Baglione

Painter, art historian and the first biographer of his famous rival Caravaggio¹, Giovanni Baglione trained and worked in Rome in late Mannerist circles until the innovative realism of Caravaggio, present in Rome in the last decade of the 16th century, had a radical influence on him. In a few years he elaborated a heterogeneous style described as “maniera propria”,² constructed from Mannerist reminiscences, realist explorations, classical references and lively Baroque effects. He won favour with the clergy and became one of the most effective and productive painters of the Counter-Reformation. Among Baglione’s most famous works, The Resurrection of Tabitha, painted for St Peter’s Basilica in 1607 and now lost, earned him the honour of Knight of the Order of Christ from Paul V.

This study of a woman, executed fairly swiftly, with her head bowed and her hands crossed over her chest, is absolutely characteristic of studies drawn by the artist in preparation for painted figures. In terms of graphic style, it can easily be compared to the many black or red chalk sheets in existence, some of which use the squaring-off technique: for example, the Study of an Assumption of the Virgin³ belonging to the Pierpont Morgan Library, in which the Virgin crosses her hands in the same manner as in our drawing, and also the Study of an Acolyte⁴ in the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum collection. Both, although drawn in red chalk, show a similar conception of volume and light.

Our drawing prepares the figure of the Virgin found in a devotional altarpiece depicting The Holy Family with God the Father in the chapel of Saint Joseph at the church of San Vincenzo in Gravedona (Fig. 1), Lombardy. Mina Gregori⁵ has linked this painting to a group of three drawings depicting the Holy Family walking together: the Metropolitan and Teylers sheets⁶ show them leaving the temple while the Bergamo sheet shows them in a natural setting. However, the latter may be related to another painting by Baglione on a similar theme, The Holy Family’s Return from Egypt, in SS Apostoli. The Gravedona painting may depict either of these subjects, but more probably the Return from the Temple: Jesus’ age seems right, approximatively twelve, and he appears to be justifying himself – he had disappeared and was busy talking with the temple doctors, causing his parents to worry (Luke 48-52). The painting is mentioned in Gravedona as early as 1627⁷, but Gregori dates it earlier through comparison with three works painted for Santa Maria di Loreto in Spoleto in 1609. The figure of God the Father in the upper section is very similar to the example in the altarpiece at San Bernardino ai Monti, together with Saints Anthony, Clare and Agatha, probably from the same period. As a painter favoured by the Church and a prolific creator of devotional imagery complying with the demands of the clergy, Baglione sometimes developed variants of his own compositions or reused certain motifs. His religious altarpieces can occasionally be a little conventional, as is the case with this one, where the psychological and narrative dimensions are less developed than in the preparatory drawings. Baglione’s patron was probably Giovanni Antonio Curti, whose family, although very present in Rome, seems to have been attached to this chapel throughout the 17^th and 18^th centuries.