Giovanni Battista Benvenuti, called Ortolano  c. 1487 – after 1527
NG 669 
Saint Sebastian with Saint Roch and Saint Demetrius

Giorgia Mancini, Nicholas Penny, 2016

Extracted from:
Giorgia Mancini and Nicholas Penny, The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings, Volume III: Bologna and Ferrara (London: National Gallery Company and Yale University Press, 2018).

1521–4

Oil on canvas (transferred from panel), 230.4 × 154.9 cm

Support

The painting has been transferred to canvas, which is mounted on a synthetic panel. The original panel (as is clear from the pattern of damage to the paint) consisted of three vertical boards, of which the central one was the widest. One of the joins passed to the right of Roch’s left knee and left thumb, the other through Demetrius’s right shoulder and Sebastian’s right wrist.

Materials and technique

The original panel was prepared with a gesso ground, but most of this seems to have been removed during the transfer. Cross‐sections prepared from the limited number of paint samples taken during cleaning and restoration in 1971 from Roch’s orange tunic and Demetrius’s red cloak show fragments of the ground, on top of which there is an off‐white or pale yellow priming composed of lead white with a little lead‐tin yellow.¹

Arsenic sulphide pigments were identified in the paint of Roch’s orange tunic – probably orpiment in the highlights and realgar in the shadows, both pigments frequently employed by artists in north‐east Italy during this period.² Demetrius’s red cloak is modelled in several layers composed of mixtures of an intensely coloured red lake with varying proportions of lead white, vermilion and black.³ Analysis has revealed very small particles of colourless soda‐ash glass as an additive in all these layers, with a higher proportion being present in the uppermost glazes.⁴ From its appearance and from examination of comparable works of this period, it seems likely that azurite was employed in the sky and in the slope beside the hill town, and was probably also used for the underlayers of Roch’s cloak and for the distant hills, although the upper paint layers seem to contain ultramarine. Examination of Ortolano’s Saint Margaret in Copenhagen (p. 375, fig. 2) reveals that a similar blue cloak in that painting contains a mixture of ultramarine and Egyptian blue – the first report of the use of the latter pigment in the Renaissance – although the absence of Egyptian blue has been confirmed in the National Gallery painting by luminescence imaging.⁵

Conservation history

It is known that the panel was severely affected by damp after a flood in 1839 and must have been restored around 1850. ‘Cracks’ and ‘chips’ were reported soon after the painting had been acquired by the National Gallery, and Eastlake instructed Wornum, in a letter of 3 August 1865, to have it repaired by Raffaelle Pinti.⁶ Blisters were treated two years later. In 1876 the painting was surface‐cleaned. Flaking and paint loss continued and in 1883 the decision was made to transfer the painting to canvas, an operation undertaken by William Morrill,⁷ using two fine canvases together with a heavy one as a support. The painting was then restored by William Dyer⁸ and seems to have enjoyed half a century of relative stability until 1937, when it is recorded that, in February and March, George Elgar Morrill⁹ laid some blisters. The painting was cleaned and restored between December 1970 and October 1971 and during this treatment, in September 1971, the canvas support was removed from its stretcher and attached to a synthetic panel. In 2001 this synthetic panel was replaced with a different one and the painting was surface‐cleaned and varnished.

Condition

There is a more or less continuous line of small paint losses corresponding to the join between two of the three original boards that were on the left of the painting, and along the lower two thirds of the join on the right. The largest areas of loss are those to Roch’s right knee and to the right of Demetrius’s face. The only facial features to have suffered losses are those of Sebastian, to the left of his lips and across his eyes. Most of the losses in the background are in the sky. The distant hill town on the right is perfectly preserved and the hamlet in the middle distance on the left is nearly so.

The surface is pitted as a result of loss of the ground during the transfer from panel to canvas in 1883. However, what remains of the original paint is in general well preserved. There are drying cracks in Roch’s blue cloak, and presumably the cloak was originally a deeper blue behind his legs and under his right arm. These areas, which should appear to be in shadow, seem to have suffered from blanching since they are now of a similar tone to the lighter areas on the left shoulder and beside his left hand, where the ultramarine blue pigment has been mixed with white and the paint seems to have retained more of its original colour. Roch’s orange tunic has a patchy appearance, perhaps caused by drying problems but probably also a result of deterioration of the arsenic sulphide pigments with which it was painted and extensive retouching applied to disguise the degradation. Demetrius’s red cloak is somewhat blanched in the areas where it is in shadow.

