Lucretia

Tosini Michele called Michele di Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio

(Florence 1503 - 1577)

This panel, documented with certainty in the Borghese collection from 1833, was painted by Michele Tosini in pendant with another half-figure depicting Leda (inv. 323). It represents Lucretia, a legendary Roman woman whose sad story is connected to the banishment of the last king of Rome. According to tradition, in fact, raped by Sextus Tarquinius, the woman publicly pierced her chest with a dagger, thus proving her innocence. Horrified by this gesture, the noble Collatinus, Lucrezia’s husband, decided to avenge her, leading a popular uprising that forced the Tarquins to flee Rome and take refuge in Etruscan territories.

Object details

Commentary

The provenance of this painting remains unclear. According to a hypothesis by Kristina Herrmann Fiore (Ead. 2005), the painting entered the Pincian collection in 1787, when the outstanding collection owned by the sculptor Bartolomeo Cavaceppi was put up for sale. Among the possessions the artist sold to the Borghese family were two half-figures, namely ‘a Juno and a Leda by Pierin del Vaga’ (see doc. 95 in Della Pergola 1959, p. 225; Campitelli 1994, p. 56), identified by critics as the Leda (inv. 323) and its pendant, the presently considered Lucretia, erroneously described as a Juno. This oversight, according to critics (Herrmann Fiore 2005) can be understood considering that, at first glance, it is difficult to notice the mortal wound under the protagonist’s breast. Apart from this interpretation, which is certainly possible, the first certain information regarding this painting dates back to 1833, when the work is described in the fideicommissum lists under the name of Giorgio Vasari (Inventario Fidecommissario 1833). This attribution, repeated in Giovanni Piancastelli’s records (1891) and Adolfo Venturi’s catalogue (1893), was discarded both by Voss (Id. 1920), who was more inclined towards an attribution to Francesco Brina, and by Carlo Gamba (Id. 1929), who convincingly thought of the Florentine artist Michele di Ridolfo whose style, influenced by the classical painting of Frà Bartolomeo and Andrea del Sarto, was reinterpreted in the light of his collaboration with Giorgio Vasari.

This interpretation, welcomed by Frederik Antal (Id. 1951) and Roberto Longhi (Id. 1928), was also accepted without reservation by Paola della Pergola (Ead. 1959) who, in the catalogue of the Galleria Borghese paintings, published the two pictures as autograph works by Tosini, comparing them for the first time with the female heads in the Uffizi (see Gamba 1929) and with The Night from the Galleria Colonna in Rome, a painting that blends Vasari’s lively style with Michelangelo’s anatomical expertise.

Confirming the Tosini attribution, unanimously supported by critics, Giovanna Rotondi Terminello (Ead. 1966) published an Ecce Homo found in the Parish House of Uscio, a painting that conforms to the two Borghese pictures in the roundness of the eyes, the graphic definition of the mouth and the papery folds of the headpieces. Considering these similarities, the scholar proposed dating the two Borghese femmes around the 1560s, a period when the Florentine painter was working alongside Vasari on the bastions of Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. Indeed, this connection with the Arezzo painter, a sign of his reconciliation with mannerist culture (see Prosperi Valenti 1974), was the basis of a second maniera of his, especially visible in the paintings from between the 1550s and 1560s, as well as in his production of female half-figures, including the two Borghese panels and numerous portraits (Meloni Trkulja 1994).

As Herrmann Fiore (Ead. 2005) well explains with regard to Leda, this Lucretia is a masterpiece of Florentine painting of the 1560s, whose beauty, elegance and monumentality are here enhanced by the soft fairness of the flesh tones, in the rendering of the fabrics and jewellery, as well as in the elaborate hairstyle that indicates a clear knowledge of Michelangelo Buonarroti’s drawings (Uffizi, no. 598r; see Herrmann Fiore 2005). In addition, the close-up view of the half-length bust, facing the viewer, would, according to the scholar, reveal a certain familiarity with Veneto painting, here blending with a masterful handling of colour, close to the models of Francesco Salviati.

However, the idea of interpreting this subject without indulging in the more sensual and erotic tones that had been common up to that time, may suggest its execution could date to further towards the end of the 1560s, when the effects of Counter-Reformation had already successfully taken root.

The work, in fact, seems to embody Giorgio Vasari’s description of Tosini and his principles (‘what I like the most about him, apart from the fact that he is truly a good man, virtuous and God-fearing, is that he always has in his workshop a good number of boys whom he teaches with incredible care; Vasari 1568, ed. 1964, pp. 340, 389), an aspect that was certainly highly appreciated by the moralists of the time that duly inspired the painter to opt for a careful and measured execution of this heroine, portraying her as a sophisticated and virtuous woman, demurely revealing one of her breasts with the mark of her mortal wound.

Antonio Iommelli