Madonna with child

Puligo Domenico

(Florence 1492 - after 1527)

While in the past the attribution of this painting was long debated, today it is generally ascribed to Domenico Puligo (Domenico Ubaldini), the Florentine painter strongly influenced by the style of Andrea del Sarto. Depicting the Madonna and Child against a landscape, the work is one of the variations of a model that the artist painted on a number of occasions during his youth; several of these versions are known today.

Object details

Commentary

This painting is ascribed to Domenico Ubaldini, called Puligo, the Florentine artist who trained in Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio’s workshop and who was close friend and collaborator of Andrea del Sarto (Andrea d’Agnolo), who clearly influenced his style. Religious subjects predominate in the oeuvre of Puligo, who in fact produced paintings for a number of Tuscan religious orders. (see A. Nesi, ‘Ubaldini, Domenico, detto il Puligo’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, XCVII, pp. 302-304).

The Borghese panel foregrounds the Virgin, who is dressed in red with a green and light blue cape; she holds the naked Child in her arms. Behind her, a small figure of a shepherd is visible on a large spur of rock. On the right side of the composition, the landscape takes the viewer’s eye farther into the background, which culminates in a church. Another figure walks with a stick in front of the structure: this is the young John the Baptist.

Paola Della Pergola (1959, p. 48) suggested that the painting probably entered the Borghese Collection as part of the estate of Olimpia Aldobrandini. Her reasoning, however, did not go beyond the fact that Olimpia’s collection contained a number of Tuscan works which at that time were ascribed to Andrea del Sarto, including paintings in her inventories that critics later attributed to Puligo. It is difficult to identify the work in question in the Borghese inventories, above all because the subject is a common one. The only likely correspondence is the entry in the 1833 Inventario Fidecommissario which reads, ‘Holy Family, school of Raphael, 3 spans 8 inches wide, on panel’.

While Piancastelli (1891, p. 305) accepted the attribution to the school of Raphael, later critics were not convinced; the question in fact gave rise to a long debate. Venturi (1893, p. 166) placed it in the Tuscan school; building on this idea, Berenson (1904, p. 102) proposed the name of Bacchiacca (Francesco Ubertini). The first to suggest the name of Puligo was Longhi (1928, p. 209), a theory which Berenson later accepted (1936, p. 409). For her part, Della Pergola (1959, p. 48) confirmed Longhi’s thesis, noting that the landscape betrayed a Mannerist interpretation of the backgrounds of Rosso Fiorentino (Giovanni Battista di Jacopo); she indeed related the work in question to the Holy Family once ascribed to the latter, which also forms part of the Borghese Collection (inv. no. 332: today attributed to the Maestro dei paesaggi Kress (‘Master of the Kress landscapes’). While Lockhart (1973, n. 29) rejected the name of Puligo, without specifying his reasons, Gardner (1986, pp. 161-162) unhesitatingly supported the attribution to the Florentine painter on the basis of stylistic and compositional similarities with other works known to be by him. This scholar in fact described the panel as a variation of the Madonna and Child (formerly in London, Sotheby’s: see Gardner 1986, n. 8), noting that the two works differ only in the rendering of their backgrounds. Gardner further pointed out that it was not unusual for Puligo to repeat motifs, poses and entire scenes in his production. In addition, his use of colour here – in particular the tones of the Virgin’s garments and of the background – are perfectly in keeping with the painter’s style. More recently, the attribution to Puligo was upheld by Elena Capretti (see her Domenico Puligo, 2002, p. 48).

In light of Gardner’s contention that the painter frequently duplicated certain details in his compositions, we should note three variations on this theme, each of which foregrounds the Madonna and Child while varying the background. The first of these is the work that was recently sold at an auction in Florence (Pandolfini, 2018), which stands out for its depiction of New Testament episodes in the background. The second and third of the series are those held, respectively, at the Musée Fabre of Montpellier and in the storerooms of the Chamber of Deputies in Rome (property of the Uffizi): while the former places the figure of John the Baptist on the right side, the latter shows a background made of a landscape only, without additional figures.

This set of works, including the Borghese panel, can be dated to an experimental phase of the artist’s early career, between 1515 and 1517 1517 (Gardner 1986).

Pier Ludovico Puddu