Original location

The painting is first described in print by Marc’Antonio Guarini in his history of the churches of Ferrara and its diocese, published in 1621. Guarini recorded, in the church of S. Maria, Bondeno, ‘un Sebastiano tra un S. Domenico, ed un S. Rocco di mano dell’Ortolano’. Domenico is doubtless a mistranscription or misprint for Demetrio.¹⁰

Bondeno is a small town beside the river Panaro, 19 km west and slightly north of Ferrara. The church, founded in 1114, was a dependence of the great abbey of Nonantola. An inventory of 1426 indicates that it had no altarpieces at that date but there was a wooden cross with painted figures – ‘pictum cum figuris’ – above the altar.¹¹ A bequest of 9 December 1483 by Giovanni ‘a Rotis’ refers to the ‘Capella sancti Sebastiani Rochi et Dimetrji noviter constructa in ecclesia Sancta Maria’ – and the fact that the new chapel [page 377][page 378] also contained some sort of image of Sebastian is clear from a bequest made by Bonfiolo Beroldi on 9 February 1483 (1482) for ‘unam figuram Sancti Sebastiani’.¹² The endowment to the chapel was doubtless made in response to the plague, since further bequests are recorded for 1489, 1500 and 1509.¹³

In 1521 the Duke of Ferrara, Alfonso I d’Este, demolished the castle of Bondeno and placed the town under a podestà of his own appointment.¹⁴ He obtained the patronage (juspatronatus) of the church of S. Maria by a papal bull of 19 May 1516, and in 1520 his nominee, Girolamo Sacrati, was appointed dean (arciprete).¹⁵ Some improvements were evidently made during the same period. Garofalo’s Resurrection (now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), painted for the altar to the right of the high altar, is dated 1520,¹⁶ and Ortolano’s painting, catalogued here, made for the altar on the left, must be close to 1520 in date (as is discussed in the next section).

The locations of the two altarpieces are given in Bishop Fontana’s visitation on 16 September 1591. The ‘altare sancti Sebastiani’ is there described as ‘a latere evangelij alt. maioris’, that is, on the Gospel side, or to the right of the altar, which is our left as we face the altar, but ‘extra tamen capellam maiorem constructum’, that is, outside the sanctuary, in the main nave. It cannot be proved that it had not been moved, but this is not likely. It is also probable that Ortolano’s altarpiece, although made for a chapel dating from the 1480s, was commissioned by the ducal family. In any case, in the same pastoral visitation of 1591 the altar of Saint Sebastian was under the patronage of Alessandro d’Este (created Cardinal in 1599), who was responsible for maintaining a chaplain and providing vestments.¹⁷ After Ferrara was annexed for the papacy in 1598 the patronage must have been removed as well. In 1628 the chapel was the responsibility of Cardinal Francesco Barberini (1597–1679), nephew of Pope Urban VIII (15681644), but by 1644 it had been transferred to the comune of Bondeno, since the painting by Ortolano is referred to as being on the ‘altare della Comunità’ in the local chronicle of that year, as also in early eighteenth‐century sources.¹⁸ The circumstances in which the painting was removed from Bondeno are described below in the section on its acquisition by Sgherbi. The church was rebuilt in 1855 and 1928, and today only the bell tower and the exterior wall of the apse are of any antiquity.

Attribution and dating

As noted above, the painting is mentioned in 1621 as by ‘Ortoleno’. In the Cronaca Bondenese of 1644 it is described as by ‘Gio. Battista Benvenuti, detto l’Ortolano’.¹⁹ It must also be the painting by Ortolano that Francesco Scannelli (1616–1663), in his Microcosmo of 1657, describes as in the ‘Duomo’ in Bondeno. Adolfo Venturi, who (as described in the biographical section, p. 374) was chiefly responsible for [page 379]reconstructing Ortolano’s identity as an artist, described it as the artist’s masterpiece. It has never been claimed as the work of any other artist, except (by implication) by connoisseurs who denied Ortolano’s very existence. For Barrufaldi it was also ‘sovereign among his works’ (‘la reina delle opere sue’).²⁰

The artist’s mannerisms are very much in evidence in this painting (fig. 1): his penchant for very fine hair in disarray; the diagonal hatched strokes (most often left‐handed, that is, sloping from upper left to lower right), as in the soil in the foreground and the grass in the meadow in the middle distance; the technique of working wet in wet, notably in the tassel on the sword handle and the lights in the armour. If nature here is subject to strange distortions – the tree trunk upon which Saint Demetrius rests his left foot, like the stump behind him to the right, appears to be made of the same substance as the soil – there is also a good measure of startling realism, demonstrating the artist’s knowledge of anatomy, perspective and optics: notably, the veins crossing the bone below Sebastian’s left knee, the foreshortened crossbow bolt in his left leg, and the reflection of the red cloak and the knuckles of the right hand in Demetrius’s armour (fig. 2).

