Caesar of Sesto
Madonna with Child
Tempera on canvas
32,5 x 27 cm
Private collection
On a turf punctuated by small tufts of weeds, penitent Saint Jerome holds in his right hand the instrument of his own corporal scourging, the stone, to stop in ecstatic adoration in front of a crucifix. The martyred body of Christ appears carnal as much as that of the saint and stands out against the red of the cardinal's mantle which reveals the sacred texts of the Vulgate, traditional iconographic attributes of Jerome. The scene, strongly suggestive and bathed in warm light, stands out in the foreground, delimited by a ridge of dark rock which also closes the space to a row of trees. In contrast, on the right, the features of a landscape unfold between the second and third floors, in a series of Nordic-style architectures bordered by an orderly and shady countryside, crossed by a stream near which two wayfarers can be seen and, a little further on, a lion; view still delimited, in the distance, by a rocky chain in bluish tones. The painting, unknown to the scholars and therefore unpublished, establishes a profound dialogue with a panel by Cesare da Sesto, of an identical subject, preserved in the National Museum of Stockholm which critics place between the end of 1515 and 1517 and therefore at the time of the painter's return to Milan after his first stay in central-southern Italy (Rome, Messina and Naples). The bright hues of the flesh, the sculptural features of the anatomies and the chromatic virtuosity of the vegetation of the Swedish work, already related to a study for San Gerolamo in Windsor (inv. 064), update us on the terms of the cultural suture operated by Cesare da Sesto, halfway between the recollections of a Leonardo schooling and a maturity forged under the blows of a more modern spatial layout and narrative conception, evidently explainable through the knowledge of the renewed precepts figurative imposed by the Roman yards of Raphael and Michelangelo. However, what is missing in the Swedish table, reduced, is the fine finishing of the rocky ridge, as well as the landscape solution with a suggestive scenic impact and with miniaturistic precision details, otherwise present in the specimen on display and probably attributable to the influence of Bernazzano, colleague and collaborator of Cesare da Sesto. These precious details, in addition to allowing us to know the original and integral iconographic formulation of the Scandinavian painting, to be considered a prototype, lead us to see in the work exhibited here the fruit of a deeper meditation on the theme, placing itself, compared to its first formulation, at a albeit short but significant chronological distance.
Bibliography
• A. Perissa Torrini, A hypothesis for a «large cona» by Cesare da Sesto for San Michele Arcangelo in Baiano, in «Prospettiva», 22, Milan, 1980, pp. 77, 78, 85;
• P. Leone de Castris e P. Giusti, in «Forastieri e regnicoli». La pittura moderna a Napoli nel primo Cinquecento, Napoli, 1985, pp. 144, 169;
• M. Carminati, Cesare da Sesto: a little-known cycle of frescoes and a review, in «Arte Cristiana», 1989, pp. 360, 365 note 53;
• M. Carminati, Cesare da Sesto, 1477 - 1523, Milan, pp. 104; 181, 182
Nicola Barbatelli
On a simple ochre background with golden veils and enlivened by the presence of a cherub, the figure of the Virgin poses statuesque, whose sweet face is reproduced from the most conventional leonardesque models. On her lap stands the blessing child who, leaping to the right, grabs the thin stalk of carnation held between her fingers. The scene, freely borrowed from the central panel of the Doppio Trittico Crespi (Double Crespi Triptych), by Marco d’Oggiono, now exhibited in Blois, is identical to that of the Madonna col bambino e donatore (Madonna with Child and Donor, 1509-1512) frescoed by Cesare da Sesto in the lunette of the church of Sant’Onofrio on the Gianicolo, in Rome. That delightful text of mural painting