A Window on Italy: the Corsini Collection, Art Gallery of Western Australia
The wealthy Florentine Corsini family has weathered turbulent centuries, and is sharing its large collection of art.
There is something remarkable about a family that has maintained itself over centuries, when so many people barely know of forebears beyond parents and grandparents. No doubt families that endure do so in part because of wealth and property passed down the generations, but also because of social distinction, political engagement and cultural eminence.
The Corsini family, whose history extends from the 12th century to the present day, are a notable example. Beginning as silk and wool merchants in the Middle Ages, they became bankers and were already prominent in Florentine political and ecclesiastical affairs by the 14th century, when the family was ennobled by the Holy Roman emperor. Andrea Corsini, bishop of Fiesole in the 14th century, was canonised in the 17th. They continued to flourish in Medici Florence, and grew even wealthier in the Renaissance and baroque periods.
By the early 18th century, Lorenzo Corsini was elected Pope Clement XII in 1730, at the age of 78, and reigned for another 10 years; he is responsible for Rome’s Trevi Fountain, which bears the Corsini coat of arms, among other monuments in Rome. The family successfully weathered the turbulent centuries that followed, and its palace on the Lungarno Corsini in Florence, not far from the Carmine church, still holds a large collection that is not open to the public but from which the present show has been lent.
The exhibition includes Guercino’s painting of the family saint, with a bullet wound inflicted by a Nazi soldier, as well as a fine bust of Clement XII and a dashing portrait by Hyacinthe Rigaud, who had earlier painted Louis XIV, of the pope’s nephew Don Neri Corsini. Neri was appointed cardinal on his uncle’s election to the papacy; it was still the custom to appoint a cardinal nipote, the origin of our word nepotism.
There is a modello of the ceiling of the family chapel, as well as a variety of works from the Renaissance and baroque periods, and numerous family portraits, including that of Princess Elena Corsini by Pietro Annigoni.
The most beautiful painting in the exhibition, however, is a tondo of the Madonna and Child with Six Angels by Sandro Botticelli and his workshop, from the later years of his career, and painted not long after the death of religious revivalist Savonarola, who had greatly influenced Botticelli, and whose execution is illustrated in another picture in the exhibition.
In this work, Botticelli has woven together layers of religious symbolism just as he did in the complex neoplatonic iconography of mythological works such as the Primavera (c.1482).
In the centre are the tender figures of the Madonna and the Christ child, their cheeks pressed together. The mood is limpid and still, yet tinged with melancholy: both mother and son are aware he is destined to die on the cross. We are explicitly reminded of this by the angels on either side bearing symbols of the crucifixion, including the three nails by which his hands and feet were fixed to the timber and the spear with which his side was pierced.
This conflation of present and future reminds us that the scene we are beholding is not set in normal time: two other angels hold a crown above the Virgin’s head, as in the Madonna of the Magnificat (1481) in the Uffizi, anticipating her coronation as queen of heaven after her own death. The robe held open behind like a tent recalls the traditional theme of the Madonna della Misericordia, with the Virgin holding her cloak open, offering shelter to suppliants.
If we look closely in raking light, we can see what look like engraved edges or grooves around the main features of the figures in the painting. These outlines suggest the design was drawn up as a full-scale cartoon on several sheets of paper glued together, then imprinted on to the prepared and primed board by scoring along the drawn outlines; this was one way of transferring a design while preserving the drawing for studio use or the training of pupils.
The painting then could be executed following the scored outlines of the drawing, and this is where we can understand something of the workings of a Renaissance artist’s workshop, which could include, as well as the master, one or more highly proficient assistants and junior assistants, technicians to prepare panels and grind colours, apprentices and servants for menial and unskilled tasks.
In a case such as this, the cartoon would be drawn by the master — or possibly drawn up by his leading assistant, working from a smaller original drawing — then the large panel could be worked on by master and senior assistants emulating the master’s style. Here it is most likely that Botticelli painted the exquisite faces of the Virgin and Child, the most important in the composition, while the angels were by an assistant.
An understanding of contemporary studio practice helps us appreciate other works too, for several are by a painter and his workshop in proportions that cannot always be exactly defined. Those who know the work of great masters of the past only from the National Gallery in London, for example, are a little spoiled in this regard, for such collections tend to focus on works that are largely autograph, by the hand of the master.
