterwards he learned that he had been carrying Christ and with him the burden of the entire world.
Object details
Inventory
Location
Date
Classification
Period
Medium
Dimensions
Frame
Salvator Rosa, 9 x 36.7 x 4 cm
Provenance
(?) Rome, collection of Olimpia Aldobrandini, 1682 (Della Pergola 1959); Rome, Borghese Collection, 1693 (Inventory 1693, room XI, no. 55); Inventario Fidecommissario Borghese 1833, p. 27. Purchased by Italian state, 1902.
Exhibitions
- 2012/13 - Lille, Palais des Beaux-Arts
Conservation and Diagnostic
- 2012 - Paola Mastropasqua
Commentary
This panel probably comes from the collection of Olimpia Aldobrandini, where it would seem to correspond to the description of ‘a painting on panel with two mountains, one taller than the other, one and a quarter spans high, with a gilded frame, hand uncertain, belonging to Cardinal Ippolito’. It is certainly identifiable in the 1693 inventory as ‘a painting with a landscape and a coast on panel, roughly 1 palm high, at no. 62, gilded frame, by Civetta’, given that the number ‘62’ cited in the document is still visible in the lower right hand corner. The work was ascribed to Paul Bril in the Inventario Fidecommissario (1833) and the profiles by Giovanni Piancastelli (1891); yet both Adolfo Venturi (1893) and Roberto Longhi (1928) rejected this idea in favour of Joachim Patinir, an artist who specialised in depicting fantastic vistas and landscapes. In 1959, however, Paola della Pergola noted that the quality of the work was not so great as to merit a direct attribution to the Flemish painter; she in fact published it as ‘in the manner of Patenier’, an opinion which later critics accepted and confirmed, most recently Isabella Rossi (2012).
Although constructed according to Patinier’s taste for broad, profound landscapes from a bird’s eye view, the painting in fact lacks that power and those details which the Flemish master so obsessively defined. The absence of these qualities suggests that we should search for the painter of this panel among his followers, who were active in Antwerp and well informed about the innovations introduced into landscape painting by Patinier and his nephew Herri met de Bles, called ‘il Civetta’ (‘the owl’), to whom the compiler of the 1693 inventory indeed ascribed the work.
Antonio Iommelli
Bibliography
- G. Piancastelli, Catalogo dei quadri della Galleria Borghese, Roma 1891, p. 387;
- A. Venturi, Il Museo e la Galleria Borghese, Roma 1893, p. 122;
- J. A. Rusconi, Il Museo e la Galleria Borghese, Bergamo 1906, p. 86;
- R. Longhi, Precisioni nelle Gallerie Italiane, I, La R. Galleria Borghese, Roma 1928, p. 197;
- P. della Pergola, La Galleria Borghese. I Dipinti, II, Roma 1959, p. 181, n. 269;
- L. Collobi Ragghianti, Dipinti fiamminghi in Italia: 1420- 1570. Catalogo, Bologna 1990, p. 14;
- 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. 69;
- A. Vergara, Patinir. Essays and critical catalogue, Madrid 2007 (assente);
- I. Rossi, in Fables du paysage flamand. Bosch, Bles, Breughel, Bril, catalogo della mostra (Lille, 2012-2013), a cura di A. Tapié, Paris 2012, p. 322, n. 100.
