Girolamo Romanino  c. 1484– c. 1560
NG 297.1–5 
The Nativity with Saints Alexander, Jerome, Filippo Benizzi and Gaudioso

Nicholas Penny, 2004

Extracted from:
Nicholas Penny, The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings, Volume I: Paintings from Bergamo, Brescia and Cremona (London: National Gallery Company and Yale University Press, 2004).

c. 1524

Oil on wood (five panels, apparently poplar):

• 265.0 × 117.2 cm (The Nativity)
• 159.5 × 64.2 cm (Saint Alexander)
• 159.1 × 64.8 cm (Saint Jerome)
• 74.2 × 64.9 cm (Saint Filippo Benizzi)
• 74.2 × 65.2 cm (Saint Gaudioso)

Supports

The measurements given above are the maximum for each panel but the sizes are irregular, thus in some places the Nativity measures 264.5 cm in height and 115.3 cm in width. Strips of oak (0.6 cm thick) have been attached to the side edges of the panel of the Nativity and that of Saint Alexander. Strips of softwood (1 cm thick) have also been attached to most of the edges of the Nativity, but not to the upper edge, and not to the left edge of the Saint Jerome.

The panels of the Nativity and of Saints Alexander and Jerome are approximately 2.5 cm thick; the other two are approximately 2.2 cm thick. None of the panels shows signs of having been thinned since painting, but in every case broad‐gauge chisel marks cross the joins, indicating that the panels were finished after the planks were joined.

The panel of the Nativity is composed of three planks, 29, 35 and 51.3 cm wide. The two thick cross‐battens of pine are not original. The joins were reinforced in 1937 with butterfly keys, which were removed in 1968 and replaced with wax and plastic wood filler. The back of the panel has been coated with a dark paint.

The panel of Saint Alexander is composed of two planks, 9.1 and 55.1 cm wide. There are no battens and the join has opened about 12 cm from the lower edge. The larger plank has also split in an irregular line from the lower edge. There are two rectangular notches towards the top of the panel to right and left. There are drawings on the back of the panel: these are described in a later section.

The panel of Saint Jerome is composed of two planks, 12.6 and 52.2 cm wide. There are no battens. Again there are drawings on the back of the panel, which are described in a later section.

The panel of Saint Filippo Benizzi is composed of two planks. The one on the left (when viewed from the back) is 11.5 cm wide near the upper edge and 12.6 cm near the lower. There are no battens. There are notches in the edges of the panel – one on the upper edge, one on the lower, and three on each of the sides.

The panel of Saint Gaudioso is composed of two planks. The one on the right (when viewed from the back) is 14.1 cm wide near the upper edge and 15 cm near the lower. There are notches in the edges of the panel – one on the upper edge, one on the lower and two on each of the sides.

Materials and Technique

The panels were prepared with gesso (calcium sulphate) in the usual way, then with a mid‐brownish grey priming consisting of lead white, coal black and umber.¹ The priming was applied with bold, swept strokes which are still apparent in places through the paint applied on top (in the panel of Saint Alexander in particular). A strip of unpainted priming remains at the apex of the arched area of the Nativity (the spandrels have been painted black but there is also a brown band at the upper edge of the painting, perhaps an original painted border). The priming also shows through Saint Filippo’s tonsure and the shadows of Saint Gaudioso’s mitre. The blue mountains and sky are painted with azurite mixed with lead white. The darker blue of the Virgin’s cloak and Joseph’s robe is painted with smalt (which has darkened), applied over a layer containing azurite. The orange of Joseph’s cloak is painted with orpiment and realgar.

There are some incised lines marking the arched top of the painted area in the Nativity and also the pole of Saint Alexander’s lance and the staff of Gaudioso’s crosier.

No evidence has been found of transfer from a cartoon, but some rough, ruddy‐coloured preliminary painting is visible below Saint Jerome’s head and on the upper part of his thighs, below the loincloth. Some areas were certainly reserved for the figures; thus it is only Alexander’s outer curls that are painted over the blue of the sky, and the right leg of the foremost angel on the right is painted on top of the pier of the stable, perhaps because its position was revised.

Numerous revisions may be discerned: some are quite minor, such as the outline of Saint Filippo’s right shoulder and the number and size of the projecting pages of his book, but others are more significant, for example the leg of the largest angel and the position of his left hand (originally lower), the foot of the highest angel on the right (originally below the cloud), and the line of the scroll where it falls from the left hand of the foremost angel on the right. In painting the clouds, much of the paint was applied with fingers and palm, the impressions of which are clearly visible. This device, like the wet‐in‐wet technique with which many features of the landscape in the Nativity are rendered or the impasto of the paint in many areas, shows Romanino to have been a bold experimenter with the medium of oil paint. If the consequences were not always happy, this is no less true of some of the more richly and adventurously painted panels by Parmigianino and Titian that belong to the same period, or of paintings by Callisto Piazza and Altobello Melone, with whom Romanino was associated.

