Virgin and Child and Young Saint John
(Florence 1486 - 1531)
According to Giorgio Vasari’s testimony, this painting was executed by Andrea del Sarto for the cultured and refined Florentine collector Giovanni Gaddi. Depicting the Virgin and Child with the Young John the Baptist, it is the highest testimony of the master’s ability to update his style to the most innovative trends in the maniera artistic language.
Object details
Inventory
Location
Date
Classification
Period
Medium
Dimensions
Frame
Seventeenth-century frame with palmette decoration (cm 182 x 129 x 7)
Provenance
Rome, Borghese Collection, 1790 (Inventory 1790, St. VIII, no. I; Della Pergola 1959); Inventario Fidecommissario Borghese 1833, p. 11. Purchased by the Italian State, 1902.
Inscriptions
"AA" at the top in the centre of the composition
Exhibitions
- 1935 Parigi, Petit Palais
- 1940 Firenze, Palazzo Strozzi
Conservation and Diagnostic
- 1906 - Luigi Bartolucci (pest control)
- 1936 - Carlo Matteucci
- 1978/79 - Gianluigi Colalucci
Work not currently exhibited
Commentary
This painting, considered by Giorgio Vasari to be ‘the best that Andrea [del Sarto] had then produced’, has been identified with the ‘picture of the Virgin (…) a singularly beautiful painting’ (Shearman 1965; Cecchi 1996), painted by Andrea del Sarto for the Florentine Giovanni Gaddi, as reported by the artist from Arezzo in his famous Lives (Vasari 1550 [1852, p. 355]). This panel, which at an unspecified date entered the Borghese collection, where it is first mentioned in 1790 (Inv. 1790), was soon considered to be a workshop painting (Reumont 1835; Morelli 1890): by some considered to be a copy of a lost original (Guiness 1899; Knapp 1907; Fraenckel 1935) and by others a partially autograph painting (Berenson 1936).
The first to attribute it to the Florentine master without any reservations was Roberto Longhi (1928) who, detecting a relation with the anti-classical movements of Rosso and Pontormo, judged the work ‘a stupendous and profound creation’ (Id.), a judgment that was welcomed by Paola della Pergola (1959) and confirmed by all later critics (see in particular Cecchi 1986; Natali-Cecchi 1989; Herrmann Fiore 2006; Donati 2010).
Variously dated between 1511–1513 (Berenson 1936), 1515–1516 (Reumont 1835; Guiness 1899; Natali 1998) and 1519–1520 (Freedberg 1961; Id. 1963), this composition has been related to both the Madonna of the Harpies by the same artist and to Pontormo’s Pala Pucci, two works rooted in the Michelangelesque climate that spread in Florence during the second decade of the sixteenth century. The panel depicts Mary with Jesus and John the Baptist, the latter identified by the wooden cross behind him. The group, set against a dark wall, is marked in the centre with the interlaced "AA" monogram, emerges thanks to a masterful rendition of light that delicately highlights the plasticity of the bodies and the stark quality of the clothing.
The fortune of this composition, testified by its several variants – including the two versions in Ancona (Pinacoteca Civica) and Rome (Cassa Depositi e Prestiti), as well as its several replicas in private collections (see Della Pergola 1959; Donati 2010) – is certainly due to the artist’s brilliant interpretation of specific Michelangelo models, as evidenced both in the figure of the Infant Jesus, which derives from the study of one of the nudes in the cartoon of the Battle of Cascina, and in that of John the Baptist, whose pose references the frescoed putto above the fireplace in the small cloister of the Annunziata in Florence (Donati 2010).
An extraordinary drawing of this panel is preserved in the Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe (Museo degli Uffizi, inv. 304 F) in Florence.
Antonio Iommelli
Bibliography
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