The Trinity

da Ponte Leandro called Leandro Bassano

(Bassano del Grappa 1557 - Venice 1622)

The oil on copper painting is listed for the first time in the 1693 Inventory of the Borghese Collection and its earliest provenance remains unknown to this day. Thanks to the restoration carried out in 1936, the signature “Leand. Bass.us F.” resurfaced at the bottom of the rock on the left, confirming the reference to the Venetian artist in the inventories of 1790 and 1833.

The figurative group, composed of the crucified Christ surmounted by the dove of the Holy Spirit with God the Father holding the Cross, occupies the centre of the painting and is surrounded by a cloud animated by young angels. At the foot of the cross is Adam’s skull dripping with the blood of the Redeemer. In the setting, to the left of the Trinity are a couple of huts at the edge of a thicket, while on the right in the flat landscape a river meanders alongside the walls of a city, flowing under the arches of a bridge. The view with the cerulean mountains in the background recalls the artist’s typically Venetian settings.

Although critics do not agree on the date of the work, the iconography is derived from two altarpieces: one by Pordenone kept in the sacristy of the cathedral of San Daniele and the other by Jacopo Bassano in the parish church of the Santissima Trinità in Angarano.

Object details

Commentary

Given the absence of documents relating to the acquisition of the work, the first mention that appears in the inventories of the Borghese collection dates back to 1693 when the painting was described as “A painting of similar size (about two palms) in copper with the Eternal Father, and Jesus Christ on the cross of No. 27 with a gilded frame by Bassano”. Although in the Inventory of 1790 the work is attributed to Leandro, fourth son of Jacopo Bassano, the painting was later attributed to the lofty name of Leonardo da Vinci in the Inventories of the Fidecommesso of 1833, probably as a result of a lapsus calami, a secretarial error in transcribing from the most ancient inventories. During the 19th century, critics disagreed in attributing the work to one of the Bassanos because of the only partially legible signature, and therefore assigned it to various members of the Dalponti workshop: Ivan Lermolieff (1876, p. 135), a pseudonym for Giovanni Morelli, indicated the name of Francesco Bassano “the younger”, while Adolfo Venturi (1893, p. 96) again assigned the work exhibited at the time in the 3rd room on the first floor to the hand of Leandro Bassano. In the catalogue of the Galleria Borghese, Venturi transcribed the portion visible at the time of the signature, remarking with regret how much the “clouds in the background detract from the effect and freshness of the putti in this sketch”.

The attribution problem that had marked historiography during the 19th century reappeared in the 20th century: Zottman (1908, p. 53) recognised the hand of Francesco Bassano in the wake of Morelli, while Arslan (1931, p. 305) included the work in the catalogue of the last-born, Gerolamo. Bernard Berenson (1906, 1936) in considering the Borghese painting, traced it back to the progenitor Jacopo Bassano, while Roberto Longhi (1928, p. 75) confirmed the attribution to Leandro proposed by Adolfo Venturi. A turning point in the critical process was the first restoration of the painting in 1936 when the complete signature came to light on the rock at the foot of the cross (Paola della Pergola 1955, pp. 104-105). Following this discovery, both Berenson (1957, p. 23) and Arslan (1960, p. 268) definitively included the work in Leandro’s catalogue.

Similar to the provenance, the dating of the painting remains problematic in the absence of documentary evidence, which critics have attempted to answer. A key moment in the chronology of Leandro Dal Ponte’s production is his appointment as a knight by Marino Grimani, Doge of the Serenissima between 1595 and the spring of 1596. In light of that important recognition, the Bassano painter began to affix the title of eques next to his name, especially in the more important paintings, and the exceptions noted by Pattanaro (2018, p. 81). The works following his knighthood make it clear that for Leandro signing his name with the title was not a practice. In the 1985 exhibition in Rome at the Palazzo di Venezia, a date of between 1585 and 1595 was proposed, bringing it close in style to other known or clearly inspired works. In 2006, the chronological span of the copper painting was shifted to the early 17th century (Hermann-Fiore 2006).

