(Moneglia 1527–1585 Madrid)
Madonna Lactans,
oil on canvas, 80 x 64 cm, framed

Provenance:
sale, Sotheby’s, Monaco, 19 June 1994, lot 443 (as Luca Cambiaso);
Private European collection

Literature:
F. Caroli (ed.), Sofonisba Anguissola e le sue sorelle, exhibition catalogue, Milan 1994, p. 266 (as Luca Cambiaso)

We are grateful to Camillo Manzitti for confirming the attribution of the present painting on the basis of a photograph.

The success of the present composition is reflected in a version by the artist Sofonisba Anguissola (see fig. 1) from 1588 in an oval format, executed circa 15 years after Cambiaso’s compositional invention. It is tempting to surmise that the two artists would have met in Genoa or later, at the Court of Phillip II in Spain.

Luca Cambiaso was the leading artist in sixteenth-century Genoa and was celebrated for the grand fresco schemes he designed and executed in churches and palaces throughout Genoa. His early preference for boldly conceived compositions, with figures seen in empathic foreshortening with exaggerated gestures, derives from the influence of Correggio, Michelangelo and the Venetian Renaissance.

In his mature period, to which the present painting appears to belong, Cambiaso’s style becomes calmer and more restrained. He mainly painted devotional subjects for private collectors, in which the light reveals the sacred characters as rustic, simple and close to the spectator. The triangular figural group in the present composition is placed in front of a dark monochrome background. The pale depiction of the figures, which seem to radiate from within themselves, is achieved by subtle nuances of colour. Any harsh lines are avoided, thus emphasising the calmness and tenderness of the scene. The inclined face of the Madonna, whose plasticity is modeled by a play of light and shadow, is reminiscent in its foreshortening of the artist’s early experiments.

In September 1583 Cambiaso accepted an invitation to work for Philip II of Spain, the result of a test piece he had sent from Genoa, which evidently convinced the King’s advisers that Cambiaso’s artistic taste coincided with their ruler’s. Perhaps it was Sofonisba to tell about Cambiaso’s talent, who herself was called to the court in Madrid 1559.