The Madonna of the House of Alba

copy after Sanzio, Raphael

(Urbino 1483 - Rome 1520)

The work, by an unknown artist, corresponds to a replica of the famous Madonna d’Alba by Raphael, today conserved at the National Gallery of Art in Washington.  The original, which dates back to the first years of the artist’s stay in Rome, takes the name of the Duke of Alba, confirmed to have had the work in his possession in the late 18th century. Believed to be an ancient copy, dated close to the time of Raphael himself, the earliest reference in the inventory for the Borghese painting is most likely traceable to the list of paintings belonging to Cardinal Scipione. 

Object details

Commentary

The painting, by an unknown artist, corresponds to a copy of the famous Madonna di Casa d’Alba [Alba Madonna] by Raphael, dating to the early years of the artist’s stay in Rome. It is confirmed to have been in Madrid in the late 18th century, in the collection of the Duke of Alba, from whom the work takes its name. It was later purchased by Tzar Nicholas I of Russia and eventually became part of the collection in the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg. The work was later sold by the Soviet government to the American collector Andrew W. Mellon and donated by him to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, where it is still conserved today. The subject was very popular, as the numerous known replicas demonstrate. The composition, set in a landscape, is laid out around the central figure of the Virgin. She wears a red robe and a blue mantle, and is seated on the ground with a book in her left hand. The Child, portrayed nude in his mother’s arms, is in the act of grasping the cross in the hand of the Infant St John the Baptist, in a clear allegorical reference to the destiny of the Passion. 

Despite the generic nature of the inventory description that generally characterises a subject as widely copied and circulated as the Madonna and Child and Infant St John the Baptist, in this case it is possible to connect the Borghese panel to an item in the list of Scipione Borghese’s assets, dated by critics to c.1633 (see S. Pierguidi, “In materia totale di pitture si rivolsero al singolar Museo Borghesiano”, in “Journal of the history of collections”, XXVI, 2014), thus described: “A tondo of the Madonna with the son and the Infant St John the Baptist, the Magdalene with the book in hand, carved and gilded frame, height 3 ¾ . Copy of a Raphael on panel” (Corradini 1998, p. 455, no. 246). Given the way in which the format, measurements and the detail of the book match up, it is likely that the person who made the inventory mistakenly substituted the Madonna with the “Magdalene” in the painting’s description (Minozzi 2006, p. 108, note 14). By accepting this match, we can state that the painting came into the Borghese collection early, even before 1650, the year in which the guide to the Villa Pinciana written by Manilli was published, and in which Della Pergola identifies two possible references to the painting (Della Pergola 1959, p. 121; also see Barberini 1984, pp. 53-54; Minozzi 2006, p. 106). Later, the panel was identified in the inventory of 1790 and again in the fideicommissary inventory of 1833. In the latter, it is attributed to the school of Raphael. 

Venturi (1893, p. 200) called it “a bad copy” of the original by the artist from Urbino, and the work was believed to be an ancient replica, probably from the same time period as the master himself or slightly later (Piancastelli 1891, p. 301; Cantalamessa 1911-1912, no. 424; Longhi 1928, p. 218).

Pier Ludovico Puddu