Christ appearing to Mary Magdalen and Martha

Supremely refined and elegant, the picture was acquired by Friedrich Christian, Count of Schaumburg-Lippe during his Grand Tour of Italy in 1686. It was brought back to Germany, together with numerous other fine pictures, where it has passed by descent in his family. Described as a ‘suprema sintesi dell’arte pittorica di Cignani’ (Buscaroli Fabbri, op. cit.), it exemplifies those qualities that made him one of the most highly regarded artists of the era in Bologna. It can rightly be considered a masterpiece of Cignani’s maturity.

The story of Christ in the house of Martha and Mary is told in the Gospel of Luke. Martha welcomed Christ into their home, and busied herself serving. Her sister, Mary, meanwhile sat and listed to their guest, which drew frustration in Martha. She asked Christ to tell Mary to help, whereupon he replied: ‘Martha, Martha, thou art anxious and troubled about many things; and yet only one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the best part…’ (Luke, 10:41). Christ’s raised arm here seems to make it clear that Mary has indeed ‘chosen the best part’, in rejecting housework to instead listen and reflect on Christ’s words. Martha, holding a bowl under her right arm, instead busies herself as she takes her leave. The story has long been examined for its moralising content, and has usually been interpreted as a defence of the importance of spiritual, contemplative values over more earthly concerns. As such, Martha and Mary have been associated, respectively, with the vita activa and the vita contemplativa, the exemplars of contrasting ways of life. From Augustine onwards, debate has occupied theologians engaged in discussion over the relative virtues of these different paths in life. It became a subject for artists both north and south of the Alps, quite often set in a kitchen space with an emphasis on the domesticity of the encounter. Cignani’s interpretation is quite the opposite: full of grandeur and classical elegance, it was praised by Hermann Voss for its sense of monumentality, akin to the Madonna and Child with Saints (Bologna, Pinacoteca Nazionale). There is little sense of the homely setting, the focus instead is on the graceful interaction between the figures. It demonstrates the Correggesque sensibility for which Cignani was renowned, and that strain of poeticism that sought, in Malvasia’s words, to find ‘un mezzo tra la forza de’ Carracci e la dolcezza di Guido’ (C.C. Malvasia, Felsina Pittrice. Vite de’ Pittori Bolognesi..., Bologna, 1841, I, p. 53).

Count Schaumburg-Lippe was a significant patron and collector of Bolognese and Roman art in the seventeenth century. Alessandro Brogi notes (op. cit., p. 46) that the collection he amassed was relatively unusual amongst his fellow princely German collectors for its concentration of sacred, rather than profane, subjects. His discerning taste was quite evident in the pictures that he commissioned and acquired on his travels: he bought works by Marcantonio Franceschini, Lorenzo Pasinelli, Giuseppe Chiari, and Carlo Maratta, purchases that were in a number of cases recorded by contemporary sources in Italy.