The shadows are also masterly – those cast by the crossbow handle and the quiver strap especially. Sebastian’s partly shadowed right hand is seen against a light streak of sky, while his other hand, in a similar pose but reversed, is placed in front of a darker streak. This is typical of the artist’s systematic pursuit of sharp contrasts. This could override the consistency that is normal in realism, as when both the grass and the tree trunk are arbitrarily lightened to serve as a foil to the shadowed sides of Sebastian’s legs.

A date for the painting in the early 1520s seems likely – between the Lamentation now in Naples, dated 1521, and the Saint Margaret now in Copenhagen, dated 1524 (p. 375, fig. 2). This would be a little later than the companion altarpiece by Garofalo, which, as mentioned above, is dated 1520.²¹

The three saints

The altarpiece depicts three saints, of whom the principal, Sebastian, is in the centre. The compositional devices employed by artists in altarpieces of this character are discussed in the section ‘Altarpieces with three saints’, below.

Sebastian, a Roman officer martyred in the third century, had by the end of the fifteenth century become one of the most venerated saints in Christendom, chiefly as a protector against the plague. He is commonly depicted, as here, tied to a tree and pierced by arrows – which, miraculously, failed to kill him.²²

Saint Roch (‘Rocco’, in Italian), who stands on the left side of the painting, was born in Montpellier in the fourteenth century and travelled to Italy as a pilgrim. Working with victims of the plague, he himself contracted the disease. In art he is always attired as a pilgrim and there is usually an ulcer on his thigh.²³ In this altarpiece the saint’s tunic has been folded back to reveal the ulcer but it is discreetly concealed by shadow. He is generally accompanied by the dog that ministered to him in his distress; the absence of the dog [page 380] here, together with the inconspicuous ulcer, may have caused some scholars to misidentify him. Eastlake, for example, at first recorded him as Saint James the Less (who also wears pilgrim’s clothes).²⁴

As noted above, there was a chapel dedicated to Saint Roch (with Saint Sebastian and Saint Demetrius) in the church in Bondeno as early as 1483. This date is early, but the cult of Saint Roch was spreading rapidly in Italy during this period. The earliest representation of him in a Venetian altarpiece is probably a wooden statue in the church of S. Giuliano, flanked by paintings of Saint Sebastian and Saint Christopher. The statue was erected by the Scuola di S. Rocco during the plague of 1478.²⁵ Seven years later Roche’s Roch’s body was brought to Venice from France and housed in the church dedicated to him within a great shrine.²⁶

Saint Demetrius is as rare in Italian altarpieces as Saint Sebastian and Saint Roch are common; no one was expected to recognise him here, as is clear from the fact that his name appears on the piece of paper or parchment on the ground in front of him. Demetrius was martyred under the Emperor Maximianus (thus shortly before AD 305) and his cult was centred on Thessalonica, where he had served as proconsul.²⁷ It spread throughout all regions that adhered to the Greek and the Russian Orthodox rite; in Russia Demetrius became a patron of the Riurikid dynasty, whose princes were named after him. A panel from his tomb in Thessalonica was brought to Vladimir in 1197 and used to make a famous icon now in the Museums of the Kremlin. He is always depicted as a warrior holding a sword, also frequently a shield, and wearing a red cloak that is taken to symbolise his martyrdom.²⁸ Ortolano was unusual in giving him a beard. The gesture of the hand must have been suggested by Raphael’s pensive Saint Paul in the Saint Cecilia altarpiece (discussed below) but the hand has now been raised to cover the mouth, which is very unusual. Such a gesture is adopted by Michelangelo’s Jeremiah on the Sistine ceiling – a seated figure, leaning forward, the hand supporting a head that is heavy with trouble. Ortolano may have had some knowledge of this fresco, but only at second hand.

