Notes
Celebrated in his own lifetime as a superlative painter of frescoes, grotesques, trompe l'oeil, and palace façades, a talented stuccoist, as well as a designer of prints, ephemeral decoration and even of images to be etched on rock crystal, Perino del Vaga was one of the most versatile artists of the Italian cinquecento. However, despite his great talent and artistic facility, he remains today a somewhat remote figure to most people. This is due for the most part to several mishaps of history. Many of his most important works have either been largely or partly destroyed, and remain to us either in fragments or in compromised state, if they survive at all. Some others are either generally inaccessible to the public or in less frequented venues; neither his great work in the Palazzo Doria, Genoa, for example, nor his late, great masterpiece, the Sala Paolina in the Castel Sant'Angelo, Rome, are amongst the most visited artistic sites, except for the serious student of Italian art. And, apparently due to his great works in these many different fields, Perino's output of standard altarpieces—let alone easel pictures—was extremely limited. As a result, it is as a draughtsman that Perino is most familiar today, and his graphic output, wide and varied, has been justly admired and prized by collectors and connoisseurs alike. Paintings by him, though, are exceedingly rare, and one has not appeared on the market for nearly half a century.(1)
This stunningly well-preserved Holy Family with the Infant Baptist, therefore, represents a rare and important addition to Perino's elegant art. Painted on a poplar panel, it depicts the Virgin, standing behind a ledge, upon which she rests her Infant Son. She holds out to him with one hand a cherry (a symbol of the fruit of Paradise, and thus of man's original sin and ultimate redemption), and steadies him with her other. She is simply dressed, in the orthodox manner: a red robe with a long blue mantle over her head.(2 ) Perino, however, gives her a slight touch of fashion; she wears a small gem at her breast which gathers her tunic into graceful folds, and a beautifully rendered head of a cherub in gold hangs along her neckline. Her hair, mostly hidden under her veil, is elaborately braided and wrapped with a blue ribbon. The Virgin's robust Son, vigorously painted by Perino as a chubby infant with tousled, sandy hair, plays with a goldfinch, an emblem of Christ's Passion which would have been well known to the artist's contemporaries. Placed at the edges of the composition are the Infant Baptist—who stands like us on the near side of the wall on which Christ rests, looking up in adoration at his cousin— and in the background, the ever watchful and protective Joseph. Insightful and elegant touches abound in the composition. Perino juxtaposes the strong and knotty hands of Saint Joseph, similarly rendered in other depictions by the artist, with elegant and subtle shadows which fall across the saint's small finger and onto his wrist. Perino's final touches are more stunning still; in addition to the beautifully elaborated gold border along the edge of the Virgin's mantle—found in many similar depictions of the period—the artist has subtly and exquisitely highlighted small strands of the hair of the Madonna and the Child with touches of mordant gilding, creating a sumptuous and rich visual effect.
The paucity of easel pictures in Perino's known oeuvre make a precise dating for the present painting somewhat problematic. Elena Parma Armani lists only five autograph easel pictures by the artist, all of which depict much the same subject as the present example. These include Holy Families in the Musée Conde, Chantilly (inv. PE 44); the Museo Nazionale di San Matteo, Pisa; the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia (inv. 1666-5); a tondo in the collection of the Princes of Liechtenstein, Vienna (inv. G 24); and an unfinished painting which includes the figure of the Infant Baptist, in the Courtauld Institute, London (inv. P 1932 XX 311). None of these are dated or signed, and thus give no firm footing on which to construct a chronology for the group. The London picture, which is on panel and is largely unfinished, has in the past been reasonably associated with a picture described by Vasari in his biography of Perino: "quadretto non molto grande; il quale condusse a fine quasi piú di mezzo, dentrovi una Nostra Donna."(3) That painting was meant as a present for his friend, the Florentine goldsmith Piloto and thus would have been dated to Perino's sojourn there in 1522/3. At over a meter tall, however, it is questionable that the Courtauld Holy Family could be called a "quadretto non molto grande" and most scholars have rejected such an early dating for the picture on stylistic grounds, preferring to place it in the Genoese period of the artist, thus at some point during the 1530s.(4) More useful is the picture in Pisa which, although in somewhat damaged state, is almost certainly the picture which is recorded without subject by Vasari as a gift to the nuns of the Convent of San Matteo in that city. Thus, the Pisa picture would be datable to circa 1534, the year that the artist bought a house in the city, and where he was working on frescoes in the Duomo. The Liechtenstein tondo has generally been dated to much later in Perino's career, to the 1540s.(5) The Holy Family in Chantilly, which is clearly stylistically related to the tondo, both in the very similar pose of the Madonna and Child and in the slick, lapidary handling of the paint, has been variously dated by the studiosi from as early as 1535 to a more likely dating of the early 1540s. The Victoria Holy Family has been dated later still, and would appear to represent the final assay in the subject, having been produced towards the end of Perino's life, according to Jaffe, circa 1545/6, a view supported by Parma Armani.(6)
The present Holy Family uses many of the same compositional devices that Perino employs in these other pictures. The strongly modeled and composed image of the Mother and Child is balanced with a tender interaction between them; the brooding dark background contrasts with strong splashes of color in his figures. The ancillary figure of Saint Joseph is always hunched up behind, often in half shadow. Ultimately, all of them owe much to the influence of the late Raphael, with whom as a very young man Perino had worked in Rome on the Vatican Loggie and whose Madonnas (and those of his direct circle) the artist would have known only too well. The present panel, however, differs in tone and character in a number of ways than these other Perino Madonne. It is conceived with much more balance and restraint, and the classicizing influence of Raphael seems much stronger, as in the other panels where it seems to grow ever so slightly removed. It would seem, therefore, that this Holy Family should date to circa 1527-30, either just before he left Rome, or just after he moved to Genoa to work for Andrea Doria. A drawing which can be dated slightly later (1533-4 of the Head of the Virgin (Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts Graphiques, inv. 2745, see fig. 1) makes an intriguing comparison.
1. The last major picture to be offered on the open market was The Holy Family offered on the London art market with Hazlitt in 1965, and was acquired for the Australian National Gallery (see note).
2. Examination of the painting itself reveals that a slightly later (17th Century?) layer of overpaint has been brushed carefully over the blue veil, in order to darken it. This has been extremely carefully done, so as not to disturb the original gilt decoration along the border or the stella maris symbol at her shoulder. In fact, it has been done in such as way as to visually suggest shadows and pattern. As the paint underneath, which is a more lighter green-blue pigment—and much more typical of Perino's somewhat offbeat palette—appears to be entirely intact, it seems that this addition was made by a later owner of the picture, perhaps to "calm down" the image somewhat, and make the Virgin's costume more in line with traditional representation.
3. "[Trans: A small painting, not very large, which he brought to finish almost more than half way, depicting Our Lady.]"
4. B. Davidson was the first to suggest this, and was followed by Oberhuber, Jaffe and Parma Armani (see Parma Armani op. cit. p. 316, under cat. No. BXII).
5. First attributed to Perino by Frizzoni in 1912, subsequent scholars dated the tondo to Perino's early career until Davidson noted similarities with figures in the Sala Paolina (1545). Other historians have tended to agree with her later dating, if perhaps slightly earlier (Jaffe circa 1540).
6. Torriti to circa 1535; Jaffe, to the late Genoese period, Parma Armani to around 1541/2. op. cit., p. 318.
