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Lot Essay
This picture repeats one of Leonardo’s most renowned and enigmatic compositions, his Saint John the Baptist (Paris, Musée du Louvre). It is thought to be one of his last pictures, and is first mentioned in the diary of Antonio de Beatis, the chaplain-secretary to Cardinal Luis of Aragon, who tells of three pictures he saw at Cloux in 1517: the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, a portrait of a Florentine woman, almost certainly the Mona Lisa, and the Saint John the Baptist. By then Leonardo had been appointed court painter to François I, where he was revered and rewarded as one might expect for his unique, other-worldly genius. The year before he died in 1519 - this year marks the five hundredth anniversary - a vast sum was paid for a group of pictures for the French king, almost undoubtedly including these three masterpieces, all now housed in the Louvre.
Leonardo’s Saint John the Baptist is a composition that has beguiled viewers and intrigued scholars. His direct gaze and magnetic expression have made it one of his most instantly recognisable pictures. For some, it has remarkable personal resonance for the artist himself: Kenneth Clark saw it as an image of Leonardo’s spiritual double, ‘which stands at his shoulder and propounds unanswerable riddles’ (K. Clark, Leonardo da Vinci, Harmondsworth, 1967, pp. 153-6). For many, the spiritual meaning of the saint’s gesture is clear: this is an image of the divine messenger, emerging from the darkness to confront the viewer with his message, that ‘There comes one mightier than I after me’ (Mark, 1:7).
A group of early copies and variants exist, painted by pupils in an effort to emulate the master; a number of these are held in museum collections, including pictures in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore and Palazzo Rosso, Genoa. In some instances, a landscape background was added, such as in the picture by Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno, called Salaì, in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana. One theory holds that the features of the saint were based on Salaì himself, an assistant of Leonardo. The panel offered here dates to the early-sixteenth century, possibly to Leonardo’s lifetime, and is painted on walnut - the same support used for the original. The Leonardesque technique is quite evident too, in the finely worked sfumato, the use of delicate glazes and the slightly ‘ashen’ appearance of the flesh tones, indicative of the decisive influence of Leonardo’s innovative painting practices (see M. Spring et al., ‘Painting Practice in Milan in the 1490s: The Influence of Leonardo’, National Gallery Technical Bulletin, XXXII, 2011, pp. 78-112). The inclusion of the staff with the Bible and Lamb is an unusual change to the original composition, and was perhaps added at a later date. An Infra-Red scan is available on request, together with a report by Art Analysis & Research Ltd., which notes that the 'wood grain pattern [...] and brush-marking' are comparable to La Belle Ferronnière (Paris, Musée du Louvre). This report concludes that 'a number of features of the material structure of this painting [...] are consonant with the currently known painting practices of Leonardo and his circle.'
The picture was part of the Northwick collection begun at Northwick Park by John Rushout, 1st Lord Northwick, (1738-1800) and afterwards considerably enlarged by his son the 2nd Lord Northwick (1769-1859) who embarked on a seven year Grand Tour of Italy. As Tancred Borenius wrote, the 2nd Lord Northwick was ‘a collector of very high intelligence and discrimination ... he was able to avail himself of an ample fortune to buy the finest specimens of the Fine arts which came into the market.’ Although he added an extensive picture gallery to his home, Northwick Park, he soon was forced to buy a second vast residence, Thirlestaine House, to accommodate his expanding collection. After his death, the collection was offered for sale at auction and Sir Thomas Phillipps, a great bibliophile and collector, bought close to 100 pictures from the sale, including this Saint John the Baptist. Sir Thomas first leased and then in 1864 purchased Thirlestaine, returning the picture to the Grand Gallery, where a photograph of 1866 showed it hanging in situ (fig. 1). In the same photograph can be seen the Holy Family by Maso da San Friano, now at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, while other notable works from the Northwick collection now hang in the National Gallery, London, the Metropolitan Museum, New York, and National Gallery, Washington. The Saint John the Baptist was later acquired in 1956 by Leander McCormick-Goodhart, a descendant of the McCormick family of Chicago and an heir to the McCormick International Harvesting company. He was a diplomat, who worked at the British Embassy in Washington D.C., and was the private secretary to the Ambassador, Lord Lothian, during the Second World War.
Leonardo’s Saint John the Baptist is a composition that has beguiled viewers and intrigued scholars. His direct gaze and magnetic expression have made it one of his most instantly recognisable pictures. For some, it has remarkable personal resonance for the artist himself: Kenneth Clark saw it as an image of Leonardo’s spiritual double, ‘which stands at his shoulder and propounds unanswerable riddles’ (K. Clark, Leonardo da Vinci, Harmondsworth, 1967, pp. 153-6). For many, the spiritual meaning of the saint’s gesture is clear: this is an image of the divine messenger, emerging from the darkness to confront the viewer with his message, that ‘There comes one mightier than I after me’ (Mark, 1:7).
A group of early copies and variants exist, painted by pupils in an effort to emulate the master; a number of these are held in museum collections, including pictures in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore and Palazzo Rosso, Genoa. In some instances, a landscape background was added, such as in the picture by Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno, called Salaì, in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana. One theory holds that the features of the saint were based on Salaì himself, an assistant of Leonardo. The panel offered here dates to the early-sixteenth century, possibly to Leonardo’s lifetime, and is painted on walnut - the same support used for the original. The Leonardesque technique is quite evident too, in the finely worked sfumato, the use of delicate glazes and the slightly ‘ashen’ appearance of the flesh tones, indicative of the decisive influence of Leonardo’s innovative painting practices (see M. Spring et al., ‘Painting Practice in Milan in the 1490s: The Influence of Leonardo’, National Gallery Technical Bulletin, XXXII, 2011, pp. 78-112). The inclusion of the staff with the Bible and Lamb is an unusual change to the original composition, and was perhaps added at a later date. An Infra-Red scan is available on request, together with a report by Art Analysis & Research Ltd., which notes that the 'wood grain pattern [...] and brush-marking' are comparable to La Belle Ferronnière (Paris, Musée du Louvre). This report concludes that 'a number of features of the material structure of this painting [...] are consonant with the currently known painting practices of Leonardo and his circle.'
The picture was part of the Northwick collection begun at Northwick Park by John Rushout, 1st Lord Northwick, (1738-1800) and afterwards considerably enlarged by his son the 2nd Lord Northwick (1769-1859) who embarked on a seven year Grand Tour of Italy. As Tancred Borenius wrote, the 2nd Lord Northwick was ‘a collector of very high intelligence and discrimination ... he was able to avail himself of an ample fortune to buy the finest specimens of the Fine arts which came into the market.’ Although he added an extensive picture gallery to his home, Northwick Park, he soon was forced to buy a second vast residence, Thirlestaine House, to accommodate his expanding collection. After his death, the collection was offered for sale at auction and Sir Thomas Phillipps, a great bibliophile and collector, bought close to 100 pictures from the sale, including this Saint John the Baptist. Sir Thomas first leased and then in 1864 purchased Thirlestaine, returning the picture to the Grand Gallery, where a photograph of 1866 showed it hanging in situ (fig. 1). In the same photograph can be seen the Holy Family by Maso da San Friano, now at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, while other notable works from the Northwick collection now hang in the National Gallery, London, the Metropolitan Museum, New York, and National Gallery, Washington. The Saint John the Baptist was later acquired in 1956 by Leander McCormick-Goodhart, a descendant of the McCormick family of Chicago and an heir to the McCormick International Harvesting company. He was a diplomat, who worked at the British Embassy in Washington D.C., and was the private secretary to the Ambassador, Lord Lothian, during the Second World War.