Girolamo da Treviso  Treviso c. 1497/8 – Boulogne 1544
NG 218 
Adoration of the Kings

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).

c. 1523–4

Oil on wood, 144.5 × 126.1 cm

Support

The panel is made of four vertical boards, probably of poplar, which (from the left) are respectively 12, 36.5, 41.5 and 36.1 cm in width. There are dowels between the boards (one is exposed at the top edge, which has been cut). The panel is warped and damaged by woodworm. It probably retains its original thickness, although it was cradled in the nineteenth century (a process that almost always entailed thinning). In 2005 this cradle was removed and the battens in their dovetailed channels were thinned so that they are flush with the panel. A polyester canvas was also applied to the back of the panel.

Materials and technique

There is a gesso ground (calcium sulphate, confirmed by EDX analysis), but there is no further priming layer.¹ Infrared reflectograms show a simple linear underdrawing, probably made with a cartoon, or cartoons. All of the straight lines in the architecture were ruled.

In samples taken from the sky and the foliage the medium has been identified as walnut oil; there is evidence that it was heat‐bodied, at least to some extent.²

The blue of the sky is composed of ultramarine with lead white, applied over azurite with lead white. The shades of green in the landscape were created with mixtures of verdigris, lead‐tin yellow, yellow earth and lead white.³ Lead‐tin yellow highlights were applied to bright orange, pink or light purple to produce a cangiante effect in the draperies. In the over‐garment of the prostrate king this effect is achieved by mixing orange‐red, blue and yellow, wet in wet.

The haloes of the Virgin Mary and Joseph were painted with small dots of lead‐tin yellow. The treatment of light on the ornamental borders of the garments, fringes, jewels and headdresses is comparable to similar effects in paintings by Dosso, such as the Adoration of the Kings (NG 3924) and the Lamentation (NG 4032), although Girolamo’s touch here is relatively meticulous. The red glaze on the robe of the man holding the reins of the rearing horse was blotted by the artist’s finger.

Condition

The paint is generally in good condition. There are some scattered losses, mainly in the sky and around the edges of the panel. These are associated with splits in the panel. Some of the darker paint is thin and worn.

Conservation history

Flaking paint was treated in 1856, 1887, 1933, 1941 and 1960. In 2005 the painting was cleaned and restored and the panel was also treated as described above (under ‘Support’).

Subject

The painting is based on a drawing by Baldassare Peruzzi (fig. 1; acquired by the National Gallery in 1839 and transferred to the British Museum in 1994), made in Bologna in about 1522 for Count Battista Bentivoglio (see p. 307). Vasari, who probably saw it when he visited that city in 1539–40, described it thus: For the above‐mentioned Conte Giovan Battista [Peruzzi] made a drawing of a Nativity with the Kings in grisaille in which it is marvellous to behold the mounts, equipages and entourages of the three kings, executed with the most beautiful grace, as are also the exteriors of the temples and some buildings that surround the hut.⁴

He added that ‘this work was afterwards given by the Conte to be coloured by Girolamo Trevigi’ (that is, Girolamo da Treviso), who did so to perfection, ‘in spite of there being more than a hundred figures’.⁵

Fragments of an entablature and two sections of a fluted column shaft are scattered in the foreground, and an inverted Roman Doric capital serves as a seat for the Virgin Mary. These must be supposed to have all fallen from the ruined structure in the centre of the painting. This consists of piers from which an arch springs (unbroken only in its further section), and to which colossal fluted columns are attached, penetrating the entablature where it survives on the right.

Such ruined structures, often depicted in Renaissance paintings of the Adoration, doubtless symbolised the decay of the old pagan world. Paradoxically, the architecture was of a type that architects like Peruzzi wished to revive, and this structure has much in common with proposals (derived from Raphael) by Antonio da Sangallo (1484–1546) for the new basilica of St Peter then being built in Rome.⁶ The stable, mentioned in the Gospels, was generally included within such ruins, or improvised out of them. Peruzzi is unusual in omitting this and Vasari was misremembering when he referred to a hut. The original purpose of the ruin here is not clear, but a portion – it looks incomplete rather than broken – of a lower arch on the right suggests that this building was not part of a temple, as Vasari supposed, but a tripartite city gate or triumphal arch, and Peruzzi provides two other examples of this type of Roman architecture in the distance. On the left there is a single arch flanked by detached columns, with an attic crowned by statues (fig. 2). On the right is a city gate with a central arch with paired columns on either side, probably framing pedestrian entrances. Behind the city gate a round fortress rises in two stages (fig. 3).