Conservation

The painting has been treated a number of times since its acquisition by the Gallery. The Gallery’s manuscript catalogue records that ‘some portions of the central panel and in the figure of Saint Jerome’ were ‘restored by Cav. Molteni’ in 1858. This intervention and further treatment in the Gallery in [page 321]August 1859 are discussed below. When the altarpiece was placed on display in September 1859 some of the joins in the panels were visible, as they had been when Eastlake viewed the Nativity in 1857.² In 1890 the panels were cleaned and varnished by ‘Dyer’. Nothing is then recorded until January and February 1937, when loose paint in the clouds and the legs of the child angels, beside the Virgin’s left eye and in the drapery of the Child was secured by ‘Morrill’. Keys were also fitted to the join in the central panel at that date. In January 1939 more loose paint was secured by ‘Morrill’ in the Virgin’s head, in the angels and in the collar of Saint Gaudioso; blisters elsewhere, especially on the cloak of Saint Alexander, were also treated. Some losses were touched in and the paintings were polished by ‘Henry’; further ‘polishing’ was recorded in December 1945 and May 1953. Some blisters on Saint Alexander were treated on 25 October 1954. Between 27 October and December 1964 the Saint Alexander panel was cleaned and restored before being sent on loan to the exhibition in Brescia the following year. Between May and July 1968 the other panels were cleaned and restored. A split in the central panel was restored in January 1970 and blisters there were laid in September 1976.

Condition

In some cases the joins have opened, and one major split has also developed – the one in the Nativity, passing through the face of the largest angel and the Virgin’s hands – but the structure of the panels is reasonably good and it is noteworthy that the joins, most of which have never opened, were made without battens. On the other hand, the craftsman who prepared the panels (probably not the artist) did not select the wood with special care, and some disturbance to the surface of the painting has been caused by knots: in the thigh of the foremost child angel on the right, in the chest of another angel higher up, and just below Saint Filippo Benizzi’s chin.

The painting is thin in some parts – especially in the half‐length saints (the shadowed side of Saint Gaudioso’s mitre and Saint Filippo’s tonsure). However, in the shadowed portion of Joseph’s tunic in the Nativity, in the Virgin’s cloak, in the darker half of Saint Alexander’s jacket and in the slashes in the lighter half, the paint was applied thickly and is cracked and wrinkled. It is this which has perhaps given the impression of heat damage. In fact, the paint in these areas contains the blue pigment smalt, which has deteriorated and darkened to the extent that in Alexander’s jacket there is no indication that the paint was originally blue. Smalt pigment is usually coarsely ground, so that it tends to be applied in thick medium‐rich layers, especially when not mixed with lead white, as in the shadows of the blue draperies in this altarpiece. This will have exacerbated the paint defects arising from the pigment alteration, which occurs through reaction of the pigment with the oil. Some other pigments have also darkened, notably the green of Gaudioso’s cope. The orange of Joseph’s cloak has clearly deteriorated.

It seems likely that some of the pinks have faded – notably, from the Virgin’s headdress, part of her dress and the cover of Saint Filippo’s book – doubtless because fugitive lakes were employed.

Actual losses to the paint surface are relatively minor (there are some flake losses from blistering and at the edges of cracks), and there is little damage from abrasion, but in many areas the paint has increased in transparency, revealing pentimenti (see above). In some of the thinner areas of shadow, especially in the faces of the half‐length saints, some of the old, darkened varnish was not fully removed in cleaning.

Drawings on the Reverse of the Panels of Saints Jerome and Alexander

SAINT JEROME: Lower left (seen from the back): large designs of a confusing nature. Centre right: frontal view of a bearded face. Centre left: bearded head in profile (fig. 3).

SAINT ALEXANDER: Top left: geometric patterns. Lower right: a circle. Centre left: a profile head with an exaggerated nose and a male profile wearing a hat (fig. 4). Mid‐right: a curly‐haired head in profile.

Molteni’s Restoration

As noted above, the painting was recorded, presumably in 1859 in the manuscript catalogue of the National Gallery, as having been restored by Molteni at the Brera in 1858. The entry is in Eastlake’s hand, and he must have been aware of the exact nature of Molteni’s work, of which he approved and which he presumably directed. Furthermore, we know that Eastlake contemplated altering the painting when he first considered its acquisition in 1857, noting that two of the heads among the ‘Titianesque’ angels were ‘bad & requiring slight rectification in drawing – a leg of one of the angels also requiring slight alteration’. Molteni’s work was probably undertaken in the first half of 1859, and payments were made to him on 21 September and 16 December 1859, through McCracken (the packers and exporters). Apart from the cleaning and repair of an uncontroversial nature that Molteni undertook, it is clear that he concealed the head and neck of the ox with drapery and added, as a repoussoir device, a block of stone (cubic, so as to seem part of the ruined architecture) and the nose of another ox above the ass (fig. 5). He evidently also made some modifications to Saint Jerome.⁴ (Eastlake’s notebooks contain numerous references to ways in which paintings might be modified to make them more eligible for the National Gallery – in one entry he noted that it would be desirable to remove the ‘fallen foreshortened idols in the foreground’ of a famous Bramantino and elsewhere that one of the Elders in a painting by Luini of Susanna ‘should be expunged’.⁵ His view of the modifications which could be made to Moretto’s Lamentation have already been mentioned (p. 148).)

