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Tre italienska renässansmålningar i svenska samlingar

1934; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 3; Issue: 1-4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00233603408603169

1651-2294

Osvald Sirén,

Renaissance and Early Modern Studies

Summary Three Italian Paintings in Private Collections in Sweden. In addition to those Italian paintings, which I published recently in my book Italienska tavlor och teckningar i Nationalmuseum och andra svenska och finska samlingar I take this opportu‐nity to reproduce three more paintings, in private possession in Sweden, which were not known to me at the time when I prepared the book. The first of these pictures is a panel representing Christ (Salvator mundi), head and shoulders, against the background of a landscape with buildings (fig. 1). At the bottom of the picture there are some fragments of a signature which, at a later period, have been altered into the name of Giovanni Bellini, but the style of the painting gives full evidence that it is not a work by Bellini but rather by Benedetto Diana. In fact, a comparison between Benedetto Dianas signed picture presenting the same subject, in the National Gallery, London, and the present one confirms our attribution of this picture to Diana. It must have been painted towards the end of the master's career: The second painting, which represents a Sacra Conversatione, is provided with a signature reading: Hieronymus de Maiis Patavinus fecit hoc opus. The name which in Italian would be Girolamo di Maggio (or dei Maggi) da Padova is unknown in the history of art. As far as I have been able to ascertain, no painter with this name is mentioned in the lists of Paduan or Venetian painters, although there are several men of the period called Hiero‐nymus or Girolamo. The best known of these Paduan painters with the name of Girolamo is, indeed, Girolamo Sordo or Girolamo dei Cesari, com‐monly called Girolamo del Santo, but the works attributed to him in his hometown hardly tend to support his identification with the master of the present picture. This Girolamo dei Maggi may rather have been the same painter who, together with Vittor Carpaccio, assisted Giovanni Bellini in the execution of certain paintings in the Sale del Gran Consiglio of the Doge's Palace in the year 1507. Some of the figures in the present painting show an obvious influence from Carpaccio, and the whole composition is quite Bellinesque. The somewhat problematic signature may thus serve as a point of departure for the reconstruction of a hitherto unknown or forgotten Paduan master from the beginning of the 16th century, who evi‐dently had received his artistic education under the influence of the old Giovanni Bellini. The third picture, which represents a reclining Venus in a landscape, is evidently a characteristic work by the Sienese master Domenico Beccafumi. Particularly characteristic of the master is the ra‐ther monotonous colour scheme, with predomina‐ting greyish‐green and brown tones, and beside this may be observed as characteristic features the manner in which the trees are painted, as well as the types of the figures. The picture seems to have served as a decorative panel in a piece of furniture or in some palace hall.