Saint Demetrius appears in the sixth‐century mosaics in S. Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, and in the seventh‐century frescoes of S. Maria Antiqua, Rome. However, the only Italian city with which he was ever closely associated was Venice: a low‐relief marble plaque of Demetrius, datable to the eleventh century and plundered from Byzantium, together with a thirteenth‐century Saint George, flank the main portal of the west facade of the basilica of S. Marco.²⁹ Chronicles record that the church of S. Bartolomeo at the Rialto was dedicated to him prior to 1083, although there is no certain evidence of this.³⁰ Demetrius was not forgotten in Venice in the sixteenth century, as is clear from the painting of him dated 1545 and attributed to Jacopo Tintoretto in S. Felice. Here he is depicted full‐length, holding a banner and a sword, wearing plate armour, with Zuan Pietro Ghisi kneeling in devotion before him.³¹ The Ghisi, who had captured several Greek islands, may have had custody of some of Demetrius’s [page 381] relics. Another patrician family, the Minotti, claimed to be descendants of the saint.³²

Demetrius is represented in Ortolano’s painting, not because of any preference of the patron (probably, as has been noted, Duke Alfonso I d’Este), but because he was one of the saints to whom the chapel had already been dedicated by 1483. It may be supposed that the veneration was encouraged by the abbey of Nonantola but, if so, there would be some earlier record of the cult and some traces of it in Nonantola itself.

Other parts of the altar

The visitation of 16 September 1591, referred to under ‘Original location’, above, notes that the ‘palla’ was of a decent or proper appearance, with a gilded frame and with some sort of cover on top (‘tegumentum superiori’) as well a cloth or drape (‘tela cooperitur’) – perhaps canvas shutters, perhaps simply curtains.³³ ‘Cover on top’ is, of course, ambiguous but the Latin also could mean ‘covering‐over’ or ‘crowning element’, and the fact that the ‘tegumentum’ is distinguished from the ‘tela cooperitur’ suggests that the latter was meant, and some kind of cimasa or lunette was being described. The Resurrection altarpiece by Garofalo in the same church, probably commissioned at the same date, is described as a ‘palla picturis et auro congruenter ornata’ that had ‘tegumentum superius similiter auro et coloribus ornatum’, and the term ‘tegumentum superius’ recurs in descriptions of several altars in this visitation.³⁴

Cesare Cittadella (1732–1809) observed that Ortolano’s painting ‘si conserva fresca, e bella nella Terra di Bondeno, esprimente la Risurrezione di nostro Signore, con S. Sebastiano e S. Demetrio martiri nell’Oratorio della Confraternità’ (‘is preserved in fresh and beautiful condition in the township of Bondeno, depicting the Resurrection of Our Lord with Saint Sebastian and Saint Demetrius, the martyrs, in the Oratory of the Confraternity’).³⁵ There are a number of puzzling aspects to this passage. The reference to the oratory is peculiar unless the chapel had been taken over by a confraternity. The mention of the Resurrection may be a conflation with the other notable altarpiece in the church, that by Garofalo mentioned above. But if Ortolano’s altarpiece was fitted with a lunette, then it would not be unlikely that the risen Christ was represented in it. If this were the case, then Roch and Sebastian may be intended not simply as looking up to heaven but as making contact with such a higher zone. The lunette, if there was one, seems to have vanished by the mid‐nineteenth century. In any case, it is not included in Candi’s copy.

The armour and the weapons

The full plate armour worn by Demetrius is fluted, a style invented in Germany that became fashionable in Italy around 1510–15.³⁶ The sword is also typical of this period or slightly earlier, and a similar one also with an etched and gilt panel at the base of the blade was presented to Maximilian I by Julius II in 1509.³⁷ The crossbow in the foreground, which implies the recent presence of Sebastian’s would‐be executioners, is ‘a characteristic sporting‐crossbow’ favoured throughout Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (fig. 3). On the top of the crossbow there is [a] bone gutter into which the bolt was placed … at its rear, the bone nut which held the cord when the bow was drawn back ready for shooting. The device leaning against the crossbow with a toothed bar and a handle is what the English called a ‘rack’ and the French a cranequin. This latter device had to be removed before the bow could be shot.³⁸

The quiver filled with bolts is made with animal hide; the fur looks like that of a wolf. Similar fur‐covered quivers are depicted in a Florentine painting of the 1470s, the Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian (NG 292) by Antonio and Piero Pollaiuolo; many similar quivers survive.³⁹