Further Treatment in London

When the panels arrived in London, Wornum evidently considered them fit for hanging, but Eastlake wrote to him from Berlin on 24 August 1859 observing that the Romanino there (presumably Salome) was ‘quite like’ but ‘much more toned’. He requested Wornum to have ‘Buttery’ apply a ‘water colour brown glaze’ to the paintings. Wornum must have questioned this, for Eastlake wrote again, more firmly, from Venice on 8 September:I must have my way in taking proper precautions with regard to the appearance of the pictures. I insist on the Romanino having a little more tone. The Italian restorers, in cleaning, remove glazing, & when the work of mending is done, they neglect to replace those glazings. I wish Mr Buttery to apply a thin brown watercolour tint over each of the five Romaninos. [page 323]It is not only the sky but the landscape & the flesh which require the depth & tone which even a slight embrowning will confer. All I ask of you is to see that the toning is moderate. The flesh & landscape will gain much by this simple operation … the former not only wants tone but is too sleek & smooth – the brown tint (very moderately used) should be about the tint of asphaltum – which ground & used as a watercolour, would I have no doubt be quite safe. But other browns if transparent & not too warm would do as well. The vehicle is diluted beer. Water alone would leave the colour, when dry, in an almost dusty state.I am obliged to enter into all this again because of your again trying to unsettle what I had directed. I now trust that you will see the operation properly performed. I am quite content that the Romanino should be placed where you like provided you attend to my wish that a proper tone & grain be restored to it. The granulated look is best attained, as an accidental appearance, in the mode I have described. The watercolour application, while unvarnished, may be at any time removed, or modified: but once varnished it must be considered unchangeable.⁶ On 14 September, writing from Milan, Eastlake expanded further on the ‘granulating process’ – ‘the appearance of the transparent watercolour brownish tint … insinuates itself (the picture being laid flat for the operation) into all the minute cavities – – giving a much more accidental look, when varnished, than glazing it with oil. The watercolour tint is of course not properly seen till it is varnished.’ He continues to explain that the warping of a panel can make it hard to administer such a glaze, but that the difficulties can be overcome. Such difficulties ‘it appears deterred Molteni from applying the water‐colour, in the mode indicated, to the Romanino … he was not enough acquainted with the method to think of remedies for this.’ Eastlake recommended that the job be given to Pinti, ‘if he is returned to London’, because ‘he has had a variety of practice & some with me in such operations’. Eastlake returned to the question of the medium later in the letter, noting that some binding ingredient ‘such as the glutinous element in beer’ was essential to the operation and that beer was a traditional medium ‘still used by house painters in the imitation of some woods, before varnishing’.

Eastlake appears here as the historian of technique, but clearly also as someone who had himself applied these methods. Yet again, writing to Wornum from Madrid on 2 October 1859, he repeated the point: ‘as I before said, it is not merely the toning & enriching but the granulated & accidental appearance which the aqueous glazing so successfully produces. It also remains transparent longer than ordinary glazing. I believe I spoke of diluted beer – ale should be used almost half & half with water: otherwise the saccharine element prevents thorough drying and may cause the superposed varnish to chill afterwards.’⁷ On other occasions Eastlake was an advocate of allowing cleaned paintings to accumulate twelve months of London dirt.⁸

Attribution

The painting has been published as by Romanino since the seventeenth century and has never been disputed as his work.

Commission, Date, Subject, Patrons

The painting was made for the high altar of Sant’Alessandro in Brescia. This church, which was consecrated in 1466, was built for the Servites – the Order of Servants of Our Lady (Ordo Servorum Mariae, OSM) – a mendicant order of thirteenth‐century foundation. Although the Servite convent was attached to Sant’Alessandro, it served as a parish church. An inscription with the date 1456, still visible in Via Moretto, indicates that the church was dedicated to Mary, the Mother of God, ‘Mater Misericordia’, and to the martyr Alexander.

