MASP

Bartolomeo Passante

Adoration of the Shepherds, 1630-35

  • Author:
    Bartolomeo Passante
  • Bio:
    Nápoles, Itália, 1618-Nápoles, Itália, 1648
  • Title:
    Adoration of the Shepherds
  • Date:
    1630-35
  • Medium:
    Óleo sobre tela
  • Dimensions:
    177 x 236 x 4 cm
  • Credit line:
    Doação Domingos Fernandes Alonso, 1950
  • Object type:
    Pintura
  • Inventory number:
    MASP.00029
  • Photography credits:
    João Musa

TEXTS



There are conflicting opinions regarding the authorship of the painting Adoration of the Shepherds (1630-35). When it became a part of the MASP collection in the 1950s, it was attributed to Spanish painter José de Ribera (1591-1652). Later, following an exchange of correspondence between the museum’s then director Pietro Maria Bardi and specialists in Italian and Spanish art, the attribution of the painting’s authorship was changed to Bartolomeo Passante, a Neapolitan collaborator of Ribera. Some historians disagreed with this theory, claiming that some of the works originally attributed to Passante were actually created by an anonymous painter in Naples, the Master of the Annunciation to the Shepherds, and the painting in the MASP collection was one of them. In 1969, Roberto Longhi (1890-1970), a historian specializing in Italian art, wrote an article in which he asserted that the entire set belonged to Passante, but the issue remains unsettled. The work in the MASP collection is considered one of the artist’s best paintings, in which he made use of tenebrism, a technique from the baroque period in which a single light source is utilized to highlight the shadows and add drama and tension to paintings dominated by dark tones. In spite of the seriousness and gravity of the composition, the lightness of the angels surrounding Jesus confers an intimate, familiar ambiance to the work, lending this painting of a sacred theme an air of everyday life.

— MASP Curatorial Team, 2018




By Galia Daniela Cabrera
The work Adoration of the Shepherds was donated to the Masp in 1950 by banker Domingos Fernandes Alonso, a Paulista and Spaniard, who had bought it on the London market where it was attributed to Jusepe Ribera. In 1951, Martin Soria examined the picture and in a letter to Prof. P. M. Bardi suggested that it be attributed to Bartolomeo Passante (Cabrera 1991-1992, Document Appendix: letter of February 23, 1951). Then the work was published by José Hernández Perera as an original by the “Master of the Annunciation to the Shepherds” (Perera 1958). The pictorial quality of the Masp work is exceptional and composition-wise is among the artist’s best works, even though its state of conservation is not ideal. The work’s composition and its luminance put it close in terms of style to the Nativity of the Longhi Foundation and the Adoration of the Shepherds of the Pinacoteca Comunale of Rimini (De Vitto, in V. A.(*) 1984, p. 341, cat. 2143), suggesting a common or approximate date for this group of works: the period immediately prior to the Adoration of the Magi of the Bank of Naples Collection and to the Birth of the Virgin by Castellamare di Stabbia (V. A.(*) 1982, pp. 83 and 195, cat. 85; V. A.(*) 1984, p. 346, cat. 2148; Spinosa 1988, p. 186; V. A.(*) 1989, p. 81, cat. 30). These were the first years of discreet revision of Riberian naturalism toward a more open Venetian sensibility, a common characteristic, in fact, of Neapolitan painting of the first half of the ‘30s. Light acquires great importance in this composition through subtle play and changes in color, particularly in the central group of angels around the Child. Likewise, the restrained, detailed treatment of the draperies of the garments and the wings reveals unexpected tones of white that contaminate the predominating browns of the picture. The central group confers an intimate tone to the Adoration, something difficult to find in Naples in tenebrista painting before 1630, even though the presence of the angels has nothing to do with the supernatural. One may also note that the delicate physique of the Virgin or of the angel in the center is a constant in this painter and may easily be found in pictures of this period. Finally, it is important to point out that this Adoration, as with the Nativity of Longhi and that of Bourgen-Bresse (Spinosa 1988, p. 185), corresponds to the dimensions of the picture that may be seen on the internal facade of the church of San Giacomo degli Spagnoli, as mentioned in the sources and amply discussed by Spinosa. A picture similar to the Masp work was in the Neapolitan’s collection of Francesco Montecorvino in 1698 (for a possible reference in the inventory of 17th-century works, in Passante and Bassante in Italian inventories, Getty Provenance Index 3/92, item n. 0021 a. Information kindly provided by Carol Togneri of the Getty Art History Program).

— Galia Daniela Cabrera, 1998

Source: Luiz Marques (org.), Catalogue of the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, São Paulo: MASP, 1998. (new edition, 2008).



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