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Orazio Gentileschi The Holy Family with the young Saint John the Baptist
作品估价：GBP 300,000 - 400,000
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图录号：
6
拍品名称：
Orazio Gentileschi The Holy Family with the young Saint John the Baptist
拍品描述：
Orazio Gentileschi
Pisa 1563–1639 London
The Holy Family with the young Saint John the Baptist
inscribed on the reverse in a 17th-century hand: n 256. Di. mano. Di./ Oratio. Gentileschi.
oil on copper
43.1 x 32.3 cm.; 17 x 12¾ in.
John Pitt, MP (c. 1706–1787);
By descent to his son, William Morton Pitt, MP (1754–1836), London and Dorset;
His sale, London, Christie’s, 1 June 1811, lot 100 (as Geutileschi [sic]), for £6.–6s., to Spackman;
Charles Spackman (1748–1822);
Anonymous sale, Detroit, DuMouchelles, 15 December 2023, lot 1000 (as Italian School, in the manner of Orazio Gentileschi);
Where acquired by the present owner.
An early work by Orazio Gentileschi, this intimate painting on copper of the Virgin Mary preparing to breastfeed the infant Christ remained unknown until its reappearance in 2023, when it was recognised as an important addition to the small body of the artist’s work on this support. Datable to 1601 or 1602, when Orazio was beginning to work in a more naturalistic vein, and inscribed with his name on the reverse, it depicts the scene of the Holy Family at Nazareth, visited by the young Saint John the Baptist. In the practical gesture of the Virgin, the wide-eyed stare and awkward limbs of her baby and the acutely observed shy deference of the little St John towards his young cousin, Gentileschi presages a truth to nature that would become a hallmark of his work. Until recently covered with overpaint, and following a careful treatment campaign, the work has been revealed to be an autograph painting by this subtly complex artist, friend and near contemporary of Caravaggio.1
Orazio Gentileschi’s refined work on copper is documented but there are few surviving or known examples. Gianni Papi recently identified this as a beautiful and very interesting autograph painting by Orazio, noting not only its quality but also its interest from an art historical perspective.2 It belongs to a period of Gentileschi’s activity during which there are few other examples: namely, the moment of his transition from a late mannerist phase to the beginnings of a more naturalistic style. Papi assigns the painting to the early years of the seventeenth century, earlier than most of Gentileschi’s known works that are datable to the first decade. He finds traces here of a late mannerist idiom still present in Gentileschi’s paintings in the Benedictine abbey at Farfa, north of Rome (1598–99),3 seen for example in certain incongruities of scale, such as the diminutive size of the lamb in relation to the young St John. The expression of a new style is found in the beautiful infant Christ, a precursor to the baby depicted in Orazio’s Virgin and Child in Bucharest of 1609 (fig. 1). Here he is painted in a highly naturalistic way, his rounded forms, open legs and small genitalia clearly visible. As Papi points out, the draperies are beautiful, so too the passage of sky, fully characteristic of the artist. In his commentary on the painting, Papi also underscores its significance within the artist’s career as an homage to Florentine sixteenth-century culture. This is most apparent in the background figure of St Joseph climbing the steps, a motif that clearly relates to the work of Pontormo and Andrea del Sarto. Such a tribute to Gentileschi’s Florentine predecessors is not found in works by him known to date and constitutes therefore a unique instance in his work.
