MASP

Pompeo Batoni

The Virgin Nursing the Child, 1760-80

  • Author:
    Pompeo Batoni
  • Bio:
    Lucca, Itália, 1708-Lucca, Itália ,1787
  • Title:
    The Virgin Nursing the Child
  • Date:
    1760-80
  • Medium:
    Óleo sobre tela
  • Dimensions:
    80 x 72,5 x 2 cm
  • Credit line:
    Doação Comendador Abílio Brenha da Fontoura, 1972
  • Object type:
    Pintura
  • Inventory number:
    MASP.00632
  • Photography credits:
    João Musa

TEXTS



The venerable theme The Virgin Nursing the Child (Lucas 2,27), is exemplified in this catalogue by Giampietrino’s Virgin. This very fine work had little documentation prior to its entrance into the Masp Collection and attribution is difficult although it clearly belongs to the Roman school of the mid or second half of the 18th century. A first attempt, cautiously proposed by Luciano Migliaccio (verbal communication) pointed to one of Maratta’s direct successors notably, Agostino Masucci (1691-1768) and may well be confirmed. Following this line of reasoning, the work could be attributed to Masucci of the 40s, after the inflection rightly described by Clark (1981, p. 92) as an abandonment of all flirtation with the Rococo, tending towards a “strong Classicist reformation”. The painting, however, has a more léchée brushwork, a cooler elegance of drawing and structure in addition to a specific blue tone that greatly approximates it to the oeuvre of Batotini, and in fact, to the most mature phase of this artist (this is also the opinion of Migliaccio). The luminous vibration and the drama of the chiaroscuro employed in the skin tone, legacies of the Rococo, are missing here, while a more rigid discipline is shown in the arrangement of the drapery of the Virgin’s veil and in the position of the Child, coupled with a milky softness, almost biscuit, in the dispersion of shading on the face of the Virgin. This work may indeed be compared with four late works of Batoni: The Virgin with Child and Saints at S. Maria della Chiara, in Chiari dated 1780 (Clark 1985, catalogue 426); the Palazzo del Quirinale The Mystic Marriage of St. Catharine, 1779 (Clark 1985, cat. 421); the Hermitage Holy Family dated 1777 (Clark 1985, cat. 398), and finally, the fourth and most convincing comparison, the Palazzo Reale Di Caserta Allegory of the Death of Two Sons of Ferdinand IV dated 1780 (Clark 1985, cat. 427), in which the figure representing the Allegory of the Two Sicilies is especially similar to the Masp’s Virgin. The work shows extremely controlled execution and whether it was actually painted by Batoni or by a Roman painter of his inner circle is a matter that should remain open to discussion. In any case, it seems quite probable that the work is dated around the same period as the Batoni paintings mentioned above and not earlier than 1760.

— Unknown authorship, 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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