The massive piers of the central ruin divide the composition into three parts, each with a path winding into the distance, along which the trains of the Three Kings separately progress. The train on the right advances from the city gate and that at the left may be presumed to progress from the distant arch. The central train seems to emerge from a cave below a cliff. On top of the cliff we see the Annunciation to the Shepherds and two shepherds with a dog walk down from this eminence along a winding and stepped track (fig. 4). The rocks, turf and trees here emulate the torsion of the [page 303][page 304] more active of the foreground figures. The star that guided the Kings is visible above the tree tops to left of centre; in the sky above, God the Father, reclining with his legs crossed, is supported by four angels and surrounded by others playing musical instruments and holding aloft bouquets of flowers. This group must have been inspired by Raphael’s Vision of Ezekiel (p. 467, fig. 12), then in the Hercolani collection in Bologna, but the pose of the Almighty also recalls (to an indecorous degree) the way that the drunken Silenus is assisted in ancient representations of the entourage of Dionysius.

The Virgin Mary holds the infant Christ, who eagerly blesses the eldest king prostrated before him and receives the gold that he proffers. The second king is only slightly behind, kneeling and clutching the crown that he has doffed in respect; the third king stands, lifting from an attendant the gift that he will present (fig. 5). A discussion of the names used for the kings at that date and the traditions associated with their representation can be found in the entry for a related composition by Girolamo da Carpi on pp. 281–2.

Joseph, in the shadows behind the Virgin Mary, is upstaged by the oversized ass, conspicuously braying; the equally large ox, alarmingly attentive to the infant; the dwarf, attired in green to match his parrot; and the sinuous hound that mimics the prostrate king. To either side there are horses and grooms united in movement, with the pages clustered precariously on the pedestals of the columns the better to view the scene of homage.

It has been observed that Peruzzi’s drawing, with its combination of antiquarian culture and theatrical spectacle, and its exotic animals, was bound to be greatly appreciated in Bologna, a city with a strong tradition of triumphal entries and lavish spectacles.⁷ However, for almost a century before Peruzzi made this drawing, the subject had been popular in Tuscany for demonstrations of artistic virtuosity involving a huge cast of animated characters in an elaborate setting. These were devised to display both knowledge of antique architecture and linear perspective – especially in Florence (see for instance NG 1033 by Botticelli).⁸ Indeed, there may be a recollection in the central group of Leonardo’s famous altarpiece of this subject left unfinished in Florence in 1482 and now in the Uffizi.

Exotic attire, blended with the fashionable clothes, was not unusual in paintings of this subject, nor was the presence of a dwarf or the birds and beasts of Africa – in this case the parrot and, in the central portion, riding upon a chest, a monkey. To the right of the composition there are, in addition, an elephant with a palanquin (Peruzzi would have seen Hanno, the elephant presented by the King of Portugal to Pope Leo X in 1514, whose commemorative portrait had been painted by Raphael’s workshop in 1516)⁹ and a giraffe (for which Peruzzi clearly had no reliable visual source).

In the foreground of the painting, on the right, near the three attendants removing precious vessels from a travelling chest, there is a man holding a brace of hounds on a leash, a figure that was not included in Peruzzi’s drawing and the only one in the entire composition that is looking at the viewer [page 305](fig. 6). It is tempting to consider this as a portrait, perhaps of Girolamo da Treviso himself.¹⁰ The author of the catalogue of the Delahante sale in 1828 found other portraits in the painting, notably Michelangelo ‘in the centre’ and Sebastiano del Piombo ‘on the right’, also the ‘Artist … with his dogs by his side, and next him Pope Leo X’.¹¹ The catalogue of Buchanan’s sale of February 1830 repeats these ideas, omitting any mention of Sebastiano but adding the proposal that ‘Raphael, Titian, Giorgione, Vasari, Paul Veronese, &c’ were also present – which made it ‘equally interesting to the connoisseur or the antiquarian’.¹²

