(Florence 1532–1592)
Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist,
oil on panel, 61 x 50 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Italy;
sale, Dorotheum, Vienna, 12 October 2011, lot 502;
Private European collection

Literature:
M. Privitera, Due opere della prima maturità di Girolamo Macchietti, in: Paragone, 98-99, July-September 2011, p. 39 and pl. 49

Marta Privitera has dated the present work to the early maturity of Girolamo Macchietti’s artistic output from the second half of the 1560s. This was the most intensely productive period of the Florentine artist’s career.

Macchietti executed this work following his return to Florence from Rome, the city that left a lasting mark on his artistic production, as is evident from the present panel. Artists such as Perin del Vaga and Parmigianino influenced him, as did the ancient ruins of the classical world, an echo of which can be seen in the landscape in the background of the present painting.

Two other contemporary autograph versions on panel of the present composition are known: one is in the museum in Kiev (see A. Nesi, Un quadro a Kiev e altre note per Girolamo Macchietti, in: Nuovi Studi. Rivista di arte antica e moderna, 12, 2006, p. 133, and fig. 181), the other was sold by Dorotheum in 2008 (Dorotheum, Vienna, 15 April 2008, lot 33; see literature).

The present painting depicts the Madonna holding the Child on her lap, while Saint John the Baptist is in the right foreground. The three paintings are united by the diagonal cut of the composition with a landscape opening out on the left, but in the painting here under discussion, the figures are rendered with greater naturalness and the warm tones of the soft brushstrokes are more prominent. These paintings likely derive from a lost drawing, thereby following the artist’s known practice of repeating compositions on the basis of his drawings. An example of this practice can be seen in the artist’s two versions of Adam and Eve in private collections (see M. Privitera, Girolamo Macchietti. Un pittore dello Studiolo di Francesco I (Firenze 1535-1592), Milan/Rome 1996, pp. 102-103, nn. 12-13): these also provide a valid point of comparison with the present painting.

On account of compositional elements, such as its landscape and sentimental intonation, the present panel can be compared to other works executed by Macchietti for private patrons following his return to Florence, such as his Venus and Adonis in the Galleria Palatina, Florence or the Madonna and Child with Saint Anne in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest (see M. Privitera, Ibid., pp. 100-101, no. 11 and pp. 112-113, no. 21). Particularly in the latter work, the ancient ruins visible in the background are executed with an evanescent sfumato technique that closely recalls those in the present work.