Venetian School, circa 1500

The Baptism of Christ,
oil on panel, 107 x 102 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Northern Italy

We are grateful to Mauro Lucco for suggesting an attribution to Boccaccio Boccaccino and for his help in cataloguing the present painting.

Boccaccio Boccaccino spent the last nineteen years of his life living in Cremona, and is considered to be the founding father of the Renaissance school of painting there. However, despite being included in Vasari’s Le Vite delle più eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori (Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects), little is known about the early part of his career, from 1485 to about 1500.
It is known from documents that Antonio Constabili, the ambassador of Ferrara to the Sforza court, extracted Boccaccino from prison in Milan in 1497, sending him back to the d’Este city (see A. Venturi, La R. Galleria Estense in Modena, Modena 1882, p. 38). Here however, in 1500 Boccaccino ‘amazò sua moiera chel trovò farle le corna et che gel confessò’ [‘murdered his wife, whom he found cuckolding him and which she confessed to’] (see A. Pattanaro, Regesto della pittura a Ferrara (1497-1548), in: A. Ballarin, Dosso Dossi. La pittura a Ferrara negli anni del ducato di Alfonso I, Cittadella 1995, vol. I, p. 113). So he was forced to flee from Ferrara. Another document, which is undated but certainly pre-dates 1506, confirms the payment of rent on a house in Calle del Paradiso in Venice (G. Ludwig, Archivalische Beiträge zur Geschichte der enezianischen Malerei…, in: Jahrbuch der Königlich Preußischen Kunstsammlungen, Beiheft, 1905, p. 10) suggesting that Venice was the city he fled to.

According to Lucco the present painting conforms stylistically with other works Boccaccino made in the Republic of Venice around 1500: the Baptist’s features are similar to those of the same saint in his Pala di San Giuliano, while the angel dressed in pink in the present painting is similar to the Saint John the Evangelist in the same altarpiece. Stylistically similar physiognomies can be observed in the fragmentary frescoes by Boccaccino now in the Museo Civico Ala Ponzone, Cremona and in particular the segments inventoried with nos. 149 and 152, datable to about 1515-18.

Boccaccino’s San Giuliano altarpiece in Venice was completed and placed in position in 1502 (see P. Humfrey, The Altarpiece in Renaissance Venice, New Haven & London, 1993, p. 351), demonstrating the date of the artist’s arrival from Ferrara. Moreover, around 1500-1501 the Baptism of Christ was a subject treated by Cima da Conegliano who had just a few years previously presented his masterpiece for San Giovanni in Bragora, and within a brief time Giovanni Bellini was to finish his magnificent vision for Santa Corona at Vicenza, probably completed by 1502. Almost incredibly, in the present work, Boccaccino, according to Lucco, appears to anticipate this rare iconography of the baptism taking place in the presence of angels, which was adopted by the great Venetian master and then replicated as late as 1540 in the painting by Francesco da Santacroce in the Museo di Castevecchio at Verona (inv. 80-1B247).

According to Lucco the principal point of interest that serves to suggest a dating of the present painting close to 1500, is the presence of the strangely shaped green sloping mountain on the left: this is related to the landscape depicted in the painting of the Homage to a Poet in the National Gallery, London (inv. 1173) which has been previously given to Giorgione or his studio. The fact that this motif is repeated here, may suggest that the London painting was highly regarded at the time, thus indirectly confirming its status as an autograph work by Giorgione, all be it a very precocious work dating to the Quattrocento. The slender shoots of trees flickering in the wind in the present painting suggest a proto-classical civilization, of Ferrarese origin; on the other hand the shrub branches in the present panel are executed like those of the Venetian master in his two panels in the Uffizi (inv. ns. P723, P724). On account of these stylistic similarities Lucco has suggested that the present work is the first painting that Boccaccio Boccaccino made in Venice in 1500.

Technical analysis:
Thin outline underdrawing can be detected by IR reflectography along the figures and the mountains, as well as some changes are apparent. Some traces of another type of linear drawing, less thin, appear under a few details such as Christ’s mouth and in the angels. The drawing of the Christ’s feet shifted slightly in the final painted version. Other changes include the risen arm of the Baptist that was originally drawn straighter and the edges of the river that were quite different behind Christ’s figure, with a strip of land stretched to the right, with the stump of a tree which was completely covered by the water of the river. Some details are painted over the landscape, such as the angels and the clothes they are holding.

The colours are laid over a white ground that exhibited numerous small bubbles. Pigments detected by spectroscopic examination include natural ultramarine (from lapis lazuli) in all the blue areas, verdigris in the green colours, a carmine type red lake sometimes added to ultramarine blue to obtain deeper hues, iron oxides (yellow and brown ochres) and a lead-tin based yellow, together with lead white and parts of vermillion in the flesh tones. The quality of painting, which is high, is consistent with the Venetian painting technique of the late 15th century and early 16th century with features that are very close to Boccaccio Boccaccino’s practice.

We are grateful to Gianluca Poldi for the technical examination of the present painting.