The Infant Jesus Asleep

Fontana Lavinia

(Bologna 1552 - Rome 1614)

The painting, documented in the Borghese household from 1693, was made by Lavinia Fontana in 1591. It is a small-format variation of the well-known painting with the Holy Family of the Escorial. In this version, the painter has included the figures of Saint Elizabeth and the two angels who support the drapes of the canopy.

The underlying message here, that Truth can only be found by remaining silent, is revealed by the gesture of the child John who invites the observer to come closer and silently watch over Jesus as he sleeps, implicitly involving the viewer in an intimate and private atmosphere that translates the counter-reformation climate of the time very well.

Object details

Commentary

This painting is reported as belonging to the Borghese collection since 1693, indicated in that year’s inventory as a “painting on a panel (sic) of two spans of The Madonna with St Joseph St John and St Anne and the Child sleeping in a bed with no. 198 marked on the back and a silver frame with the coat of arms of Sir Cardinal Borghese carved by Lavinia Fontana.” This attribution to the Bolognese painter is duly reported in all of the Collection’s inventories and confirmed in 1955 by Paola della Pergola, who published the work as an original replica of a painting preserved at the Escorial and produced in Bologna in 1589 for Philip II of Spain. As suggested by Vera Fortunati (1998), for such a prestigious commission – from which the Borghese painting is derived – Lavinia adopted a very complex iconographic structure modelled on Raffaello Sanzio’s Madonna of Loreto (copy – Chantilly, Musée de Conde), Sebastiano del Piombo’s Madonna of the Veil (Naples, Museo di Capodimonte; Prague, Narodni Galerie), and Michelangelo Buonarroti’s Madonna of Silence (London, private collection), the latter a work produced for Vittoria Colonna and reproduced by the Bolognese artist in a painting preserved in Liverpool (Walker Art Gallery; see Cantaro 1993). The subject chosen by Fontana had already been tackled by Orazio Samacchini (Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi; Germany, private collection), a Bolognese artist who was in touch with Prospero Fontana, Lavinia’s father, who in turn was very well acquainted with Michelangelo and Sebastiano del Piombo’s works thanks to Giulio Bonasone and Giovanni Battista de’ Cavalieri’s engravings (Fortunati 1998).

The circumstances leading up to the commissioning of this copper plate are still unknown. According to Caroline Murphy (2003), the work was quite likely executed for Camillo Borghese, the future Pope Paul V, who in 1591 was the vice-legate in Bologna. In this capacity he encountered many local painters, among whom Lavinia, who in the meantime had already produced a number of replicas of the altarpiece in Madrid. In 1602, in fact, Father José de Sigüenza reported the existence of many copies of the Spanish painting, produced in the wake of the success of such a prestigious commission, for which Lavinia had been paid one thousand ducats (Pacheco 1649).

The painting depicts baby Jesus watched over and protected by Elizabeth, the child John, Joseph, and his mother, who is covering him with a thin veil. The scene is set in a small, refined room dominated by a magnificent canopy, the colour of which matches the bright, acid hues of the garments of the figures and is enhanced by the dark background and by the use of the copper support. As Stefania Biancani (2021) has recently recalled, the subject is full of iconographic significance, its many meanings enclosed in the motto “COR MEUM VIGILAT” which can be observed on the border of the bed on which baby Jesus is resting in the painting in Madrid. This expression – much like Symbolum LXIII of Achille Bocchi’s Symbolicae Quaestiones which recites Silentio Deum Cole (“adore God in silence”) – reminds us of the importance of contemplation and of silence in the pursuit of the Truth (see Urbini 1994; Fortunati 1998, Biancani 2021).

Antonio Iommelli