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拍品專文
This large canvas, originally executed on panel, is one of the sacre conversazioni painted by the Venetian master, Paris Bordone. It boasts an illustrious collecting history, first securely documented in the distinguished collection of Queen Christina of Sweden. After abdicating the throne and converting to Catholicism in 1655, Christina moved to Rome. There, under the guidance of Cardinal Decio Azzolino—appointed by Pope Alexander VII to assist her— Christina assembled one of the most important art collections in the city. Her residence, the Palazzo Riario on the Via della Lungara (now partly integrated into the Palazzo Corsini), became a veritable private museum, exhibiting about 270 paintings. Among these were Titian's Death of Actaeon (National Gallery, London), six large Allegories by Veronese (four in the National Gallery, London, and two in the Frick Collection, New York), Correggio's Leda (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin) and several predelle by Raphael (National Gallery, London; Dulwich Picture Gallery, London; Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).
After Christina’s death in April 1689, her collection was bequeathed to Azzolino, who himself died only three months later. His nephew subsequently sold the entire collection to Livio Odescalchi, Duca di Bracciano. In 1721, Odescalchi's cousin, Baldassare Odescalchi-Erba, sold around 260 paintings, including the present work, to Philippe II, duc d'Orléans. The collection was later brought to England by François Louis Joseph de Laborde de Méréville and sold to Michael Bryan, who exhibited it in his gallery on Pall Mall and at the Lyceum. Bryan purchased the collection on behalf of a consortium made up of Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater, his nephew George Granville Leveson-Gower, Earl Gower, and Frederick Howard, 5th Earl of Carlisle. The Duke of Bridgewater held the collection at Cleveland House, which was later renamed Bridgewater House when rebuilt by Lord Francis Leveson Gower, 1st Earl of Ellesmere. The painting remained with him there until sold by Ellesmere in 1979.
In Queen Christina’s 1689 inventory, the painting is described in great detail but was attributed to Pordenone. It was later called Giorgione in a 1721 catalogue from the time of its sale to the duc d'Orléans. Once in the Orléans collection, the attribution to Bordone was secured and published as such by Dubois de Saint-Gelais in 1727 (loc. cit.). By the early 19th century, the attribution had been firmly re-established as Bordone, without question since.
While the authorship is secure, the date of execution has been a subject of debate. The chronology of Bordone’s oeuvre is not straightforward, as dating on stylistic grounds is complicated by the artist’s wide range of sources upon which the artist drew, often depending on the patron. In 1964, Canova dated the painting to circa 1545-1555, later proposing a more precise date of 1545-1550 in the catalogue of the 1984 Treviso exhibition (loc. cit.). However, before the painting last sold in 2006, Dr. Bernard Aikema suggested an earlier date, around 1525, in private verbal correspondence with the owner at the time. Andrea Donati most recently published the painting in 2014, dating it to circa 1545-1548 (loc. cit).
Current scholarship supports an execution date in the late 1540s. Venetian artists from Giorgione and Titian onwards frequently set religious scenes in extensive landscapes, and Bordone was no exception. A number of such works by the artist can be used to establish a chronology. Several of Bordone’s compositions share the same serene, intimate mood, formed through soft lighting and carefully designed arcadian landscapes in which the figures are set, and, to some degree, through the stillness and composure of the figures themselves. Works such as The Holy Family with Saints Jerome and Catherine (Musei di Strada Nuova, Palazzo Rosso, Genoa) and The Rest on the Flight to Egypt (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne) exemplify this tendency and show the influence of works from the 1520s by Bordone’s first teacher, Titian. Canova accordingly dated this group to the latter part of that decade (op. cit., p. 101 and fig. 25; and p. 109, fig. 26 respectively).
By contrast, the present composition situates its figures before a wilder, less hospitable landscape that extends far into the distance. Comparable treatments of the landscape can be found in other works of the 1540s, such as The Baptism of Christ (Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan; fig. 1) and the large altarpiece, The Holy Family with Saint Jerome and angels in glory (Santa Maria presso San Celso, Milan). The similarities suggest a comparable dating for the present work. Like the Milan altarpiece, this work displays a brilliant and rich palette, and robustly modeled figures, in marked contrast to the muted tones and smaller scale of Bordone’s works from the 1520s. The figures here are more animated, with a stronger sense of movement across the composition, created through their oblique postures as they lean toward or fall back from one another – thereby producing a rather artificial rhythm typical of the Mannerists. The monumentality and exaggerated musculature of Saint John the Baptist can be seen as anticipating Bordone's interest in the somewhat cool, courtly Mannerism of artists such as Bronzino, which was to characterize his depiction of the nude in the 'mythological' works of the following decade.
The figures in this painting also appear in other similar composition by Bordone. The Madonna, for example, appears in an identical pose in The Rest on the Flight into Egypt (National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh; fig. 2), another version of which is in the Malberti collection, Desio, Milan. A related Holy Family in the Muzuel Brukenthal, Sibiu, reverses the present composition with some variations. Of all these related works, however, it is in the present composition that the figures are most successfully integrated into the landscape. This is due in part to the prominence Bordone gives to the landscape and the consequent reduction in scale of the figures in relation to it. It can also be explained by the artist's handling and treatment of the landscape itself. More summarily painted and dramatically lit than in earlier works, its vast, open vista—punctuated with a solitary, craggy peak—conveys a slightly unsettling, almost 'Romantic', sense of nature as something untamed and unbounded. In its subtle depiction of the interrelationship between man and nature, the present composition may thus be considered among the most accomplished of the artist's achievements.
