Madonna with Child - SOLD

Copies, replicas, and versions are the subject of endless attribution debates regarding paintings, which, lacking signatures, dates, or archival citations, fuel eternal debates among merchants, scholars, and art historians. What is certain is that painters made copies, replicas, and versions of their own works and copies of the canvases of their more famous "colleagues" according to the requests of patrons who wanted identical, successful, and trendy works in their homes, perhaps to pass them off as originals by Raphael, Titian, or others. Gaetano is a clear example of this. In an interesting study, Scipione Pulzone da Gaeta (1545 - 1598): the painter of the "Madonna of Divine Providence," in "Barnabiti studi", XIII, 1996, p. 80, n. 41, Augusto Donò clarifies how the painter was accustomed to this practice. He cites the portrait of Cardinal Ricci replicated at least 4 times, to date known, the portrait of Paul III, a copy of Titian replicated several times (versions that differ in the presence or absence of the monstrance), the two copies of the portrait of Cardinal Alessandrino, now preserved respectively in the museum of Gaeta and Cambridge, just to give a few examples. The painter was born in Gaeta around 1550, hence the nickname, was initiated into painting by his father, but in 1566 "driven by the love of beauty and glory, came to Rome" [Mariotti, Cenni su Scipione Pulzone detto Gaetano, Ritrattista, in Rivista di Storia dell'arte medievale e moderna e d'arte decorativa, A. Venturi, 1924, p.27]. His fame and artistic skill, primarily as a portrait painter, led him to Naples in 1572, called by Don Giovanni d'Austria (the famous admiral who defeated the Ottomans in the Battle of Lepanto the year before), and in 1584 to Florence. Having worked for the Colonna, Barberini, Farnese, Medici families, for popes and high aristocrats (certified by the numerous and well-paid works present in their inventories) allowed him to achieve deserved success even beyond the Alps. Our splendid canvas depicts the Madonna of Divine Providence, the Virgin in half-bust dressed in red holds her Child in her arms, a bond of love reinforced by an exchange of glances and by the small hand of the child grasping that of his mother. A transparent veil covers the head and descends on the shoulders of the woman as if to protect that moment of intense intimacy. The subject was successful and therefore replicated, or copied, by himself and others. The figure of the Madonna is the same in the painting Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Elizabeth preserved in Rome at the Borghese Gallery, but an identical replica is exhibited in Rome in the Church of Saints Biagio and Carlo ai Catinari, now a Marian sanctuary; in this unsigned painting "Il Gaetano was able to capture and freeze, in a work of art, a moment of maternal ecstasy:..." (A. GHIGNONI, Il quadro, in Mater Divinae Providentiae, 1932, pp. 7-10). The canvas and the craquelure are contemporaneous with the period and the painting does not present the classic rigidities of vulgar copies. As Zeri said, a painting is timeless and without place if its sweetness is immune from the bite of the centuries and the emotion it transmits in presence this little jewel is palpable. Dimensions: canvas 39 x 30 cm