The setting and the architecture

Although the architecture of the hamlet in the middle distance must be fanciful (fig. 4), it is surely based on the vernacular styles mingling stone and timber and thatch, with lean‐to extensions, corbelled projections and open storage areas at ground level, such as are found in the mountainous areas of north Italy (none of them very near the monotonous fertile plain surrounding Bondeno). The clock that is visible in one of the gables is especially surprising. There is a stone trough by the track leading to this hamlet, which is fed by a spring, and the water overflows as a horse dips its head to drink there. Very similar buildings occur in Ortolano’s Saint Margaret in Copenhagen ( fig. p. 375, fig. 2), where there is also a distant fortified town very like the one here.⁴⁰

The influence of Raphael

Ortolano’s altarpiece, as has long been recognised, must have been inspired by careful study of the Saint Cecilia altarpiece that Raphael sent from Rome to S. Giovanni in Monte, Bologna, in about 1516 (now in the Pinacoteca in Bologna; fig. 5). This ‘tavola di Raffaello divino, e non dipinta, ma viva’, as Vasari described it in his life of Francia, exerted a powerful influence on many north Italian artists.⁴¹ Ortolano surely saw the original painting rather than (or in addition to) Marcantonio Raimondi’s print (based, it seems, on an earlier compositional drawing by Raphael) because he was so concerned to emulate the still life on the hard, pebbly [page 383]ground, which is far more prominent in the painting than it is in the print, and because his Demetrius rests his chin on his hand and his hand on his sword, which Saint Paul does in Raphael’s painting (but not in the print).⁴² Furthermore, the shining armour and hair and eyeballs seem to have been inspired by equivalent passages in Raphael’s work – Mary Magdalene’s silver vessel, Paul’s steel sword, John’s curls and Cecilia’s eyes. The influence of this painting is no less evident in the Saint Margaret in Copenhagen (p. 375, fig. 2; where the very conception of the saint depends on the model of Cecilia) and in the Nativy Nativity with Saints in the Doria Pamphilj collection in Rome (p. 373, fig. 1; where the distant choir of angels resembles that painted by Raphael above Cecilia). Baruffaldi claimed that he had seen a sketchbook in which Ortolano had made a note about the Raphael he had studied in Bologna in 1508. The date is impossible and the story untrustworthy but it surely reflects an awareness of his special debt.⁴³

Altarpieces with three saints

Most altars in the later Middle Ages were officially dedicated to the memory of several saints in addition to the Trinity, the Virgin Mary and the heavenly hosts.⁴⁴ Three relics at least were also considered appropriate for an altar. Thus it is not surprising to find an altarpiece featuring three saints. Such altarpieces may, however, have been less common in Tuscany than elsewhere, and perhaps only one such from fifteenth‐century Florence will be immediately recalled in this connection: Antonio Pollaiuolo’s altarpiece with Saint James between Saint Vincent and Saint Eustace, now in the Uffizi but painted for the chapel of the Cardinal of Portugal in S. Miniato al Monte.⁴⁵ Elsewhere, this may have been the most popular type of altarpiece. In a survey of altarpieces commissioned for Venetian churches between 1450 and 1530, eighty have a saint in the centre – many more than honour the Virgin and Child in this way or feature a narrative scene in this position.⁴⁶

The most common formula for an altarpiece with three (or five) saints in the fifteenth century was the triptych (or polyptych). Some examples are the altarpiece of Saint Ambrose by Bartolomeo Vivarini (1432–1499) in the Accademia Galleries in Venice; Giovanni Bellini’s of Saint Vincent Ferrer in SS. Giovanni e Paolo, Venice;⁴⁷ and Cossa’s, also of Saint Vincent, painted for Bologna, the central panel of which is in the National Gallery.⁴⁸ This format was still popular around 1500, which is the probable date of Cristoforo Caselli’s altarpiece of Saint Francis (today in the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore⁴⁹), and there are examples by leading artists from more than two decades later – for instance, Palma Vecchio’s altarpiece of Saint Barbara in S. Maria Formosa, Venice.⁵⁰ In such altarpieces some attempt is usually made to give extra distinction, other than the central position, to the principal saint. Thus Palma painted Barbara larger in scale than the saints flanking her and made the arch above her higher. In all the other cases mentioned, the central saint is elevated by a pedestal or plinth, by a throne (in the Vivarini) or by a cloud platform (in the Giovanni Bellini).

