The picture, attributed to Titian in the inventory of 1693, is the work of Bonifacio de’ Pitati. The scene, taken from the Gospel of Matthew (20:20-28), depicts the request that Salome, mother of James and John, sons of Zebedee, makes to Jesus to let her sons sit beside him.
Rome, Borghese Collection, 1693 (Inventory 1693, room V, no. 14); Inventario Fidecommissario Borghese 1833, p. 8. Purchased by Italian State, 1902.
Exhibitions
2024, Guandong, Guandong Museum of Art
Conservation and Diagnostic
1946 Carlo Matteucci
Commentary
The painting can be identified in the 1693 inventory of the Borghese collection as ‘a large painting with Our Lord seated with a book in his hand with the Apostles around him with a Woman kneeling in front of him, No. 344 by Titian’. Attributed to Bonifacio de’ Pitati in the Fideicommissary List of 1833, it was later attributed by Venturi (1928) to Antonio Palma, while Berenson (1936) and Longhi (1928) ascribed it to the hand of the Verona artist, to be followed by Della Pergola (1955). De Rinaldis (1948) endorsed the hypothesis already advanced by Morelli (1897), suggesting that the painting was the work of Bonifazio Veronese the Elder, from whose catalogue it had previously been excluded by Westphal (1931). In the recent monograph by Cottrell and Humfrey (2021), the painting was rehabilitated and assigned to the hand of de’ Pitati, possibly with some assistance from his workshop. The two scholars date the canvas to around 1545-1546 on account of similarities with other works from this same period such as Christ and the Adulteress in the Galleria dell’Accademia, Venice (ibid., p. 383, cat. 131) and the Madonna and Child, St. Catherine of Alexandria and St. James (ibid., p. 388, cat. 139), of which the Borghese canvas reproduces the head of St. James in reverse, both works dated between 1544-1546.
The subject is taken from the Gospel of Matthew (20:20-28) and depicts Zebedee’s wife Salome prostrate on her knees before Jesus, as she asks him to grant her sons James and John a place in Paradise on his right and left.
Elisa Martini
July 2024
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Bibliography
G. Piancastelli, Catalogo dei quadri della Galleria Borghese, in Archivio Galleria Borghese, 1891, p. 35.
G. Ludwig, Bonifazio di Pitati da Verona, eine archivalische Untersuchung, I-II, in Jahrbuch der Königlich Preussischen Kunstsammlungen, XXII, 1901, pp. 61, 180; XXIII, 1902, p. 36.
E.M. Phillipps, The Venetian school of painting, London 1912, p. 211.
R. Longhi, Precisioni nelle Gallerie Italiane, I, La R. Galleria Borghese, Roma 1928, p. 192.
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P. della Pergola, Itinerario della Galleria Borghese, Roma 1951, p. 56 .
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P. Cottrell, P. Humfrey, Bonifacio de’ Pitati, Treviso 2021, p. 393, cat. 148.
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