Holy Family with The Infant Saint John the Baptist

Albertinelli Mariotto

(Florence 1474 - 1515)

First documented in connection with the Borghese Collection in 1833, this painting is a product of the Florentine workshop of San Marco, as is suggested by the monogram – a cross with two rings – visible in the centre of the composition. Inventories and critics have variously attributed the panel to Fra’ Bartolomeo and Mariotto Albertinelli. It depicts the Holy Family with the infant John the Baptist, who holds up a cross with a scroll. God’s appearance to Moses is represented in the landscape behind the Virgin.

Object details

Commentary

The provenance of this panel is unknown. It was first cited in connection with the Borghese Collection in the 1833 Inventario Fidecommissario as a work by Fra’ Bartolomeo. While Cavalcaselle (1864) rejected this attribution, Morelli (1897) revived it, proposing also the name of Mariotto Albertinelli. This scholar, in fact, argued that the work was executed by both artists working together, as is suggested by the presence of the monogram at the centre of the composition, a cross enclosed by two rings, the symbol used by the Florentine workshop of San Marco. Furthermore, the date shown on the edge of the table on which the Child is leaning – 1511 – corresponds to the period of close collaboration between Albertinelli and Fra’ Bartolomeo.

Nonetheless, the debate over the artist still continues, dividing critics between those who maintain that the entire work was by Albertinelli (Knapp 1903; Longhi 1928; Della Pergola 1959; Becherucci 1960; Borgo 1976; Padovani 1996), those who propose that it was a collaborative effort of the two artists (Gruyer 1886; Mündler 1891; Venturi 1893; Herrmann Fiore 2006), and those who claim that Albertini painted over a cartoon prepared by the Dominican friar. (Berenson 1909; Id. 1936). This uncertainty is fully comprehensible, especially in light of the existence of other versions of the work – in the Mond collection (National Gallery, London), in the Galleria Corsini (Florence) and in the private Moss collection (Riverdale, NY). The Borghese exemplar is clearly one of those works for which certain attribution is problematic, as products of the San Marco workshop – and of busy ateliers generally – were painted in series, beginning from a common prototype. In his work on the Adoration in the Mond collection, Cecil Gould took these considerations into account, going on to propose that the Borghese and Corsini versions derived from a single cartoon. For his part, Ludovico Borgo (1974) assumed the existence of an original, now lost, by Fra’ Bartolomeo in the San Marco workshop.

A new twist was given to the critical debate in the context of the Florentine exhibition on Fra’ Bartolomeo. Diagnostic testing conducted on that occasion brought to light several elements of which scholars had until then been unaware. One of these was that the Borghese painting revealed several changes of strategy during its execution, while the Corsini version did not, suggestion that the latter was a copy of the former (Padovani 1996). Nonetheless, the discovery of the Holy Family of Riverdale, which has been definitively ascribed to Mariotto (Padovani 1996), has led critics to reassess the question of attribution of the Borghese panel: in spite of its high quality, it does not so clearly show those stylistic characteristics to permit us to attribute it with complete confidence to either Mariotto or Fra’ Bartolomeo; the present writer is in agreement with this view.

Antonio Iommelli