After 1500 most painters in north‐east Italy preferred to place the saints in the same architectural or landscape setting. But the desire, or need, to distinguish the central saint remained strong. It looked better, as well as seeming more honorific – especially when the panel or canvas had an arched top. Thus we find many altarpieces in which some sort of architectural platform is retained. Peter Martyr in Cima da Conegliano’s altarpiece in the Brera, Milan, and John the Baptist in the altarpiece by Andrea Previtali (1480–1528) in S. Spirito, Bergamo, are examples of central saints that have been elevated by incongruous expedients of this kind.⁵¹

After the 1520s the device is less frequent. A late example is the altarpiece by Paris Bordone (1500–1571) in S. Giobbe, Venice, probably of the mid‐1550s, in which Saint Andrew, supported on an inverted capital, steadies himself by resting his hand on the shoulder of Saint Nicholas.⁵² There are some cases where cloud platforms were employed, even for saints who were not associated with miraculous elevation. Saint Roch in the altarpiece by Francesco Torbido (1486–1562) in S. Eugenia, Verona, is an example of this, and Lotto in his very original altarpiece for the church of the Carmine in Venice placed three saints in the clouds, with Nicholas of Bari, the central one, the highest.⁵³ Antonio Boselli (about 1496–1536) gives Saint Laurence an advantage over his companion saints by showing him standing on his attribute, the grill upon which he was martyred.⁵⁴

When a landscape setting was chosen, a hillock or a rock might serve as a pedestal – a solution especially appropriate for saints who preached in the open air, such as John the Baptist (as in altarpieces by Rocco Marconi [1490–1529] and Lattanzio da Rimini [active 1492–1505])⁵⁵ or Bernardino (as in the altarpiece in the Duomo, Belluno, by Andrea Schiavone [died 1564]);⁵⁶ it was used for other saints as well, including Saint Roch in the altarpiece by Marco Basaiti (1470–1530) in the sacristy of the Salute in Venice.⁵⁷ The originality of Giovanni Bellini’s solution in the altarpiece he completed in 1513 for S. Giovanni Crisostomo in Venice may be assessed in this connection. He showed Saint Jerome seated on a rocky platform considerably behind the two other saints, the wall separating him from them perhaps intended to remind us of Jerome’s life in the wilderness.⁵⁸ This example was not imitated and it may have been controversial because, although the principal saint is elevated, he was smaller than his companions. Nevertheless, the idea of placing the central saint further away, on rising ground, was an acceptable solution, and Ortolano in the National Gallery’s altarpiece adopted it cunningly: his Sebastian does not appear to be smaller than the other saints but in fact is slightly so. A comparable altarpiece that uses the same device is that by Girolamo dai Libri in S. Tommaso, Verona, where Roch stands behind Sebastian and Job.⁵⁹

Acquisition by Sgherbi and Barker

A note in the 1844 edition of Girolamo Baruffaldi’s lives of the artists of Ferrara records that when the Po broke its banks in 1839 and Bondeno was severely flooded, Ortolano’s altarpiece [page 384]suffered from the damp walls.⁶⁰ It seems probable, therefore, that it was removed from the church, perhaps originally for conservation, in the late 1840s. Since the church itself was in dire need of repair and expansion, and funds were required for this purpose, it is not surprising that the picture was subsequently sold. Today an excellent copy of the painting by Alessandro Alfonso Candi (about 1796–1866), said to date from 1854, occupies the third chapel of the left aisle. A stucco statue of San Silvestro by Gaetano Davia (1815–1885) of 1853 also suggests that there was a concerted attempt to renew the church at that date;⁶¹ Candi’s copy of Garofalo’s Resurrection (now in the Palazzo Archivescovile in Ferrara but made for Bondeno) is dated 1852.⁶²

The Marchese Massimiliano Strozzi Sacrati, patriot, traveller and collector, noted in his diary in 1849 ‘due quadri antichi di Benvenuto quali trovansi nella parrochiale di Bondeno’ – surely the Ortolano and the Garofalo (both artists called Benvenuto) – that he proposed to acquire for his own collection in return for a contribution of 500 scudi towards the repairs needed by the church and two ‘copie identiche’ made at his own expense.⁶³ If Strozzi Sacrati did proceed with this purchase, then he would have placed the paintings in the care of the dealer and restorer Ubaldo Sgherbi, whom he contracted the following year to establish a picture gallery in his palace in Ferrara. He may also have commissioned Candi’s copies. In any case, Candi is recorded as working for him on other occasions.⁶⁴ A decade later Strozzi Sacrati did acquire the great Strozzi Altarpiece, then attributed to Ercole Grandi and here catalogued as by Costa and collaborators, which was purchased from his heirs by the National Gallery in 1882 (NG 1119, pp. 68–89). However, he seems to have decided against keeping the Garofalo and the Ortolano.

