(San Matteo della Decima 1728–1781 Ravenna)
The Immaculate Conception with Angels,
oil on canvas, 56.5 x 37.5 cm, framed

We are grateful to Donatella Biagi Maino for confirming the attribution after examining the present work in the original and for cataloguing this lot.

This painting is a startling demonstration of Ublando Gandolfi’s talent. It has been conserved as the pendant to the study for the altarpiece of the Capuchin Order of Castelbolognese representing the Madonna and Child appearing to Saints George and Francis (see lot 93), and it can be assumed that these two paintings must have been in the same private collection since the eighteenth century. The present work is a study for the altarpiece in the church of Santo Spirito in Cingoli in the Marches, in the church of the Santo Spirito (see D. Biagi Maino, Ubaldo Gandolfi, Turin 1990, p. 277, n. 154).

For this important commission Ubaldo tried out the image of the Virgin and the composition as a whole, in two drawings. The first in black chalk and the second in pen, these are respectively conserved in Milan (Pinacoteca di Brera) and in Vaduz (Stiftung Ratjen, see D. Biagi Maino, Ibid., plate XXXIV, XXXV).

The artist appears to have had full freedom with regard to the work’s conception. He interpreted the subject for the church of the tertiary Franciscan nuns by composing an image according to a highly baroque sentiment of pathos which is reminiscent of examples by artists that he admired such as the Carracci. However, the fluid clarity of the pictorial brush strokes, built on the principles of disegno and expressed with rare perfection, are reflective of his own era, as is the intense brilliance of the palette, played out in softly applied brightly vibrant tones.

The present work’s excellent state of conservation allows us to appreciate the rich pictorial surface, the refined play of the brush saturated with sparkling colour and touches of light and the resplendent forms of the figures. Seen, for example, in the beautiful hand of the genuflecting angel holding the censer, the brilliant white robes of the Virgin whose solemn pose communicates graceful magnificence: her hands folded in prayer, her feet pressing down on the serpent of original sin. Just as the presence of the angel in the foreground is unusual for this subject, so is the gesture of the putto beside Mary, which emphasise her salvific message by menacing the serpent with a cross. Gandolfi’s intellectual freedom allows him to strengthen the meaning of the usual iconography, for example he depicts the angels engaged in everyday ritual acts which are recognisable to the faithful, thereby making his work communicative and therefore cathartic.

The Cingoli altarpiece was commissioned for the same church that already housed the magnificent painting of Saint Francis receiving the Stigmata by Ubadlo Gandolfi dated 1768, which is now in the Pinatoceca di Brera, Milan. This painting was removed from the church by the Legazione Pontificia delle Marche during the Napoleonic era, at the behest of, amongst others, a former pupil of Gandolfi, Giovanni Santi from the Accademia Clementina of the Istituto delle Scienze di Bologna. Ubaldo had served as professor of figure painting there on several occasions, and was also the president for a period (see Cingoli. Chiesa di Santo Spirito, in: Lo spazio del sacro. Chiese barocche tra ‘600 e ‘700 nella provincia di Macerata, ed. by F. Mariano, Macerata 2009, pp. 53-54). The painting is now in the Brera. Milan (see D. Biagi Maino, in: Pinacoteca di Brera. Scuola emiliana, ed. by F. Zeri, Milan 1991, pp. 204–205.). It was therefore made about a decade before the present Immaculate Conception, which on the basis of style, belongs to the final years of the artist’s career, circa 1780. This was the most productive period of the artist’s output, which was cut short by his premature death in 1782, at a time when he still had much to teach and was engaged in decorating the dome of San Vitale in Ravenna.