The main interpretive reference for the small painting is The Trinity Appears to the Virgin, the Apostles and St Dominic from the church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice, bearing the signature of Leandro Bassano. The altarpiece made for the Confraternity of the Ligadori of Rialto between 1593 and 1595 is inspired by the Holy Trinity of Angarano, a paternal prototype delivered in 1547, in turn modelled on the Trinity by Pordenone in the cathedral of San Daniele in Friuli and datable to within 1535. Recurring in the three pictorial compositions is the divine triad - Christ, the Holy Spirit and God the Father - framed by the clouds that pierce the darkness, an iconographic motif inspired by the Gospel scriptures regarding the tearing of the curtain of the temple of Jerusalem that occurred at the death of Christ to symbolise the breaking of the veil of the Old Law that prevented the making of the New Law (Letter to the Hebrews).
The Eternal Father is depicted in the form of an old man with a cane and thick beard (“the Ancient of Days” of the prophet Daniel, 7.9), wrapped in a broad cloak and sitting in the clouds of heaven. Like his illustrious predecessors, Leandro in the altarpiece for the church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice and in the small Borghese Trinity seems to draw on the medieval Gnadensthul (Throne of Grace), but unlike Pordenone and following in his father’s footsteps, the figure of the Eternal Father does not hold the cross with both hands, but instead grazes Christ’s bloody wrist with his right hand to emphasise the concept of consubstantiality between God the Father and the Word (Pattanaro 2018, pp. 84-87). God the Father in the Borghese painting has the swollen mantle behind him and the face is expertly reproduced thanks to the painter’s well-known portraiture skills.
The composition of the crucified Christ is once again derived from the Angarano altarpiece painted by Jacopo, whose prototype can also be found in the Crucifixion in the Museo Civico in Treviso. Leandro re-proposes it on several occasions in his paintings, as can be seen by the comparison with the Trinity, St Andrew the Apostle and Two Patrons preserved in the church of the Eremitani in Padua, datable to the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. The painting’s Eucharistic message is also emphasised by the recurring symbolism of Adam’s skull, similarly reproposed by the artist in the Crucifixion in the Musei Biblioteca Archivio in Bassano del Grappa, painted in the first decade of the 17th century.

The landscape depicted behind the Trinity recalls the views frequently used by Dalponti’s workshop, where having several artists collaborate on the works was a consolidated practice that also helped meet the pressing demands of collectors and merchants. Carlo Ridolfi (1648, p. 380) recalls how the landscapes of Bassano and Vicenza were favoured for setting biblical stories in a contemporary context. The presence of the huts, Monte Grappa, the Brenta River, the bridge and the city of Bassano del Grappa are a leitmotiv of the Bassanos’ workshop and represent a sort of signature in their works. The depiction of the forest on the left and the city on the right would indicate a division between the precariousness and sinfulness of man and a serene and ordered vision of the world (Samadelli 2009). The landscape covered by the cloudy sky, skilfully depicted through filamentary dense cold touches of colour, would seem to be no different. However, the bridge depicted behind the Trinity appears to have resulted from observing another place or from the artist’s own imagination due to the generic nature of the architecture. In fact, it does not coincide with the construction designed by Andrea Palladio following the ‘brentana’ of 30 October 1567, when the old bridge connecting Angarano and Bassano had to be rebuilt again. The commission for the bridge now known as “degli Alpini” was given to the architect from Padua and it already had a wooden deck at the time. It should be noted that this is lacking in the Borghese Trinity. Instead, Palladio’s bridge is faithfully reproduced in the painting depicting A podestà of Bassano before the Virgin, preserved in the Musei Biblioteca Archivio in Bassano del Grappa, dated between the eighth and ninth decade of the 16th century, where the vedutistic and documentary intention may have been the result of a client’s request. We find the bridge again in the map of the city of Bassano drawn between 1583 and 1610 in red pencil, ink and watercolour by the brothers Francesco and Leandro. The city is also portrayed with only a few elements and it is therefore difficult to establish how far the architecture depicted behind the Trinity might correspond to an exact location in the city of Bassano del Grappa or to another town in the hinterland of the Serenissima (Mazzi 2018, p. 25).

A final note regards the painting’s frame, which is only described as gilded in the Inventory of 1693. The current ornamentation can be dated to the first half of the 17th century and is made of gilded, engraved and chiselled cartouches at the corners and centres, while the undecorated areas are lacquered in imitation marble typical of Marche production, influenced by Albana, a very popular model in Emilia (P. Zambrano 1992, p. 140).

Stefano Spinelli