On 15 October 1855 Eastlake saw both paintings in Sgherbi’s possession.⁶⁵ He seems not to have met Sgherbi before, recording his name as ‘Sgerbi’ and then correcting it and adding ‘Ubaldo’ and ‘sen’ (for senior). But on future visits, in September 1861 and October 1863, Sgherbi seems to have escorted him around the city’s collections.⁶⁶ Sgherbi was by then very old but he was certainly a great expert on Ferrarese art and had been largely responsible for forming the most important local collection, that of Marchese Giovanni Battista Costabili (described in an appendix in this volume, pp. 462–6). His three sons were also involved in dealing and collecting and one of them, Luigi (1819–1873), was a painter of some talent and a noted picture restorer.⁶⁷

Eastlake was clearly impressed by the Ortolano, describing it as ‘fine in design’ and an ‘altogether good specimen’ of the master, although the ‘darks of the fl[esh]’ were ‘rather too strong’ and it was ‘injured in parts’. Otto Mündler, who saw it with him, was more alarmed by the condition, noting that it had ‘suffered in many parts’.⁶⁸ Returning in September 1857, he found that the Garofalo had remained with Sgherbi and noted that it had been, ‘formerly, with Mr B’s Ortolano, at Bondeno’.⁶⁹ In other words, he knew that ‘Mr B’ (that is, Alexander Barker) had acquired the picture. Visiting Ferrara on 23 August 1856, Mündler recorded that it had been sold, but Sgherbi may not have sold it direct[ly] to Barker. In any case, he told Mündler that ‘he expects the picture to be gone to England’.⁷⁰ It was clearly in Barker’s collection later in 1856, for it is entered as his property in the National Gallery’s manuscript register of desirable paintings compiled in that year, and described as ‘in admirable preservation, the colouring dark and fresh’.⁷¹

Alexander Barker (died 1874), the son of a fashionable bootmaker, was the most prominent marchand amateur in London during the 1850s and 1860s. He displayed masterpieces of the Florentine quattrocento, of Venice in the early sixteenth century and of Paris in the eighteenth century in separate parts of his house in Piccadilly, together with appropriate furnishings and objets. He sold to the richest collectors in Britain, notably the 4th Duke of Northumberland (1793–1865) and Baron Mayer Amschel de Rothschild (1818–1874), and occasionally, after some haggling, he let the National Gallery buy works.⁷²

Acquisition by the National Gallery

In June 1858 Barker lent the Ortolano, together with a group of other paintings, to the British Institution’s exhibition at 52 Pall Mall.⁷³ It was after seeing it there that Eastlake wrote to Wornum from Genoa on 6 October, ‘pray try to get the Lippi & Ortolano from Mr Barker – you can safely offer £1,000 for the two’.⁷⁴ The Lippi was the lunette of seven Medici saints (NG 667). Another letter of 19 October reveals that the offer was not enough but that Barker would consider selling these two pictures, together with Crivelli’s Blessed Gabriele Ferretti (NG 668).⁷⁵ Back in London on 17 December, Eastlake proposed to the Trustees of the National Gallery that they should offer Barker £1,800 for the three paintings, or £1,300 for the Ortolano and Lippi.⁷⁶ At the board meeting on 1 February 1859 Eastlake reported that he had heard from Mr Bentley (presumably Barker’s secretary or lawyer – but just possibly the picture restorer of that name) that the group of three pictures was priced at £2,500 – £1,000 for the Ortolano, £900 for the Lippi and £600 for the Crivelli. If the Ortolano alone were bought it would cost £1,200. Eastlake then offered £2,000 for the three or £1,500 for the two, noting that Barker ‘does not seem inclined to accept’.⁷⁷

On 1 July 1861 – more than two years later – Eastlake announced that he had accepted Barker’s original terms, subject to the board’s approval. This was forthcoming and Eastlake then announced that he would donate Lippi’s Annunciation – the pendant to Barker’s Lippi – to the National Gallery.⁷⁸ Payment was recorded on the same day; a ‘frame for the Ortolano’ was due to be delivered on 1 August by Critchfield, so the painting was presumably hung soon afterwards.

