The Presentation at the Temple,
oil on panel, 55.5 x 80.5 cm, framed
Inscribed on a paper label on the reverse: 25.340. Masaccio. Gesù presentato al Tempio

Provenance:
Giovanni Andrea de Marinis, Marchese di Genzano (1755–1824), Naples, before 1824 (as Masaccio);
by inheritance to Maria Costanza de Marinis, married to Giuseppe de Sangro (1776–1837), 3rd Prince of Fondi, Naples;
De Sangro Collection until 1895;
by inheritance to the present owner

Documentation:
1824 inventory, Archivio di Stato di Napoli, Archivio de Sangro, Copia dell’Inventario de’ beni del fu Ecc. M.se di Genzano, Giovanni Andrea de Marini: “La Vergine che presenta il Bambino al vecchio Simeone”, sopra tavola (ed. by M. Sevarese, 2006)

Literature:
M. Savarese, “La collezione de Sangro dei principi di Fondi in tre inediti inventari di famiglia: da quadreria seicentesca a moderna raccolta di arti decorative”, in: Napoli nobilissima, 7.2006, 5/6, p. 200

We are grateful to Alessandro Tomei, who examined the present painting in the original, for his assistance in cataloguing the work.

The present painting once belonged to the prestigious Neapolitan collection of Giovanni Andrea de Marini, Marchese di Genzano (1755–1824), whose picture gallery was admired by travellers on their Grand Tour and described by a number of writers (see G. Manieri Elia, “La quadreria napoletana de Marinis-de Sangro dall’influenza del classicismo romano al dissolvimento del collezionismo aristocratico”, in: E. Debenedetti, Collezionismo e ideologia: mecenati, artisti, teorici dal classico al neoclassico, Rome, 1991, pp. 307–337). When the Marchese died in 1824, his daughter, Maria Costanza, became his universal heiress. She later married the Prince of Fondi Giuseppe de Sangro. The painting remained in his collection until 1895 and was passed on to the present owner by way of inheritance.

With its juxtaposition of mountains, a town enclosed by walls and towers, and a water surface, the landscape forming the backdrop to the scene of Mary’s presentation in the temple clearly reveals its Venetian origins. The calm atmosphere is bathed in a soft, warm light. The figures populating the scene (from left to right: Joseph, the Virgin, Simeon the Priest, and Anne the Prohetess, with the Child and a clergyman holding an incense container in his hand, inside a building) are rendered with subtly shaded colours. Joseph’s unusual headgear seems to be based on Flemish examples.

The painting’s formal features suggest that it originates from the Venetian mainland, probably from the circle of Andrea Cordegliaghi, called Previtali, a painter from the Bergamo region (Berbenno di Valtellina c. 1470–1528 Bergamo) trained by Giovanni Bellini in Venice, whose student he claimed to be in an inscription in the painting The Virgin Enthroned, Flanked by the Saints Sebastian and Thomas Aquinus (Pinacoteca Carrara, Bergamo, signed and dated 1506). The present Presentation was inspired by such works by the hand of Previtali as the Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine in the Pinacoteca Carrara and the altarpiece of Saint Benedict in the cathedral of Bergamo, which dates from 1525. These works have been reinterpreted here in a more tranquil and intimate mood.