Madonna and Child with Saint Barbara, Saint Christine and two Donors

Negretti Jacopo called Jacopo Palma the Elder

(Serina c. 1480 - Venice 1528)

The painting can only be traced with certainty in inventories starting with the 1833 fideicommissary list. The subject of the painting, commonly referred to as ‘Sacred Conversation’, was particularly popular with private patrons, and it became enormously successful in the 16th century. On either side of the Virgin, seated on a throne with a sculpted base, kneel the two donors of the painting, respectively associated with, on the left, Saint Barbara, identifiable by the tower, her symbol, and, on the right, Saint Christine, who carries the millstone representing her martyrdom under her arm.

Object details

Commentary

The painting can only be traced with certainty in inventories starting with the 1833 fideicommissary list. There it is recorded as ‘The Madonna, Child and other Saints, Venetian, 8½ palms wide, 6 palms high’ (p. 18). Then there began what Della Pergola calls ‘the jumble of attributions’ (Della Pergola 1955, I, pp. 123-124). The artist was first identified as Caliari (Cavalcaselle 1864, IV, p. 164), then Morelli, followed by Berenson, believed the work to be an early copy from a lost original by Lotto (Morelli 1892, pp. 237-238; Berenson 1895, ed. 1901, pp. 114-116). Gombosi considered it to be a late Previtali (1932, p. 175), while Longhi’s thesis was more widely accepted – he identified it as a work by Palma the Elder, painted around 1510 (Longhi 1928, pp. 48 ff.; Sphan 1932, p. 188; De Rinaldis 1948, p. 90). 90). Della Pergola was of the same opinion, although she noted that ‘there are many echoes of Lotto, from the Child, both in the movement and in the pearly flesh, to the rose leaves scattered on the ground, the bows of the women’s clothing, and the tree laden with fruit behind the Virgin’ (Della Pergola 1955, I, pp. 123-124). Elements considered too limited, however, to see Lotto as a direct participant, but rather as a source of inspiration. The scholar considered similarities with the work of Palma il Vecchio to be greater. It was, however, Longhi’s words that gave substance to this proposed attribution, recognising in the work ‘the tendency to use a particularly pure colour with a rich and precious texture, unmistakably typical of this artist. This colour appears vibrant and shimmering also because all the shadows of the painting are gathered in the cracks of the edges, so much so that the colour itself seems like a liquid gem – as in the all-blue sleeve of the saint, or in the all-gold sleeve of the patron (...). The islands of colour are sharply delimited, without nuances, so that they seem to float on the darkness of their surroundings; and the presence of these colour fields leads us to wonder whether the flamboyant stylistic bravura that, in 10 years’ time, would lead to the supreme, unmistakable colour of the painting The Three Sisters in Dresden is not already at work here, albeit at an early stage of evolution. In this work, we see in its early stages what would later become typical of Palma’s style, a colour with a radically liquid, ‘lake-like’ effect. All this removes any doubt as to whether the painting is from Palma’s early period’ (Longhi 1928, pp. 48, s).

Going against tradition, stylistic references began to change, now ready to condense the entire composition within a few chromatic sections, a development stemming from observation and a greater understanding of Titian. A glance to the past, however, is certainly behind the heraldic presence of the patrons lined up in profile: a wide-ranging figurative tradition, but one whose closest parallels with the Borghese painting are Giovanni Bellini’s Barbarigo Altarpiece, 1488, in the church of San Pietro Martire in Murano, and even more so, Titian’s Pesaro Altarpiece, cited by Longhi.

Ancient models are also seen in the saints’ robes, in which the late 15th-century Lombard style reappears, evident in the ribbons closing the sleeves of St Barbara. The fashion for voluminous sleeves, as in the Allegory of Isabella d’Este’s Coronation painted by Lorenzo Costa for her studiolo between 1504 and 1506, can be dated to the early 16th century (Villa 2015, pp. 82-84). Villa believes that echoes of Dürer’s model – the Prague Feast of the Rose Gardens– are evident ‘in the bright, high-tone colour’. Moreover, according to the scholar, apart from the fact they lived around the same time, Palma could have become acquainted with Dürer’s work via Lorenzo Lotto, as is apparent in the colour, the group of the Madonna and Child and the male patron.

Fabrizio Carinci