The polyptych is first recorded by Ottavio Rossi in 1620, and a later seventeenth‐century source (Cozzandi in 1684) records it as dated 1525, conceivably a date on the frame, but there is no longer any date to be found on any of the panels.⁹ It is likely, however, that 1525 was the date of completion: that the main panel of the altarpiece had been painted, at least in large part, in 1524 is strongly suggested by its influence on a polyptych of the Nativity with Saints, signed by Romanino’s associate Callisto Piazza and dated to that year.¹⁰

Although the original location of Romanino’s altarpiece is clear, and the date uncontroversial, the circumstances of the commission are unknown. The only person associated with the high altar in records of the church seems to be a certain Giustiniano de Faglia di Chiari, whose endowment for a daily mass is mentioned in Carlo Borromeo’s visitation on 16–17 April 1580. The high altar was then the responsibility of a confraternity of Corpus Christi, and on it there was a wooden tabernacle which must have been directly below the infant Christ in the painting. This Confraternity may have commissioned the altarpiece. Other late‐sixteenth‐century visitations testify to the Confraternity’s interventions elsewhere.¹¹ The presence of the angels with a scroll suggests the annunciation to the shepherds, who, however, appear in the landscape to the right.

Saint Alexander (lower left; fig. 1) was included in the altarpiece as the patron saint of the city of Brescia and as the saint to whom the church was dedicated; he is accorded special prominence, both by his position (on the proper right of the Holy Family and the altar) and by his double halo. Saint Gaudioso (top left) was included as the fifth‐century bishop of Brescia whose bones had been discovered in 1454, when the church was under construction, and were conserved as a relic in one of its altars. Saint Filippo Benizzi (1233–1285) (top right) was fifth General of the Servite Order (appointed 1267) and its chief propagator and organiser.

There is no known reason for the presence of Jerome. Alessandro Nova notes that one of the other twelve altars in the church was dedicated to him, but that does not explain his presence in this altarpiece.¹²

The Missing Parts

The painting originally had a crowning panel or cimasa, which Ridolfi described in 1648 as representing ‘Saint John and the Magdalen mourning the dead Saviour’,¹³ but his account is not reliable (he describes Filippo Benizzi as Felice, and San Gaudioso as San Gaudentio). Averoldo’s description in 1700 is to be preferred.¹⁴ He notes that the crowning panel depicted the three half‐length figures of ‘the dead Saviour supported by the Virgin and Saint John’. As Nova points out, it is highly probable that this corresponds to a panel previously in a private collection in Florence (fig. 6) but now not traced, which measured 105.5 × 116 cm, for the width corresponds to that of the panel of the Nativity.¹⁵ It is clear from photographs that this painting was designed to be seen from below. The figures are larger relative to those in the Nativity, but this is commonly the case in paintings designed for the uppermost register of an altarpiece.

Ridolfi and other observers also noted that the altarpiece had a coperta.¹⁶ This would have taken the form of shutters, painted in guazzo (glue size), as was the convention for the large canvas shutters that were used to protect organs in this part of Italy. On the outside there was the Annunciation and on the insides ‘La visita de’ Magi’, perhaps chosen because the kings would thus appear to be converging on the Nativity in the central panel. In the sacristy of SS. Nazaro e Celso in Brescia there are two damaged paintings in glue size on canvas which have been proposed as parts of the original polyptych (figs 7 and 8).¹⁷ As Nova observes, the style of these seems later, but then the shutters may have been a later commission (as the shutters by Moretto for Titian’s polyptych seem to have been).¹⁸ The choice of subject matter for both shutters and cimasa is not unusual – indeed, nine out of ten polyptych altarpieces in northern Italy in the period 1450–1550 are crowned with an image of the dead Christ, and the Annunciation, the prefatory subject par excellence, was frequently favoured for shutters.

Attitudes, Attributes and Dress

Jerome is shown in penitence, beating his breast with a stone (some blood may be detected on it) and holding a crucifix. The cross is formed of a rough branch but Christ’s body is flesh‐coloured, and it is just possible to discern blood in his hair, hands, feet and side. A penitent Jerome normally kneels and gazes at the crucifix, but here, to match Saint Alexander, he stands – although his knees are bent – and acknowledges the infant Christ in the central panel. His right foot appears to be nearer to us than his foremost one, an eccentricity that is not uncharacteristic of the artist. His usual attribute, the lion, is included, but there is no sign of his cardinal’s hat.

