Virgin and Child with Saints

Tisi Benvenuto called Garofalo

(Garofalo or Ferrara 1476 - Ferrara 1559)

The figures in this painting are arranged on either side of the Madonna, who is sitting in the exact middle of the composition. In the background, there is a barely noted architectural element, a detail that is quite frequent in Garofalo’s paintings. Besides the Archangel Michael, the other figures are probably St Joseph, on the right, and, in the background, Sts Anne and Joachim.

Object details

Commentary

Although its original provenance is unknown, the iconography of this painting is very unique. The composition, in which the figures are portrayed in the Venetian style, half-length, is dominated by classical architecture in the background on the left and a patch of sky on the right. In the foreground, the Virgin Mary is immediately identifiable as the mediating figure, providing access to the work and its meaning by looking straight at the viewer and touching the Christ Child with her right hand. The Christ Child, held in his mother’s arms and resting on a fringed white cloth, indicates a globe that has been divided into two halves: one with the sky and the other with a woody landscape in which we can just make out a human figure. This element, along with the length of fabric which might allude to the sudarium, has been read as a reference to the Agony in the Garden (Herrmann Fiore 2002), which when added to the preceding reference would become a prefiguration of the Passion of Christ, also in line with the passion for the geographic location of sacred sites so fashionable in the early modern period (A. Scafi, Il paradiso in terra. Mappe del giardino dell'Eden, Milano 2007). On the right, St Joseph seems to be attentively and tenderly watching the Christ Child play, while on the left we find St Michael the Archangel, in full armour with a splendid cuirass and crowned with an exquisite diadem, above whom, in the architectural decoration, we see two figures seated in the position of prisoners, a probable allusion to the defeat of the demon fundamental to the archangel’s cult. Behind this triad, there are two elderly people who some have identified, given the presence of haloes, as Sts Joachim and Anne.

Although different dates have been proposed, varying between 1529-1532 (Coliva 1994), 1530-1531 (Neppi 1959) and 1527 (Herrmann Fiore 2002), the most likely date seems to be 1524 (Fioravanti Baraldi 1993), considering the strong influence of Dosso, which probably derives from their work together on the Costabili Polyptych for the (now destroyed) church of Sant’Andrea in Ferrara (Pinacoteca Nazionale di Ferrara, inv. PNFe 189-194; Della Pergola 1955). This painting also reveals Garofalo’s mastery of the language of Raphael, with solutions adopted more or less at the same time by Giulio Romano. A distinctly Raphaelesque air is found especially in the figure of St Michael, possibly in connection with the cartoon that Raphael sent to Duke Alfonso I d’Este for his painting of the same subject for Francis I of France, now in the Musée du Louvre (inv. 610; for the story of the cartoon and the links between Raphael’s painting and that of Garofalo, with earlier bibliography, see: K. Faber, ‘Il "Trionfo di Bacco" di Benvenuto Tisi detto Il Garofalo: dal modello raffaellesco al dipinto per le "camere nuove de corte" di Ercole II d’Este’, in Dosso Dossi e la pittura a Ferrara negli anni del ducato di Alfonso I, ed. A. Pattanaro, Cittadella 2007, VI, p. 295).

Lara Scanu