In most galleries in Italy and in private collections such as this, we are likely to encounter many pictures that represent the more typical collaborative process, where the master might draw the design of the work and have it painted by a senior assistant before retouching it, or not, or in some cases allowing the assistant to draw and paint the whole thing in the standard workshop style.
Establishing whether a picture originated in the workshop of a master often can be determined by documentary sources, whether biographies, receipts of payment or listing in inventories, and sometimes by technical examination, although this is more useful in discriminating between contemporary works and later copies or forgeries.
Determining how far the work is autograph, however, is essentially the task of connoisseurship, ultimately the expertise of the eye. And, in the absence of documentary evidence, connoisseurship remains the main tool for attribution. This is particularly the case with the other exceptionally interesting picture in this exhibition, the portrait of Maffeo Barberini, as a young man, attributed to Caravaggio.
Barberini belongs in the Corsini collection because later, as Pope Urban VIII, it was he who canonised the family saint. In this case there is no question of apportioning responsibility between master and workshop, for Caravaggio, like Nicolas Poussin a little later, usually worked alone. Workshops were indispensable for masters undertaking large-scale projects such as fresco decorations in churches and palaces, or huge altarpieces such as those by Rubens, but were less useful for those chiefly producing easel paintings on a modest scale.
Is this really a portrait by Caravaggio? This is the question that has divided experts and, since documentary evidence is lacking, we have to rely on judgment.
It is a striking portrait, but at first sight the face doesn’t look typical of Caravaggio’s work. It is well-painted but rather thin and tight in its execution. The anatomy of the foreshortened hands is also inaccurate, compared with other contemporary pictures by Caravaggio.
The fabric of Barberini’s clerical costume, however, is well painted, rendering not only the texture of the fabric but even the stitching points on the red velvet lining, turned to make a red slash across the composition. Less obvious but also impressive is the confident treatment of the fall of light, including the economical way it is picked up on the edge of the chair arm.
Barberini is young, about 28 or 29, though if anything he looks even younger. More important, Caravaggio was younger still, only about 25 or 26.
The poor anatomy of the foreshortened hands may not be particularly surprising because Caravaggio had not been properly trained as an artist, had never learned to draw, and could paint only what he could actually see: even in later work, he has difficulty making the upper and lower parts of a body hang together if they are draped and therefore concealed in the middle.
Even an artist as notoriously bold as Caravaggio, moreover, must have been a little daunted under the circumstances: he was in the first years of his career, not yet established, although already supported by the influential Cardinal del Monte; his sitter, though not much older, was an important man and of much higher social station.
On top of all that, this was probably his first formal portrait commission. So we can understand the extreme care he has taken in the likeness, which has made it seem tighter and stiffer than his other faces of the time.
There is something, too, about the way the figure braces himself against the arm of the chair that seems to speak of Caravaggio’s sense of the physicality of the body, and to anticipate the way the disciple on the left braces himself against the chair to rise from his seat in the first version of the Supper at Emmaus (1601-02) and, even more directly, the way the disciple on the right leans on the table in the second version of this subject (1606).
There is another portrait of Barberini that is generally attributed to Caravaggio, dated about 1599, and today in a private collection. It is painted with greater freedom and fluency — even the sleeve, admittedly in a different fabric, without the pleating of the Corsini version, is more freely executed — but this could well be explained by the rapidity of Caravaggio’s development over the two or three years that separate the two paintings.
A question like this can never be settled decisively in the absence of explicit documentary evidence, but it does seem plausible to attribute the Corsini picture to a youthful Caravaggio. A final consideration that may help to confirm that impression is the unexpected but striking similarity of the young prelate’s features to those of the epicene lute-playing boy painted, presumably, a few years later for Cardinal del Monte and hanging today in the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
In the end, even if we cannot be entirely sure that this picture was painted by Caravaggio, the artist was not yet famous enough for anyone else to be imitating him, and it is very hard to imagine it could have been the work of any other contemporary Roman painter we know of. The case, as in a court of law, may not be conclusive, but seems circumstantially convincing.
A Window on Italy: The Corsini Collection
Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, to June 18
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