It is worth noting that the exhibitions of the British Institution often served as a shop window. Barker also lent the famous painting from the Manfrin collection supposed to be by Giorgione, and to represent the artist, his mistress and pupil, to the exhibition in 1858; he sold it soon after to the Duke of Northumberland.⁷⁹ Robert Holford (1808–1892) bought his Lotto (as a Giorgione), having seen it at the exhibition of 1854.⁸⁰ John Ruskin (1819–1900) purchased his Catena (as a Titian) in the same way in 1864.⁸¹ These exhibitions also excited considerable critical interest, and the opinion of Ortolano’s altarpiece expressed by George Scharf the Younger (1820–1895) in his Artistic and Descriptive Notes on the 1858 exhibition, is of special interest.⁸² He found the painting to be ‘of a most peculiar tone, but remarkably vivid for effect of reality. The colour and massing of the shadows remind one of Maclise, whose force, if not clearness of style, is there also.’ Saint Demetrius was admired for power and ‘sculpturesque treatment’, the armour for its ‘astonishing truthfulness and brilliancy’. But Scharf also noted a ‘tendency to decadence which had even at that early time, 1525, five years after the death of Raphael, manifested itself in remote places’. The ‘technical mastery’ was not matched by ‘genuine dramatic power’; the ‘action of St. Roch, and his countenance, also are peculiarly insipid’.

Provenance

Parish church (or Duomo), S. Maria, Bondeno; with Ubaldo Sgherbi the elder by 1855; bought by Alexander Barker in late 1855 or early 1856; sold by Barker to the National Gallery, July 1861.

Copies, versions

A copy of the Saint Demetrius was exhibited by Dr Wellesley at the Art Treasures exhibition in Manchester as of Gaston de Foix (1489–1512) and by Giorgione. We know from Scharf that this was in fact a copy of the Saint Demetrius.⁸³ It is likely to be identical to a painting of Saint Demetrius attributed to Dosso in W.R. Cassel’s sale at Christie’s on 25 July 1907 (lot 32), next sold at Christie’s on 20 April 1928 (lot 64, as ex‐Barker) and then again at Christie’s on 14 February 1930 (lot 96) and at Sotheby’s on 7 December 1960 (lot 49). This was an early copy made after the figure in Ortolano’s altarpiece (fig. 6).⁸⁴ The Barker provenance is not false and he does seem also to have owned this version, for a Saint Demetrius by Ortolano was lent by him to the National Exhibition of Works of Art in Leeds in 1868.

A copy by Alessandro Alfonso Candi, said to have been made in 1854, is in the church at Bondeno. It is executed with a similar technique and on a panel similarly constructed to that of the original. The remarkable accuracy of copies of sixteenth‐century altarpieces made by Ferrarese painters in the mid‐nineteenth century merits separate study: those after Garofalo in S. Francesco, Ferrara – one signed by Girolamo Domenichini (1812–1891), others unsigned (one of them by Giovanni Pagliarini [1809–1878]) – are outstanding in this respect.⁸⁵ Candi’s copy has flaked along the joins and much of the surface was concealed by facing‐paper when the church was visited by Nicholas Penny in 1998.

Framing

The painting is shown in a reversed frame with a twisted leaf carved at the sight edge and a twisted ribbon at the further side of the hollow. The painting was displayed in this frame in 1886, as is clear from Giuseppe Gabrielli’s view of the new Italian room. It seems likely that the painting came to the gallery from Barker, framed in this way – we know that it was framed⁸⁶ and the style is quite unlike anything that Critchfield would have made in 1861. It seems likely that it was exported from Ferrara in this frame because nothing we know about Barker’s framing suggests that he would have favoured this style. It seems indeed possible that this was the way that the painting had been displayed in the church in Bondeno since the seventeenth century (when this style of frame was favoured) because it is hard to imagine that such a frame would have been devised for the painting in mid‐nineteenth‐century Italy. If correct, then this is a most remarkable survival, prompted perhaps by the difficulty of making an arched top.

Notes