Keith Christiansen (formerly John Pope-Hennessy Chairman, European Paintings, Metropolitan Museum of Art), on the basis of images, also considers The Holy Family to be by Orazio Gentileschi and dates it to the years around 1600.4 He too points out the peculiarity of the setting, noting that when Orazio embraced Caravaggism he largely abandoned architectural settings as depicted here, landscape and architecture no longer being the primary components. The figure of Joseph mounting the stairs has no parallel in his later work, a point made also by Papi. Christiansen finds close correlations for the heads and foreshortening of the infant Jesus with, for example, The Fall of the Rebel Angels painted on alabaster;5 and The Stigmatization of St Francis, which he dates to c. 1600–1;6 but the closest analogies for the figures are in his work at Farfa and the vault of the chapel in San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, Rome, as well as the angels in Santa Maria ai Monti, Rome, datable to 1599.7 Like Papi, Christiansen too connects the painting with the Bucharest Virgin and Child, finding similarities with this image of motherhood. In particular, he singles out the Madonna’s hand, highly comparable in both paintings. The present work he places earlier, certainly before the Holy Family with the Infant St John the Baptist, also on copper, which he dates to 1607–8, sold at Sotheby’s in 2000 and now in the collection of the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe.8
Infrared reflectography shows no perceptible underdrawing, although this does not exclude the possibility of a compositional outline under the paint surface, drawn in a material that is non-absorbent of infrared, such as a chalk or red chalk. The IRR does however indicate a possible alteration to the composition, namely the insertion of St Joseph climbing the stairs and of the little dog at the top—both figures that are painted over the architectural elements of steps, walls and doorway. Details such as the foliage sprouting from the wall and the stepped profile of crumbling brickwork are motifs often employed by Orazio in later pictures, such as the finely wrought painting on copper of The Virgin and Child in a landscape at Burghley House, Stamford.9 The sky too, with its distinctive cloud formations is employed in other compositions, even on a considerably larger scale, in masterpieces such as the Rest on the Flight into Egypt in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, generally dated to the later 1610s or slightly later (fig. 2).10
Note on Provenance
The copper plate is prominently inscribed on the reverse in a bold seventeenth-century hand: ‘Di. mano. Di./ Oratio. Gentileschi’. While it has been suggested that the inscription is early in date and may be autograph, the number ‘256’ written in the same hand has thus far eluded identification and more likely connects to a collection or inventory belonging perhaps to the picture’s first owner. The earliest record of certain ownership places it in England in the possession of John Pitt (c. 1706–1787), who in the 1750s and ’60s put together a collection that comprised mainly seventeenth-century Old Masters. Information about where he acquired the pictures is scant but some details can be found in the catalogue of the collection sold by his son, William Morton Pitt (1754–1836), at Christie’s on 1 June 1811. Member of Parliament for Dorset, as his father also had been, William inherited the collection after John died in 1787. The sale is thought to have been occasioned by Pitt’s departure from his London residence in Arlington Street, to Dorset. Among the most significant pictures were two large landscapes by Annibale Carracci, both of which made significant prices at that sale.
We are grateful to Keith Christiansen and Gianni Papi for their opinions.
1 Arcanes, Paris, 2024.
2 Private communication with the owner, 12 July 2024.
3 R.W. Bissell, Orazio Gentileschi and the Poetic Tradition in Caravaggesque Painting, University Park and London 1981, pp. 135–37.
4 Email communication with the owner, 3 April 2024.
5 Oil on alabaster, arched top, 49.8 x 40.3 cm.; sold Sotheby’s, New York, 30 January 2019, lot 14, for $3,255,000 with premium.
6 Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, K. Christiansen and J.W. Mann (eds), exh. cat., Rome, New York and Saint Louis, 2001–2, pp. 53–55, no. 3, reproduced in colour.
7 Y. Primarosa in Orazio Gentileschi e l’immagine di San Francesco. La nascita del caravaggismo a Roma, G. Porzio and Y. Primarosa (eds), exh. cat., Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica, Palazzo Barberini, Rome, 2023, pp. 17–20, figs 4 and 5 and I. Sgarbozza in the same publication on their recent restoration, pp. 124–35, figs 4, 6, 8 and 9.
8 Inv. 3070; oil on copper, 58.5 x 44.4 cm.; sold Sotheby’s, London, 6 July 2000, lot 28, for £2,423,500 with premium, to a private collection.
9 Oil on copper, 28.8 x 21.5 cm.; X. Bray in Orazio Gentileschi at the Court of Charles I, G. Finaldi (ed.), exh. cat., London 1999, pp. 60–61, no. 4, reproduced in colour.
