Madonna and Child with The Infant Saint John the Baptist

tuscan school

The panel, of excellent quality, probably entered the collection in 1787, following Prince Marcantonio IV Borghese’s granting of a life annuity to Bartolomeo Cavaceppi. Over time it was subject to a series of attributions all within the Tuscan sphere. Here, the name of Domenico Puligo is put forward as the artist of the painting.

Object details

Commentary

Without any other information available, Della Pergola’s proposal to identify the painting with the ‘Madonna di Baldassar Peruzzi’ mentioned in 1787, when it became part of the collection of Marcantonio IV Borghese through the bequest of Bartolomeo Cavaceppi (Della Pergola 1955, p. 37), remains only hypothetical. Shortly afterwards, the painting was listed in the 1790 inventory again as a work by Peruzzi and recorded as such up to the time of Piancastelli’s catalogue (1891). The panel was later judged by Adolfo Venturi to be of the ‘school of Bartolomeo della Porta’ (1893, p. 154). In the Notes to the 1893 Catalogue, Cantalamessa rejected this suggestion, reluctant even to recognise its Florentine origin (Della Pergola ibid, p. 37). Berenson later pointed out a similarity with Domenico Beccafumi (1936, p. 57), while Longhi placed the painting ‘in the circle of Granacci and Ridolfo’ (1928, p. 205). Cautiously, Della Pergola attributed the painting to a generic ‘Tuscan Master’, seeing in it a ‘certain Sienese character’ (Della Pergola 1955, p. 37). For our part, we would like to put forward the name of Domenico Puligo (Domenico Ubaldini), a painter in the workshop of Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio, but whose main debt is to the work of Andrea del Sarto, whose pupil and friend he became. Of his style, Vasari wrote that his ‘causing the distances to recede little by little as though veiled with a kind of mist, gave his pictures both relief and grace, and that although the outlines of the figures that he made were lost in such a way that his errors were concealed and hidden from view in the dark grounds into which the figures merged’ (1568, p. 104). Some of the characteristics described by the biographer from Arezzo are evident in this composition: moving on from the models of Raphael, Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio and Andrea del Sarto, in its mature phase his work takes on tones of commercial seriality, making it difficult to distinguish the contribution of the workshop. Puligo’s name has already been suggested by the restorer Laura Cibrario, who had the opportunity to study the work during the last restoration of the painting (2019). As is often the case, the non-publication of the restoration report has prevented recognition of its merits. The attribution is also supported by the file in the Zeri Photo Archive, where the painting is recorded as a work by Puligo, a reference ignored in the monograph on the artist. Cibrario herself notes significant similarities with other autograph works in support of the identification. The main similarities are to be found in the tilting of the Virgin’s head, which closely resembles that of the Holy Family in the Palatine Gallery (Inv.1912 no. 294), in the Virgin and Child with Saints Quentin and Placidus in the John and Mable Ringling Museum in Sarasota, as well as in the version recently found in the antique market owned by Trinity Fine Art. Other elements common to Puligo’s output are the tapering fingers of the Child, the small landscape to the right of the Virgin which has similarities with those to be found in paintings in Munich, the face of St John the Baptist, which has its twin in a panel of unknown location, tentatively ascribed to Puligo in the Zeri Photo Archive.

In addition to the tilting of Mary’s face, the shadowed portion of the face and the arch of the eyebrow, sharpened by the long, narrow bridge of the nose, as well as the foreshortened rendering of the hand holding the Child, are all worthy of note. The almost zenithal light creates a small, virtually triangular-shaped shadow, which is echoed in the one generated by the lower lip of the mouth. However, a certain ‘artificial and empty gracefulness’ seems to dominate the composition, thus prompting the assignment of the panel to the period that Adolfo Venturi called ‘Puligo’s decadence’ – that is, the last phase of the artist’s production, with extensive intervention by his workshop (Venturi ibid., p. 154). The severe tone characterising the profile of the Virgin is heightened by the chiaroscuro that is only used to bring out certain parts that are dramatically highlighted, in which the rounded faces distinguish the work from that of other contemporaries, most notably Andrea del Brescianino, a painter with whom Puligo shares the attribution of certain works.

Fabrizio Carinci