Saint Filippo Benizzi is attired in the black scapular, tunic and cowl of the Servite Order. He holds a lily, which is matched by the crosier held by Saint Gaudioso, with its rather feeble and vegetal termination. Gaudioso is attired as a bishop, wearing a mitre and with a large oval morse fastening the broad jewelled border of his cope. On the morse there is a gilt metal relief in which there are two full‐length figures facing each other, perhaps representing the Baptism of Christ but more probably two persons of the Trinity. ‘The face, of remarkable beauty’, has been thought to be ‘probably a portrait of some distinguished churchman of Romanino’s own day; a second Gaudioso, perhaps, setting that later Brescian church to rights after the terrible French occupation in the painter’s own time, as his saintly predecessor, the Gaudioso of the earlier century here commemorated, had done after the invasion of the Goths. The eloquent eyes are open upon some glorious vision.’¹⁹

Saint Alexander was a local martyr, beheaded at Bergamo in about 303. He was said to have been a soldier in the Theban Legion and was generally depicted as a youthful knight. He often holds a banner, and in a thirteenth‐century fresco in [page 326]the Bishop’s Palace in Brescia this is decorated with a cross and the monogram of Christ with a lily, or fleur‐de‐lis, in allusion to those which grew up where his blood was spilled.²⁰ In Vincenzo Foppa’s polyptych for S. Maria delle Grazie, Bergamo (now Brera, Milan), he has a large fleur‐de‐lis on his banner and smaller ones on his tunic.²¹ In the organ shutters attributed to Girolamo Rossi (1547– c. 1614), which are in the same church as Romanino’s polyptych, Alexander’s banner bears a white cross on a pink field, with a fleur‐de‐lis beside the cross. In Romanino’s panel Alexander holds a large banner with a pink cross – as noted above, the cross was once more apparent upon the scarlet field. His right hand is concealed beneath the fabric of the banner, while the tail of the banner is draped over his left arm like a cloak.

The jacket over Alexander’s armour is parti‐coloured: yellow with dark grey slashes (originally blue) over the left part of his chest, and dark grey‐brown (originally blue) with yellow slashes over the right. Other examples of such parti‐colouring (generally associated with livery) may be found in Brescian painting of this date.²²

Most of Alexander’s armour is concealed, but the details that are visible – the fluted toes of the sabatons (foot‐defences) and the roped rim of the gorget – are characteristic of contemporary work. The latter detail, in Claude Blair’s opinion, ‘points to a period not earlier than the second decade of the sixteenth century’. The armour seems to be very close in style to that worn by Saint Demetrius in Ortolano’s altarpiece in the National Gallery (NG 669).

The Virgin’s Mantle

The blue mantle worn by the Virgin is embroidered with widely spaced arabesque ornaments in gold thread, incorporating a central fleur‐de‐lis. Lisa Monnas has pointed out that such embroidered mantles feature in paintings of the fourteenth century (notably those by Bernardo Daddi), when they may have been worn as part of fashionable dress,²³ but by the sixteenth century such designs were reserved for ecclesiastical use (a surviving example is the Spanish dalmatic of embroidered red velvet of about 1520 in the Victoria and Albert Museum) and ‘to a sixteenth‐century observer, the mantle worn by Romanino’s Virgin could have evoked a cope’.²⁴ An embroidered mantle of this type is worn by the Virgin in several of Romanino’s works, both altarpieces and smaller devotional paintings, and is occasionally found in the work of other painters of this period. An example in the National Gallery is the mantle embroidered with strawberry plants which is worn by the Virgin in the altarpiece by Lorenzo di Sanseverino (NG 249).²⁵

The Original Framing and Arrangement of the Panels

It was normal for altarpiece frames in Lombardy and the Veneto to be commissioned in advance of the paintings. This is documented in the case of the polyptych frame commissioned in 1503 from Giovan Agostino di Francesco de’ Marchi for the altarpiece painted by Tommaso Aleni for S. Maria Maddalena, Cremona (fig. 13).²⁶ In the case of the polyptych by Gaudenzio Ferrari for the Collegiata Arona, dated 1511 (fig. 9), the contract specified that the frame must be made to the artist’s design and approved by him before the painting was begun.²⁷ Romanino would certainly have found this procedure normal. The contract for his great altarpiece for S. Giustina in Padua makes it clear that the frame had already been commissioned, and the polyptych frame for S. Cristo, Brescia, also preceded Romanino’s painting. This must also have been true of the high altarpiece of S. Francesco, Brescia, because the frame there is inscribed 1502 – more than a decade earlier than this painting.²⁸ In the case of NG 297 we know that on 1 July 1515 the woodcarver (intagliatore) Stefano Lamberti received twelve ‘denari’ for making the ‘ancona’ of the high altar in S. Alessandro; further payments amounting in all to ‘L.16’ (presumably ‘libri imperiali’), are recorded for this work, which was thus begun about a decade before the painting.²⁹ It has been suggested that Romanino was influenced in his choice of the polyptych form by the example of Titian’s Averoldi polyptych: but it is likely that the choice was made by the patrons in both cases.

