Saint John the Baptist
(Cologne 1552 - Prague 1615
The canvas, which probably came into the Borghese collection from the collection of Olimpia Aldobrandini, depicts St. John the Baptist, dressed in animal skins, with a cross and the usual cartouche with the inscription: ‘ECCE ANGNVS DEI’.
Object details
Inventory
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Date
Classification
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Provenance
Rome, Olimpia Adobrandini Collection, Inventory1682; Borghese Collection, Inventory 1693, room VII, no. 35; Inventario Fidecommissario Borghese 1833, p. 22. Purchased by Italian state 1902.
Conservation and Diagnostic
- 1996 Elena Zivieri e Guido Piervincenzi
Commentary
The painting is listed in the Olimpia Aldobrandini inventory (1682) without attribution (Della Pergola 1959). It was already recorded as being in the Borghese collection in the 1693 inventory, where it was considered to be by ‘Cecchin Salviato’ and in the Fideicommissary list of 1833, by an ‘unknown artist’ – Piancastelli was to repeat this ascription at the end of the century (1891). Shortly afterwards, however, Venturi (1893) attributed the work to the manner of Salviati, while Longhi favoured Daniele da Volterra (1928). The association with van Aachen was made by Zeri who, in the 1952 exhibition in Naples devoted to Mannerist painters, Fontainebleau e la Maniera Italiana, related it to the sphere of Bartolomeo Spranger, under whom the Aachen artist had trained. The scholar assigned the painting to van Aachen's Italian period (1574-87), dating the Saint John the Baptist to around 1577.
Paola della Pergola, in the 1959 catalogue, cautiously attributed the painting to the hand of the German painter, undoubtedly more refined than that of the unknown artist who was also inspired by it. One cannot but note the rigid portrayal of the figure, which, although in line with the ‘serpentine figure’ (where a human figure spirals around a central axis) of Italian Mannerism at the time, seems to suffer from a certain slackness especially in the depiction of the head. In the face in particular, there is evident mastery in the treatment of the thick hair, connected to the long sideburns ending in a double-pointed beard which, however, together with the curious gaze, make the figure more of a satirical figure than a saint. According to the Gospel of Matthew (3:1-12), the Baptist wore a coarse tunic of camel-skin with a leather belt, in line with the typical clothing of nomads, here however enriched by a scarlet mantle that livens up the composition, which is set in a landscape. The landscape, however, is far from the desert landscape described in biblical sources, with the leafy trunk behind the saint. In the distance one can see high mountains and a river, the Jordan, in which he would later baptise Jesus. Although showing his cross and pointing to the cartouche with the famous exclamation ‘ECCE ANGNVS DEI’, John lacks the bowl, his usual attribute, which alludes to the baptism of the Saviour. Ultimately, the painting can only be ascribed to the manner of van Aachen, a painter called to be part of the sophisticated court of Rudolf II in Prague from 1592.
Sofia Barchiesi
Bibliography
- G. Piancastelli, Catalogo dei quadri della Galleria Borghese iscritti nelle note fidecommissarie, redatte nel 1888 da Giovanni Piancastelli, con note aggiunte nel 1891, 1888-1891, p.440.
- A. Venturi, Il Museo e la Galleria Borghese, Roma 1893, p.224.
- R. Longhi, Precisioni nelle Gallerie Italiane I: La R. Galleria Borghese, Roma 1928, p.225.
- F. Zeri, Fontainebleau e la Maniera Italiana. Mostra d'Oltremare e del Lavoro Italiano nel Mondo, catalogo della mostra a cura di F. Bologna e R. Causa, Firenze 1952, p. 49, fig.81.
- P. Della Pergola La Galleria Borghese. I Dipinti, vol. II, Roma 1959, p. 143 n. 195.
- La Galleria Borghese, a cura di A. Coliva, CD-rom, Roma 1995, inv. 532.
- K. Hermann Fiore, Roma scopre un tesoro, dalla pinacoteca ai depositi un museo che non ha più segreti, Sesto Ulteriano (MI) 2006, p.171.
