(Venice 1549–1628)
Adoration of the Magi,
oil on canvas, 136.2 x 205.8 cm, framed

Provenance:
sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 31 January 2014, lot 410 (as Palma il Giovane);
Collection of Ramon Osuna, Washington D.C.;
sale, Freeman’s, Philadelphia, 22 February 2022, lot 7 (as Palma il Giovane);
where acquired by the present owner

We are grateful to Giorgio Fossaluzza for confirming the attribution and for his help in cataloguing the present lot.

This work has been dated by Fossaluzza to 1600–1605, when Palma il Giovane was influenced by the works of Jacopo Tintoretto, but using a clearer colour scheme similar to Titian’s palette and following Veronese’s application of bright light paint effects.

The size, horizontal orientation and iconography of this painting suggest that the work was commissioned for private devotion and it can be compared to Palma il Giovane’s Adoration of the Shepherds in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow (inv. no. Ж-2715).

Born into a family of artists which included his father, Antonio Palma (circa 1510–1575), his great-uncle Palma il Vecchio (1549–1628) and his uncle, Bonifacio de’ Pitati, called Bonifacio Veronese (1487–1553), Palma il Giovane enjoyed a long and illustrious career. His precocious talent was recognised by Guidobaldo II della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, who called the young painter to his court when he saw him in 1564, aged only fourteen, copying the Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence by Titian. It is believed that he also travelled to Pesaro and then to Rome before returning to Venice in 1574, where he may have worked in the studio of Titian.

After the death of Jacopo Tintoretto (1518–1594), Palma became one of the leading painters in Venice. Demonstrating the high reputation he enjoyed, he was commissioned to complete the Pietà left unfinished by Titian (Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice) upon which Palma proudly applied the inscription ‘QUOD TITIANVS INCHOATVM RELIQUIT PALMA REVERENTVR ABSOLVIT DEOQ. DICAVIT OPVS’ [‘That which Titian left unfinished, Palma completed with reverence, dedicating the work to God’] – thereby evidently identifying himself as the heir to Titian’s artistic supremacy in the city.