10 Inv. 1947P5; oil on canvas, 176.6 x 219 cm. Rome, New York and Saint Louis 2001–2, pp. 160–63, no. 34, reproduced in colour.
Pisa 1563–1639 London
The Holy Family with the young Saint John the Baptist
inscribed on the reverse in a 17th-century hand: n 256. Di. mano. Di./ Oratio. Gentileschi.
oil on copper
43.1 x 32.3 cm.; 17 x 12¾ in.
John Pitt, MP (c. 1706–1787);
By descent to his son, William Morton Pitt, MP (1754–1836), London and Dorset;
His sale, London, Christie’s, 1 June 1811, lot 100 (as Geutileschi [sic]), for £6.–6s., to Spackman;
Charles Spackman (1748–1822);
Anonymous sale, Detroit, DuMouchelles, 15 December 2023, lot 1000 (as Italian School, in the manner of Orazio Gentileschi);
Where acquired by the present owner.
An early work by Orazio Gentileschi, this intimate painting on copper of the Virgin Mary preparing to breastfeed the infant Christ remained unknown until its reappearance in 2023, when it was recognised as an important addition to the small body of the artist’s work on this support. Datable to 1601 or 1602, when Orazio was beginning to work in a more naturalistic vein, and inscribed with his name on the reverse, it depicts the scene of the Holy Family at Nazareth, visited by the young Saint John the Baptist. In the practical gesture of the Virgin, the wide-eyed stare and awkward limbs of her baby and the acutely observed shy deference of the little St John towards his young cousin, Gentileschi presages a truth to nature that would become a hallmark of his work. Until recently covered with overpaint, and following a careful treatment campaign, the work has been revealed to be an autograph painting by this subtly complex artist, friend and near contemporary of Caravaggio.1
Orazio Gentileschi’s refined work on copper is documented but there are few surviving or known examples. Gianni Papi recently identified this as a beautiful and very interesting autograph painting by Orazio, noting not only its quality but also its interest from an art historical perspective.2 It belongs to a period of Gentileschi’s activity during which there are few other examples: namely, the moment of his transition from a late mannerist phase to the beginnings of a more naturalistic style. Papi assigns the painting to the early years of the seventeenth century, earlier than most of Gentileschi’s known works that are datable to the first decade. He finds traces here of a late mannerist idiom still present in Gentileschi’s paintings in the Benedictine abbey at Farfa, north of Rome (1598–99),3 seen for example in certain incongruities of scale, such as the diminutive size of the lamb in relation to the young St John. The expression of a new style is found in the beautiful infant Christ, a precursor to the baby depicted in Orazio’s Virgin and Child in Bucharest of 1609 (fig. 1). Here he is painted in a highly naturalistic way, his rounded forms, open legs and small genitalia clearly visible. As Papi points out, the draperies are beautiful, so too the passage of sky, fully characteristic of the artist. In his commentary on the painting, Papi also underscores its significance within the artist’s career as an homage to Florentine sixteenth-century culture. This is most apparent in the background figure of St Joseph climbing the steps, a motif that clearly relates to the work of Pontormo and Andrea del Sarto. Such a tribute to Gentileschi’s Florentine predecessors is not found in works by him known to date and constitutes therefore a unique instance in his work.