‘M. Stefano Intajador’, as Lamberti is also called in the accounts, was one of the greatest woodcarvers of his day and was almost certainly a more celebrated artist than Romanino. Two major frames by him survive: that for the high altarpiece of S. Francesco just mentioned, and that for the Lamentation by Zenale commissioned in 1509 by the Scuola del Sacramento of S. Giovanni in Brescia, completed in 1517. They are among [page 327]the most richly elaborated altarpiece frames to survive from the early sixteenth century, with free‐standing columns of complex baluster form, and every surface – plinth as well as frieze – carved with brittle, pierced, applied ornament of fantastic variety, involving grotesques, tendrils, trophies and geometric tracery.³⁰

Although we can be sure that Lamberti’s frame was very rich, we cannot be sure how the divisions related to each other. A scheme similar to that of Aleni’s altarpiece in S. Maria Maddalena seems probable, especially since it too has a tall, arched central panel, but Romanino has not allowed for the projection of capitals and cornice into the central panel. Moreover, if this formula was followed then the smaller pair of panels would have been considerably higher than the central arched panel. Gaudenzio’s Arona polyptych shows that a central panel could sometimes be positioned as much as a foot below the level of the flanking panels.³¹ If Romanino’s central panel were displayed in this way, the horizon line would be continuous across the three panels, so this seems likely as an arrangement.

Derivations and Influence

In the small parish church of S. Michele a Bedulita in the Valle Imagna some ten miles north‐east of Bergamo, there is an altarpiece of the Adoration of the Shepherds attributed to Francesco Prata (active 1513–27) which adapts the central panel of Romanino’s polyptych to a canvas support measuring 195 × 157 cm (fig. 10). The Holy Family is repeated, as are the ox and ass (moved, however, further left) and four of the angels (lowered, so that they are right on top of Mary and Joseph’s heads), but shepherds are added on the right and standing angels on the left. It has been suggested that the artist employed Romanino’s cartoon, or cartoons, but this cannot have been the case because the canvas painting reproduces alterations made by Romanino in the course of painting – for example, to the scroll held by the angels.³² The most likely hypothesis is that Prata made tracings, or at least carefully measured drawings, of Romanino’s work. This may have been a proposal of his patron (and thus reflect the esteem in which Romanino’s work was held) rather than merely convenience for an artist who was associated with Romanino’s workshop. The Bedulita Nativity is undated, but another polyptych with the Nativity, by Callisto Piazza, formerly in SS. Simone e Giuda, Brescia, which is also clearly derived from Romanino’s painting, is inscribed 1524 (fig. 11).³³

Reputation, Previous Owners and Acquisition

Romanino’s painting remained one of the most notable in Brescia, but in Averoldo’s guidebook of 1700 praise for it was mixed with criticism.³⁴ The ‘softness of the flesh and the unassertive foreshortening’ (‘morbidezza di carnaggione e scorci non violenti’) of the angels was praised, but the ‘bambinello’ was thought ‘scarcely well turned’ (‘poco bon contorno’), Jerome was ‘too dry’ (‘troppo secco’) and the body of Christ in the cimasa ‘did not comply with the rules of true anatomy’ (‘non consserva le regole della vera notomia’). Nevertheless, the decision to remove it from the church cannot have been easy or uncontroversial. According to the official notice in the Director’s Report for 1858, it had been sold to Count Averoldi in 1785.³⁵ However, a new high altarpiece by Pietro Moro (active 1785–1825) had been commissioned for the church by 19 May 1791, when a modello of it was brought to Brescia from Venice, and Nova proposes that this is a more likely date for the removal of Romanino’s painting.³⁶ The whole church was completely restructured and redecorated at that period, and although some other altarpieces were given new frames, Romanino’s altarpiece would have been much harder to accommodate. It was certainly no longer in S. Alessandro in 1808.

By 1826 the painting, divided into separate panels, could be seen in the palace of the ‘Fratelli Averoldi’, the great sixteenth‐century building which also contained frescoes by Romanino (then Contrada San Carlo, no. 1715).³⁷ According to Paolo Brognoli in his Nuova Guida of that year, the Saint Alexander was considered to be one of the artist’s ‘capi d’opera’.³⁸ The guide by Alessandro Sala in 1834 notes that not only was this the finest Romanino in this noted gallery but it ‘seemed to have come from the brush of Titian’ (‘sembra uscita dal penello di Tiziano’).³⁹ By 1853, when Federico Odorici’s Guida di Brescia was published, Angelo Averoldi owned the Presepio, that is, the central panel of the Nativity (erroneously described as being on canvas), and Gherardo Averoldi owned the Jerome and Alexander (and presumably the other saints).⁴⁰ The robust impasto, the brio which ‘shines forth from every part’ of the Alexander, also the ‘beauty at once celestial and martial’ (‘angelica e marziale’) of his head, were praised with enthusiasm.

Although the Averoldi brothers seem to have occupied the same palace – the Palazzo Averoldi just mentioned – the collection was divided among them, and this may have made it easier for them to contemplate a sale. Another member of the family owned the Pietà which had originally crowned the altarpiece. It was seen in the palace of the Abate Antonio Averoldi by Mündler on 12 February 1858⁴¹ (Contrada dei Lauro, nos 1848–50), although it was not considered sufficiently remarkable to merit mention in the guidebooks.