long attributed to Leonardo, - with some timid hint to Andrea da Salerno or significant integration to Boltraffio’s catalogue (of whom he takes up the substance of the volumes and the sweetness of the complexions), while remaining for certain aspects still built on the foundation of Leonardo’s and the Lombard school of the early 16th century, is clearly imbued with the figurative grammar of the Vatican Raphael, as shown by the faux mosaic background borrowed from the Stanza della Segnatura and the marked monumentality of the figures. The small painting in the exhibition, considered by Mina Gregori the prototype of the Gianicolo’s lunette, has been published in Marco Carminati’s monograph on Cesare da Sesto (1994) as a “partial copy of the lunette of Sant’Onofrio without the donor”, a witness to the good fortune of the artist’s iconographic model. Displayed at the exhibition “Leonardo e il rinascimento fantastico. Una mostra tra Napoli e le rotte del Mediterraneo” (“Leonardo and the Fabulous Renaissance. An Exhibition Between Napoli and the Mediterranean Routes”, 2010) with a dossier curated by Laura Bartoni, and an attribution split between Cesare da Sesto and Antonio Solario, that same year it is definitively restored by the present author to the master from Sesto.The attribution, supported by the infrared diagnostic investigations of Andrea Rossi, which allowed the identification of a prepara - tory drawing very similar to the modes and the graphic quality of the artist, is confirmed by Carlo Pedretti (2013) and reiterated by Alberto Cottino who, on the occasion of the exhibition “Nel segno di Leonardo. Cinque dipinti da collezioni private” (“In Leonardo’s Sign. Five Paintings from Private Collections”, 2013), publishes the painting as an autograph work of the painter.
Bibliography
• G. Bora, at the entry Cesare da Sesto, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Rome, 1980, XXIV, p. 141;
• G. Borghini, Baldassarre Peruzzi, Cesare da Sesto and other presences in the Episcopo of Raffaele Riaro in Ostia, in «Quaderni di Palazzo Venezia», 1981, p. 14, no. 24;
• MT Fiorio, Leonardeschi in Lombardy, Milan, 1982, p. 40;
• A. Perissa Torrini, Considerations on Cesare da Sesto in the Roman period, in «Bulletin of art», n. 22, 1983, p. 90-92;
• PL de Castris and P. Giusti, "Forastieri e regnicoli". La pittura moderna a Napoli nel primo Cinquecento, Napoli, 1985, pp. 12, 117, 124, 135, n. 8, 36, n. 38;
• F. Sricchia Santoro, in Andrea da Salerno in the southern Renaissance, exhibition's catalog (Padula, Certosa di San Lorenzo, 1986), edited by G. Previtali, Florence, 1986, pp. 224-225;
• Leonardo's drawings and paintings from the Milanese collections, Milan, 1987, p. 118;
• P. Giusti and P. Leone de Castris, Pittura del Cinquecento a Napoli. 1510-1540. Forastieri e regnicoli, Napoli, 1988, pp. 22, 87, 90, 104, 106, 271;
• F. Moro, in Painting in Italy. The sixteenth century, Milan, 1988, II, p. 676; M. Carminati, Cesare da Sesto: a little-known cycle of frescoes and a review, in «Arte Cristiana», 1989, p. 364, n.45 and p.367, n.61;
• M. Carminati, Cesare da Sesto, 1477 - 1523, Milan, 1994, pp. 146, 156;
• L. Bartoni, in “Leonardo and the fantastic Renaissance. An exhibition between Naples and the Mediterranean routes”, exhibition's catalog (Sorrento, Villa Fiorentino, 2010), edited by A. Tomei, MC Paoluzzi, N. Barbatelli, Sorrento, 2010, p. 65;
• N. Barbatelli, A. Rossi in Diagnosis for the conservation and valorization of cultural heritage, edited by L. Campanella and C. Piccoli, Roma, 2010, pp. 439 - 445;
• A. Cottino, in In the sign of Leonardo. Five paintings from private collections, exhibition's catalogue, (Milan, Banca Profilo, 2013), edited by A. Cottino and S. Ferrari, Mantua, 2013, pp. 33 - 34;
• A Rossi, in Leonardo Da Vinci: the faces of a Genius, exhibition’s catalogue (Taipei, Red Brick Area West Hall), edited by A. Rossi, N. Barbatelli, P. Hohenstatt, pp. 22 - 25.
Nicola Barbatelli