Keith Christiansen (formerly John Pope-Hennessy Chairman, European Paintings, Metropolitan Museum of Art), on the basis of images, also considers The Holy Family to be by Orazio Gentileschi and dates it to the years around 1600.4 He too points out the peculiarity of the setting, noting that when Orazio embraced Caravaggism he largely abandoned architectural settings as depicted here, landscape and architecture no longer being the primary components. The figure of Joseph mounting the stairs has no parallel in his later work, a point made also by Papi. Christiansen finds close correlations for the heads and foreshortening of the infant Jesus with, for example, The Fall of the Rebel Angels painted on alabaster;5 and The Stigmatization of St Francis, which he dates to c. 1600–1;6 but the closest analogies for the figures are in his work at Farfa and the vault of the chapel in San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, Rome, as well as the angels in Santa Maria ai Monti, Rome, datable to 1599.7 Like Papi, Christiansen too connects the painting with the Bucharest Virgin and Child, finding similarities with this image of motherhood. In particular, he singles out the Madonna’s hand, highly comparable in both paintings. The present work he places earlier, certainly before the Holy Family with the Infant St John the Baptist, also on copper, which he dates to 1607–8, sold at Sotheby’s in 2000 and now in the collection of the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe.8
Infrared reflectography shows no perceptible underdrawing, although this does not exclude the possibility of a compositional outline under the paint surface, drawn in a material that is non-absorbent of infrared, such as a chalk or red chalk. The IRR does however indicate a possible alteration to the composition, namely the insertion of St Joseph climbing the stairs and of the little dog at the top—both figures that are painted over the architectural elements of steps, walls and doorway. Details such as the foliage sprouting from the wall and the stepped profile of crumbling brickwork are motifs often employed by Orazio in later pictures, such as the finely wrought painting on copper of The Virgin and Child in a landscape at Burghley House, Stamford.9 The sky too, with its distinctive cloud formations is employed in other compositions, even on a considerably larger scale, in masterpieces such as the Rest on the Flight into Egypt in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, generally dated to the later 1610s or slightly later (fig. 2).10
Note on Provenance
The copper plate is prominently inscribed on the reverse in a bold seventeenth-century hand: ‘Di. mano. Di./ Oratio. Gentileschi’. While it has been suggested that the inscription is early in date and may be autograph, the number ‘256’ written in the same hand has thus far eluded identification and more likely connects to a collection or inventory belonging perhaps to the picture’s first owner. The earliest record of certain ownership places it in England in the possession of John Pitt (c. 1706–1787), who in the 1750s and ’60s put together a collection that comprised mainly seventeenth-century Old Masters. Information about where he acquired the pictures is scant but some details can be found in the catalogue of the collection sold by his son, William Morton Pitt (1754–1836), at Christie’s on 1 June 1811. Member of Parliament for Dorset, as his father also had been, William inherited the collection after John died in 1787. The sale is thought to have been occasioned by Pitt’s departure from his London residence in Arlington Street, to Dorset. Among the most significant pictures were two large landscapes by Annibale Carracci, both of which made significant prices at that sale.
We are grateful to Keith Christiansen and Gianni Papi for their opinions.
1 Arcanes, Paris, 2024.
2 Private communication with the owner, 12 July 2024.
3 R.W. Bissell, Orazio Gentileschi and the Poetic Tradition in Caravaggesque Painting, University Park and London 1981, pp. 135–37.
4 Email communication with the owner, 3 April 2024.
5 Oil on alabaster, arched top, 49.8 x 40.3 cm.; sold Sotheby’s, New York, 30 January 2019, lot 14, for $3,255,000 with premium.
6 Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, K. Christiansen and J.W. Mann (eds), exh. cat., Rome, New York and Saint Louis, 2001–2, pp. 53–55, no. 3, reproduced in colour.
7 Y. Primarosa in Orazio Gentileschi e l’immagine di San Francesco. La nascita del caravaggismo a Roma, G. Porzio and Y. Primarosa (eds), exh. cat., Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica, Palazzo Barberini, Rome, 2023, pp. 17–20, figs 4 and 5 and I. Sgarbozza in the same publication on their recent restoration, pp. 124–35, figs 4, 6, 8 and 9.
8 Inv. 3070; oil on copper, 58.5 x 44.4 cm.; sold Sotheby’s, London, 6 July 2000, lot 28, for £2,423,500 with premium, to a private collection.
9 Oil on copper, 28.8 x 21.5 cm.; X. Bray in Orazio Gentileschi at the Court of Charles I, G. Finaldi (ed.), exh. cat., London 1999, pp. 60–61, no. 4, reproduced in colour.
10 Inv. 1947P5; oil on canvas, 176.6 x 219 cm. Rome, New York and Saint Louis 2001–2, pp. 160–63, no. 34, reproduced in colour.