A good idea of the esteem in which Romanino was held by British connoisseurs in the 1850s is conveyed by the ‘Manuscript Register’ of 1856, a volume in which desirable acquisitions were listed by Eastlake and Mündler. ‘The great Romanini in Padua,’ we read, in an entry of unusual length, ‘might fairly be valued at 6000 £s. This admirable work, which exhibits a close imitation of Giorgione’s manner, and stands on a level with the finest Lorenzo Lotto, and even with Palma Vecchio, is equally good in character and brilliant in the deep and glowing harmony of the colour. It is generally admitted to be, by far, the most important picture existing in Padua.’ Eastlake in one of his notebooks for 1856 was deeply impressed by Romanino’s high altarpiece in S. Francesco – by the colours especially: the ‘kindled colour in cheeks’, the ‘deep metallic shine (like blue bottle fly)’, the ‘beautiful effect of grey‐silver hanging’.⁴² It must, however, have soon become clear that neither of these works could be purchased: other, less spectacular paintings had, therefore, to be considered.

In his report to the Trustees in November of the following year, Eastlake surveyed the possibilities in Brescia. ‘The Fenaroli absolutely refuse to sell and are apparently too wealthy to think of it. But I found the Conte Angelo Averoldi (at present Podestà of Brescia) more ready to listen to such proposals.’⁴³ From him Eastlake hoped to purchase ‘the altarpiece by Romanino, formerly in the church of Sant’Alessandro in Brescia. Of that altarpiece Conte Angelo has the principal picture, and his brother Gherardo has four other pictures which complete the work. The price asked was 30,000 francs for the whole. I have offered 20,000 francs (about £800) and it remains to be seen whether the offer will be accepted.’ In the following month, as Eastlake reported a year later, the purchase was made from Count Angelo and Count Ettore (Gherardo’s nephew and heir) ‘for the sum of 804 £’. Gallery accounts show bills drawn on Coutts by ‘Mr Mündler’ on 7 January 1858.⁴⁴ The painting had not then arrived (owing to the restoration undertaken in Milan – see above). It is clear from correspondence with Wornum that the transaction was managed by Mündler and included his fee.⁴⁵

Eastlake was aware that ‘the sixth, and originally uppermost’ panel of the altarpiece was still in the possession of the Abate Averoldi – ‘but its unsatisfactory state, and the circumstance that in its place, at the top of the altar‐frame, it would be too far removed from the eye, were reasons for not including it in the purchase’.⁴⁶ The separation of the cimasa from the main body of an altarpiece was a common consequence of the removal of altarpieces from churches in the last century. The National Gallery acquired several such crowning pictures as separate items (the Palmezzano, NG 596, is a notable example). However, the acquisition of such together with the main panel was not unusual – the Zaganelli Baptism, NG 3892, is one case; the great Francia altarpiece, NG 179 and 180, is another; and a third was the Bergognone altarpiece, NG 298, acquired also in 1857, although the lunette was lost at sea on its way to London.

It has been claimed that the polyptych bought by Eastlake was in some senses an uncharacteristic painting by Romanino, and it is true that Eastlake found parts of it ‘Titianesque’ (the angels) or ‘quite Giorgionesque’ (Saint Alexander), but it is also clear that he responded to Romanino’s daring handling and colour, even if he was not comfortable with some of his eccentricities of form.⁴⁷ In any case, the purchase may have been criticised, for a somewhat ambivalent tone was adopted by Eastlake in the privacy of his notebook when, in Padua on 21 September 1860, he re‐examined the S. Giustina altarpiece there, noting its ‘agreeable general effect’ and conceding that [page 329]the ‘masses of the draperies’ were well harmonised, but finding parts ‘extremely careless & in detail it is not at all superior to the London picture. The infants in the predella underneath are as bad as possible, the flesh less well painted than in the “Averoldi picture”.’⁴⁸ In June of the following year the Romanino was given a very prominent place on the end wall of the new gallery in the National Gallery (which occupied the space now taken up by the staircase hall).⁴⁹

Eastlake’s enthusiasms and anxieties were echoed in 1871 by Crowe and Cavalcaselle, who were impressed by the ‘fire’ in the handling, the ‘brilliance and sparkle in the flesh’ and the ‘variety in the full rich tints’, but struck also by the ‘styleless cast of the drapery’, the ‘puffy forms’ of the angels and the ‘low nature’ exemplified by the ‘large working shape’ (that is, the peasant‐like appearance) of ‘S. Roch’ (presumably an error for Saint Jerome).⁵⁰

Provenance

See above. S. Alessandro, Brescia, until sold to Count Averoldi c. 1785–91; then with Averoldi family in Brescia, but divided among its members; purchased for the National Gallery in December 1857; placed on display in September 1859.