A copy of this picture by David Teniers the Younger is in the collection of Lord Methuen at Corsham Court.
After Christina’s death in April 1689, her collection was bequeathed to Azzolino, who himself died only three months later. His nephew subsequently sold the entire collection to Livio Odescalchi, Duca di Bracciano. In 1721, Odescalchi's cousin, Baldassare Odescalchi-Erba, sold around 260 paintings, including the present work, to Philippe II, duc d'Orléans. The collection was later brought to England by François Louis Joseph de Laborde de Méréville and sold to Michael Bryan, who exhibited it in his gallery on Pall Mall and at the Lyceum. Bryan purchased the collection on behalf of a consortium made up of Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater, his nephew George Granville Leveson-Gower, Earl Gower, and Frederick Howard, 5th Earl of Carlisle. The Duke of Bridgewater held the collection at Cleveland House, which was later renamed Bridgewater House when rebuilt by Lord Francis Leveson Gower, 1st Earl of Ellesmere. The painting remained with him there until sold by Ellesmere in 1979.
In Queen Christina’s 1689 inventory, the painting is described in great detail but was attributed to Pordenone. It was later called Giorgione in a 1721 catalogue from the time of its sale to the duc d'Orléans. Once in the Orléans collection, the attribution to Bordone was secured and published as such by Dubois de Saint-Gelais in 1727 (loc. cit.). By the early 19th century, the attribution had been firmly re-established as Bordone, without question since.
While the authorship is secure, the date of execution has been a subject of debate. The chronology of Bordone’s oeuvre is not straightforward, as dating on stylistic grounds is complicated by the artist’s wide range of sources upon which the artist drew, often depending on the patron. In 1964, Canova dated the painting to circa 1545-1555, later proposing a more precise date of 1545-1550 in the catalogue of the 1984 Treviso exhibition (loc. cit.). However, before the painting last sold in 2006, Dr. Bernard Aikema suggested an earlier date, around 1525, in private verbal correspondence with the owner at the time. Andrea Donati most recently published the painting in 2014, dating it to circa 1545-1548 (loc. cit).
Current scholarship supports an execution date in the late 1540s. Venetian artists from Giorgione and Titian onwards frequently set religious scenes in extensive landscapes, and Bordone was no exception. A number of such works by the artist can be used to establish a chronology. Several of Bordone’s compositions share the same serene, intimate mood, formed through soft lighting and carefully designed arcadian landscapes in which the figures are set, and, to some degree, through the stillness and composure of the figures themselves. Works such as The Holy Family with Saints Jerome and Catherine (Musei di Strada Nuova, Palazzo Rosso, Genoa) and The Rest on the Flight to Egypt (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne) exemplify this tendency and show the influence of works from the 1520s by Bordone’s first teacher, Titian. Canova accordingly dated this group to the latter part of that decade (op. cit., p. 101 and fig. 25; and p. 109, fig. 26 respectively).
By contrast, the present composition situates its figures before a wilder, less hospitable landscape that extends far into the distance. Comparable treatments of the landscape can be found in other works of the 1540s, such as The Baptism of Christ (Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan; fig. 1) and the large altarpiece, The Holy Family with Saint Jerome and angels in glory (Santa Maria presso San Celso, Milan). The similarities suggest a comparable dating for the present work. Like the Milan altarpiece, this work displays a brilliant and rich palette, and robustly modeled figures, in marked contrast to the muted tones and smaller scale of Bordone’s works from the 1520s. The figures here are more animated, with a stronger sense of movement across the composition, created through their oblique postures as they lean toward or fall back from one another – thereby producing a rather artificial rhythm typical of the Mannerists. The monumentality and exaggerated musculature of Saint John the Baptist can be seen as anticipating Bordone's interest in the somewhat cool, courtly Mannerism of artists such as Bronzino, which was to characterize his depiction of the nude in the 'mythological' works of the following decade.
The figures in this painting also appear in other similar composition by Bordone. The Madonna, for example, appears in an identical pose in The Rest on the Flight into Egypt (National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh; fig. 2), another version of which is in the Malberti collection, Desio, Milan. A related Holy Family in the Muzuel Brukenthal, Sibiu, reverses the present composition with some variations. Of all these related works, however, it is in the present composition that the figures are most successfully integrated into the landscape. This is due in part to the prominence Bordone gives to the landscape and the consequent reduction in scale of the figures in relation to it. It can also be explained by the artist's handling and treatment of the landscape itself. More summarily painted and dramatically lit than in earlier works, its vast, open vista—punctuated with a solitary, craggy peak—conveys a slightly unsettling, almost 'Romantic', sense of nature as something untamed and unbounded. In its subtle depiction of the interrelationship between man and nature, the present composition may thus be considered among the most accomplished of the artist's achievements.
A copy of this picture by David Teniers the Younger is in the collection of Lord Methuen at Corsham Court.