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Lot Essay
The Spinola Holy Family, although admired in the nineteenth century, evaded attention until it was published in 1982. The subject was accurately described in the catalogue of the 1826 Radstock sale:
"THE HOLY FAMILY, consisting of Joseph and the Virgin seated before the door of a ruined Dwelling, the Infant Christ, standing, but from weakness of his frame, scarcely erect, between the knees of his mother, and the young St John in a more energetic attitude on one knee, pointing to the prophecies in an open Volume: a fine Female Figure is advancing from the right, with a basket of Turtle Doves, as the offering of Purification, while with her right hand she collects her drapery. The distance is filled with romantic Scenery."
Although it is not mentioned in any early guidebooks to Genoa, or traceable to any specific inventory, the picture may always have been attributed to Giulio Romano. Dr. Waagen, whose high opinion of it is quoted above, commented on the the resemblance of the child to that in the Munro of Novar Madonna, now in the National Gallery of Scotland, which is generally dated no later than 1523. Giulio's Roman pictures all reveal the strength of his bond with Raphael. As the Novar Madonna at Edinburgh is an adaptation of the Madrid Madonna della Rosa and the Capodimonte Madonna del Gatto an interpretation of La Perla of the Prado, so the Spinola picture bears a clear structural relation to the Holy Families of Raphael's final years, to the Madrid Holy Family with the Oak, to La Perla and to the Madonna del Divin Amore at Naples. In the relative positions of the heads of the Virgin and the Holy Children, it evidently recalls the Madrid Madonna della Rosa. The pose of the 'fine Female Figure' has, in Waagen's words, 'quite the motive of the Virgin' of the Prado Visitation. The figure in question does indeed derive from this source, but depends, as Joannides, loc. cit., observed, on a drawing at Windsor (Popham and Wilde no. 881 verso) which is persuasively attributed to Giulio's closest associate in Raphael's shop, Giovanni Francesco Penni.
Her introduction - which of course has also an iconographic significance - is the most striking innovation of the composition and makes possible the daring concentration of the heads of the Madonna and Christ diagonally across the centre of the panel; for none of Raphael's own Madonnas is set so low in the painted plane. Nonetheless, Pagden, loc. cit., suggests that the picture, like the small Gonzaga Madonna, also attributed by her to both Giulio and Penni, was commissioned from Raphael himself, and based, however loosely, on a lost design supplied by him.
Giulio's responsibility for the design is, however, strongly suggested by the evidence of pentimenti. As was customary, the detail of the architectural background was inscribed on the panel with a stylus: incisions establish that to the right of the structure, behind the head of the Saint, a deep arch with a substantial cornice supported on the right by a further pilaster was shown at an angle. The landscape was thus an afterthought. Underdrawing is visible elsewhere in the picture, as is the arm of the Christ Child where this is overlain by the Virgin's right hand.
Giulio's fame now rests on his inventive facility, represented most obviously by the frescoes of the Palazzo del Tè, but it is on his adaptation of the art of the late Raphael that his significance in the mainstream of European painting depends and the Spinola picture is one of the key statements of this aspect of his oeuvre. Smaller and thus more intimate in scale than most of the compositions to which it is most directly related, the Spinola Holy Family must be marginally earlier in date than the Stoning of Saint Stephen of 1523 in the church of that Saint, Giulio's only documented Genoese commission, in which such details as the matted grasses are precisely paralleled.
It may well be that the two commissions were, in some way, linked. That the composition was admired by contemporaries is attested by the survival of at least three early copies; a crude picture described as having been in the 'Municipal Art League, Chicago' and a drawing at Gijon (see Russell, op. cit., May 1982, p. 297, no. 1) and a panel in the Church of Santa Maria del Suffragio at Amatrice which is generally attributed to Cola dell'Amatrice (Cannatà, op. cit., no. 25, where dated c.1527)
"THE HOLY FAMILY, consisting of Joseph and the Virgin seated before the door of a ruined Dwelling, the Infant Christ, standing, but from weakness of his frame, scarcely erect, between the knees of his mother, and the young St John in a more energetic attitude on one knee, pointing to the prophecies in an open Volume: a fine Female Figure is advancing from the right, with a basket of Turtle Doves, as the offering of Purification, while with her right hand she collects her drapery. The distance is filled with romantic Scenery."
Although it is not mentioned in any early guidebooks to Genoa, or traceable to any specific inventory, the picture may always have been attributed to Giulio Romano. Dr. Waagen, whose high opinion of it is quoted above, commented on the the resemblance of the child to that in the Munro of Novar Madonna, now in the National Gallery of Scotland, which is generally dated no later than 1523. Giulio's Roman pictures all reveal the strength of his bond with Raphael. As the Novar Madonna at Edinburgh is an adaptation of the Madrid Madonna della Rosa and the Capodimonte Madonna del Gatto an interpretation of La Perla of the Prado, so the Spinola picture bears a clear structural relation to the Holy Families of Raphael's final years, to the Madrid Holy Family with the Oak, to La Perla and to the Madonna del Divin Amore at Naples. In the relative positions of the heads of the Virgin and the Holy Children, it evidently recalls the Madrid Madonna della Rosa. The pose of the 'fine Female Figure' has, in Waagen's words, 'quite the motive of the Virgin' of the Prado Visitation. The figure in question does indeed derive from this source, but depends, as Joannides, loc. cit., observed, on a drawing at Windsor (Popham and Wilde no. 881 verso) which is persuasively attributed to Giulio's closest associate in Raphael's shop, Giovanni Francesco Penni.
Her introduction - which of course has also an iconographic significance - is the most striking innovation of the composition and makes possible the daring concentration of the heads of the Madonna and Christ diagonally across the centre of the panel; for none of Raphael's own Madonnas is set so low in the painted plane. Nonetheless, Pagden, loc. cit., suggests that the picture, like the small Gonzaga Madonna, also attributed by her to both Giulio and Penni, was commissioned from Raphael himself, and based, however loosely, on a lost design supplied by him.
Giulio's responsibility for the design is, however, strongly suggested by the evidence of pentimenti. As was customary, the detail of the architectural background was inscribed on the panel with a stylus: incisions establish that to the right of the structure, behind the head of the Saint, a deep arch with a substantial cornice supported on the right by a further pilaster was shown at an angle. The landscape was thus an afterthought. Underdrawing is visible elsewhere in the picture, as is the arm of the Christ Child where this is overlain by the Virgin's right hand.
Giulio's fame now rests on his inventive facility, represented most obviously by the frescoes of the Palazzo del Tè, but it is on his adaptation of the art of the late Raphael that his significance in the mainstream of European painting depends and the Spinola picture is one of the key statements of this aspect of his oeuvre. Smaller and thus more intimate in scale than most of the compositions to which it is most directly related, the Spinola Holy Family must be marginally earlier in date than the Stoning of Saint Stephen of 1523 in the church of that Saint, Giulio's only documented Genoese commission, in which such details as the matted grasses are precisely paralleled.
It may well be that the two commissions were, in some way, linked. That the composition was admired by contemporaries is attested by the survival of at least three early copies; a crude picture described as having been in the 'Municipal Art League, Chicago' and a drawing at Gijon (see Russell, op. cit., May 1982, p. 297, no. 1) and a panel in the Church of Santa Maria del Suffragio at Amatrice which is generally attributed to Cola dell'Amatrice (Cannatà, op. cit., no. 25, where dated c.1527)