Venus

Grazia Leonardo called Leonardo da Pistoia

(Pistoia 1503 - Naples post 1548)

Sources and critics of the past variously attributed this work to Giulio Romano, Sodoma and Baldassarre Peruzzi; recently, however, it has been recognised as by the hand of Leonardo Grazia, the painter from Pistoia who was active in the mid-1500s in Tuscany, Rome and Naples. It depicts Venus, the goddess of beauty, whose face is tinged with a subtly melancholic sweetness. The smooth, sinuous figure of the deity stands out against a dark background, which highlights the alabaster coldness of her body.

Object details

Commentary

The provenance of this work is still unknown. It was first documented in the Borghese Collection in 1693, when it was described as ‘a nude woman with her hand between her thighs, at number 684, engraved gilded frame, by Raphael of Urbino’ (Inv. 1693). The attribution was changed in 1790 in favour of Giulio Romano (Inv. 1790; see Platner 1842) and was also rejected by Gustavo Frizzoni, who proposed the name of the Sienese painter Baldassare Peruzzi (Frizzoni 1869). Critics of the following decades concurred with this idea (Morelli 1897; Venturi 1893; Borenius 1914; Longhi 1928). It was supported in particular by William Winthrop Kent (1925), who included the work in his monograph on Peruzzi, dating it to his Roman period, which he called his ‘second style’.

The first scholar to call this attribution into question was Noella de Cataldo (1930), who included this Venus among the works which were mistakenly ascribed to the Sienese artist. Her contention, however, did not persuade critics, including Bernard Berenson (1936) and Paola della Pergola (1959), who confidently attributed it to Baldassare. Their opinion was in turn confirmed by Kristina Herrmann Fiore (2006).

Another dissenter was Pierluigi Leone de Castris, who in 1988 suggested the name of the Leonardo Grazia of Pistoia, situating the work in the painter’s Roman period, together with two other works in the Borghese Collection, Lucretia (inv. no. 75) and Cleopatra (inv. no. 337). His theory was confirmed by Andrea G. de Marchi (1994; and in Pietra dipinta 2000) and more recently by Michela Corso (2018a; 2018b); it is also supported by the present writer. The painting in fact reveals the same idioms evident in other works by the Tuscan artist, which prove his adherence to the styles of Raphael, Giulio Romano and Parmigianino. His personal synthesis, which he developed between Tuscany, Rome and Naples, informed the representations of his heroines, including this Venus, which is characterised by smooth, sinuous forms and a gaze that expresses a subtle melancholic sweetness.

Antonio Iommelli