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In this essay the attention is directed towards a painting in the National Museum in Stockhohn, which usually is ascribed to Girolamo Romanino and sometimes to Dosso Dossi, and which earlier has been regarded as depicting Cesare Borgia, Duke of Valentino. The painting came to the National Museum in 1919 and can be traced via English private ownership to the Orléans Collection in Paris and from there to the ownership of Queen Christina in Rome. The painting is entered as a portrait of the Duke of Valentino in all the inventories of Queen Christina's art collections, the first time in 1677. The portrait is also mentioned by the Swedish architect Nicodemus Tessin the younger, when he at his last visit to Rome in 1687–88 wrote a description of Queen Christina's art collection in the Palazzo Riario. In the inventories the painting is attributed to Correggio. Tessin states it is a work of Tizian, this possibly being suggested to him by the well known art‐historian Giovanni Pietro Bellori who acted as a guide to the Swedish architect during his visits to the art collections in Rome. Several details, among them the costume, dates the painting to the 1520's or 1530's. It cannot then depict Cesare Borgia who died 1507. The composition has much in common with the portrait of an officer by Piero di Cosimo in the National Gallery (fig. 5). Artistically and psychologically it is closlely related to Venetian, Giorgionesque, art The face and the landscape in the background, as well as the exquisite treatment of the textiles, bring Tizian to mind (fig. 9 and 11). Giorgione and Tizian have of course strongly influenced the North Italian portrait‐painting during the first half of the 16th century. Apart from Romanino and Dossi many other artists worked in a style which united the Venetian with local or individual characteristics. Among these painters, among which the master of this portrait belongs, can be found Cariani, Savoldo, Altobello Melone, Bernardino Licino and others. The author puts forth no definite view as to attributing the painting, but is inclined to think that the attribution to Dossi has lost much of its foundations since it was shown that the romantic vegetation in the background is a later addition. This is shown both by older reproductions (fig. 3 and 4) and by X‐ray photography (fig. 2). The author calls attention to the piece of jewellery the man is wearing in his biretta. The painting shows a medallion of gold with inlays of black and red enamel. In relief is shown Hercules fighting the Nemeian Lion, whose jaws he is breaking apart. This piece of jewellery is compared with information that Benvenuto Cellini gives in his autobiography and in his Trattato degli Oreficeria. Cellini writes that he in 1528 in Florence made a golden medallion with Hercules and the Nemeian Lion as biretta decoration for a Sienese noble named Girolamo Marretti, who had for a long time lived in Turkey. A closer study of Cellini's description of how this, as well as another and similar medallion made for a Florentine noble, Frederigo Gihori, came into being seems to show that Cellini on the Marretti medallion worked from a design by Michelangelo. Cellini's work filled Michelangelo with admiration and the famous sculptor expressed his appreciation of the medallion and of the figures on it; he said that if these figures were worked in a larger scale, they would make excellent sculptures. When Ginori later turned to Michelangelo with a request for a design for a biretta medallion with Atlas carrying the vault of heaven as relief motiv, the sculptor suggested he turned with his request to Cellini, whom he could strongly recommend. He would not, however, refuse to make a drawing for the medallion, since Ginori so wished.—Cellini started his work with great enthusiasm and has in the Trattato given a detailed description of the proceedings. Michelangelo's friend, the artist Bugiardini brought Michelangelo's design to Cellini's workshop, and there it was compared with the wax model by Cellini. Ginori decided, with Bugiardini's full approval, that Cellini's model should be used. When Michelangelo later saw the finished work, he commended it highly. These intermezzos constituted Cellini's first meetings with the admired master. It developed into a lifelong friendship which for Cellini resulted in his turning to large‐scale sculpture. The medallion in Marrettis biretta was thus executed after a drawing by Michelangelo. This drawing might be identical with one where three of the deeds of Hercules are depicted in red crayon; among them his battle with the Nemeian Lion. This drawing, now at the Royal Library, Windsor, has been the subject of a lively discussion ever since A. E. Popp in 1927 doubted its authenticity. Charles de Tolnay agrees with Popp's views, while several other scholars as Popham, Panof‐sky and Dussler assert its origin from Michelangelo's hand. The drawing has not earlier been connected with Cellini's statements about his work on a medallion with a Hercules motif from a design by Michelangelo in Florence 1528. This now being done, it seems to show the authenticity of the Windsor drawing ‐ or at least it is a contemporary copy of a drawing by Michelangelo. Comparing the Windsor drawing with the relief on the biretta medallion in the painting gives foundation for the supposition that this medallion is identical with the “medaglia d'oro” of which Cellini writes. We can then in the picture recognize a portrait of Girolamo Marretti from Siena, “persona di vivace ingegno” according to Cellini, while the painting also gives a representation of a lost work of art from the hand of the renowned goldsmith. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER] |