Exhibition

Brescia 1965 (27, Saint Alexander panel only).

Frame

For the original frame, see above. The painting is currently in a gilt architectural frame with simplified Corinthian pilasters and a bold entablature (fig. 12). The ornament is carved: in the pilasters it consists of slender candelabra, vases and vegetation incorporating, a third of the way up, a tablet (suitable for a date) and crowned by a flaming urn; in the frieze, broad [page 330]gadrooned urns, with flames, alternate with narrower vases (but a pair of the flaming urns awkwardly occupies the centre). Each urn and vase is framed with scrolls.

The frame has been entirely regilt, probably in 1968, and ornament may also have been removed from around the detachable mouldings for the glazing of each panel. The frame was made, presumably to Eastlake’s design or at least with his approval, by ‘Signor Spelluzzi’ of Milan, who was paid £68 13s. 8d. on 17 August 1859 through Messrs McCraken. The ornament was probably copied from genuine Lombard work of the early sixteenth century. Wornum recorded in his diary that Critchfield was ‘sent for’ on 11 July to set up the frame and that he ‘took off’ the ‘fretwork’ (presumably the separately carved appliqué ornament which had perhaps been damaged). On 25 August he noted: ‘fretwork of Romanino frame added to it.’⁵¹

Appendix
THE POLYPTYCH IN THE EARLY SIXTEENTH CENTURY AND THE NATIVITY IN ALTARPIECES

It is sometimes claimed that the survival of the polyptych as a type of altarpiece was, in Italy at least, an index of provinciality in art, and it has also sometimes been asserted that the decline of the polyptych form can be connected with the increase in popularity of canvas as a support.⁵²

The latter assertion is easily dismissed. The ‘unified pala’ which became conventional for altarpieces in Florence during the fifteenth century was typically painted on wood, and in Venice in the first decades of the sixteenth century, where polyptychs also fell from favour, the support was also commonly wood. This was the case not only with most of Giovanni Bellini’s altarpieces but also with many of Titian’s, including the largest – the Assunta – for which, it might be supposed, canvas would have been far more convenient.

The claim that the polyptych was provincial is more problematic. It is certainly the case that artists in a major centre such as Venice were more likely to provide polyptychs when receiving commissions for churches in the hills north of Bergamo, in The Marches, or on the Dalmatian coast.⁵³ Since Titian never painted a polyptych for a Venetian church but did do so for Brescia, it is easy to suppose that he was prompted by the same considerations. However, no patron who could afford a painting by Titian, or who would seek to obtain one from a distance, could be described as provincial in taste, and by the time NG 297 was commissioned there were plenty of large single‐panel altarpieces in Brescia. It may be that the ecclesiastical authorities there expected a high altar to be a polyptych, and it is noteworthy that one of the other two high altarpieces made for Brescia by Romanino was a polyptych. Commissioned for S. Cristo (Corpo di Cristo, the church of the Gesuati), Brescia, in 1511, it has now been divided between public and private collections.⁵⁴ The reason for this expectation may have been that there was almost always more than one mystery and more than one saint whose veneration was required in a high altarpiece. Once it had been decided that the mystery was a narrative – the Resurrection in the case of Titian’s polyptych and the Nativity in Romanino’s – then the participation of extra saints in such a scene could be considered undesirable, not only because it would be anachronistic but because each saint should be distinctly visible to the congregation (who might, after all, be directing prayers to them as intercessors). This would have restricted the compositional options available to the artist. However, the polyptych was not the only solution. Later in the century the convention of having statues of saints flanking a single large painting was adopted, an idea unsatisfactorily anticipated in the Frari in Venice by the statues of saints crowning the frame of Titian’s Assunta and the relief sculpture incorporated into its lower edge. These items are omitted from reproductions of the painting and are hard to attend to in situ, but they were surely of importance to the patrons.

Altarpieces of the Nativity painted in Italy in the thirty or so years before Romanino’s, when they included saints other than the Holy Family, were often polyptychs.⁵⁵ The future [page 331]Pope Julius II, for example, commissioned one such from Giovanni Massone for S. Francesco, Savona, in the early 1490s (now in the Musée du Petit Palais, Avignon), and another from Perugino in the same period (in the Albani/Torlonia Collection).⁵⁶ The altarpiece that Perugino was commissioned to paint for the Certosa at Pavia by the Duke of Milan also in the 1490s (NG 288) showed the Nativity divided from the flanking saints (Michael and Raphael). So did Tommaso Aleni’s altarpiece for Cremona of about 1505 (fig. 13) and Gaudenzio Ferrari’s in Arona, completed in 1511 (fig. 9) and much influenced by Perugino’s Certosa altarpiece.⁵⁷ Numerous other, lesser, examples are to be found in Lombardy.⁵⁸

Notes