Sheep and lamb

da Ponte Jacopo called Jacopo Bassano

(Bassano del Grappa 1510 - 1592)

The small-scale canvas is documented in Scipione Borghese's collection in the inventory of around 1633, in which it is generically assigned to Bassano. It was then mentioned in Manilli's 1650 guide, in this case attributed to Titian, but 18th-century inventories of the collection again indicated the Bassano family. Critics, also referencing the 1833 inventory, then identified the name of Jacopo, patriarch of the famous Venetian family, suggesting a date of around 1576 and considering the painting to be stylistically close to the time when other works of a biblical-pastoral nature were being produced.

Object details

Commentary

The first mention of the work can be found in Scipione Borghese’s so-called partial inventory of around 1633, in which the canvas is wrongly described as a panel: “A small panel painting of a sheep with breastfeeding lamb, gilded frame with foliage, 1 1/3 high, 1 3/4 wide, Bassano” (Corradini 1998, no. 73). Apart from the difference in the frames, another discrepancy between the inventory report and the painting in its present state can be seen in the dimensions given, the width of which is less than the actual width (and the canvas has certainly not been enlarged). Yet the iconography and attribution leave no doubt as to its identification. The size discrepancy is a frequent problem when comparing the works described in the above inventory with the clearly identifiable ones that arrived in the Gallery – which often, from the conversion of Roman palms into centimetres, turn out to be slightly larger than they should be. For this reason, it is safe to assume that at the time of the first inventory of the cardinal’s works, the dimensions were sometimes rather approximate. This hypothesis seems to be corroborated by the fact that in the 1833 inventory (p. 26, no. 7) the width of the painting is found to be “palms 2, unciae (inches) 3½”, corresponding to the actual 51 cm of the canvas (and the same is true in many other cases where there is a size discrepancy).

Manilli's guide (1650, p. 85) noted that, in what is today Room VII of the Gallery, the painting “of a little sheep, giving milk to a little lamb, is by Titian”. We find the work with the same attribution in the 1693 inventory, while 18th-century inventories and the above-mentioned Fideicommissary inventory associate the painting with the Bassano family, in the latter case indicating the name Giacomo (or Jacopo). While in the 20th century, scholars’ opinions on the attribution oscillated between Jacopo Bassano, patriarch of the famous family of painters, and various artists of his workshop, today critics agree with the attribution to Jacopo, dating it to around 1576, the time when he was producing paintings with biblical-pastoral subjects. Indeed, the subject depicted, a sheep suckling its offspring, also ties in with a great number of works by Bassano showing animals in various poses, almost treated as self-contained subjects. Thus, the theory that the canvas is a fragment of a larger work (Della Pergola 1955, p. 99) can probably be ruled out, since it was most likely conceived as a subject in its own right.

Pier Ludovico Puddu