Peruzzi was known to have been a follower of Raphael, even though less closely associated with him than Giulio Romano or Gianfrancesco Penni (1490–1528). Apart from the character of the architecture and the group in the clouds – an unusual addition to this subject, directly inspired by the Vision of Ezekiel (as mentioned above) – there are debts to the frescoes in the Stanza di Eliodoro in the Vatican Palace, most obviously the figures crowded around the columns in the Expulsion of Heliodorus, but also the rearing horse in the Repulse of Attila. As Waagen noted, the starting‐point for the principal group was the design for a tapestry for this subject in the Scuola Nuova series made in Raphael’s workshop (p. 282, fig. 4).¹³ More generally, we are reminded of the indigestible richness of the figurative decoration in the Sala di Costantino, completed soon after Raphael’s death, in which the essential central action and dramatic coherence are compromised by the size and agitation of the marginal chorus.¹⁴

Attribution, style and dating

In Bologna, by the late seventeenth century the painting had been described as the work of Peruzzi himself and this remained the case during the first half of the nineteenth century in both France and England.¹⁵ In 1854 Gustav Waagen expressed doubts about this attribution, not only because the painting was ‘far inferior in feeling’ to Peruzzi’s drawing (which had been in the National Gallery since 1839), but also because it differed ‘totally from the acknowledged colouring of the master’. He also rejected the possibility that this was the version painted by Girolamo da Treviso that had been mentioned by Vasari, and proposed instead that it was the work of ‘some Ferrarese master, with much affinity to Mazzolino da Ferrara, only harder and gaudier, and of an exaggerated red in the flesh‐tones’.¹⁶ This opinion was accepted by Cavalcaselle, who considered the painting ‘too timidly handled to be even by Girolamo da Treviso’ and thought that it was possibly by a Ferrarese artist with a style similar to that of Rinaldo Mantovano (active 1527–39).¹⁷

It was only in 1936 that the painting was included in Berenson’s lists under Girolamo da Treviso.¹⁸ Cecil Gould in his catalogue of 1975 provided arguments in support of this attribution, correctly observing that the palette was similar to that of NG 623, a signed work by Girolamo.¹⁹ It is indeed strikingly close (most obviously so in the blue and pink of the Virgin) and in the distance on the left – one of the few areas where the painter is not following Peruzzi closely – where the blend of architecture, rocks and somewhat spongy vegetation is of exactly the character that we find in NG 623 and elsewhere in Girolamo’s work. This attribution to Girolamo has been accepted in subsequent literature.²⁰

Giovanni Sassu has argued persuasively that such a work would have been commissioned after Peruzzi himself had left Bologna.²¹ This must have been soon after 30 April 1523, when he received the final payment from the Fabbriceria of S. Petronio. Girolamo was in Bologna later in that year, when he was commissioned to paint the S. Biagio altarpiece, and is likely to have been engaged on that until the spring of 1524. The reliefs Girolamo made for S. Petronio between March 1524 and August 1525 (p. 296, fig. 1) reflect the influence of Peruzzi’s drawing, strengthening Sassu’s proposal that NG 218 dates from the same period.²²

Girolamo da Treviso’s translation of Peruzzi’s model

The figures in the painting are approximately the same size as those in Peruzzi’s drawing but since the drawing is not pricked, indented or squared it is likely that Girolamo copied the original as an outline drawing, perhaps using a net (as [page 306] was later the practice in the preparation of reproductive engravings). This drawing would have served as the cartoon for the painting. The larger size of the painting is due to the greater space above the group of God the Father, and between the latter and the arch. Girolamo introduced some changes, such as the leafier vegetation and the almost stormy density of the clouds. He also added some figures on both sides (these are not included in Agostino Carracci’s engraving of 1579)(fig. 7).²³ Other small variations include the more youthful appearance of Joseph, the floppy hat of the man to the left of the Virgin Mary, the more ornate short trousers and footwear of the Moor, and the position of the fiddle held by the angel below the foot of God the Father.

Previous owners

The painting by Girolamo da Treviso was seen by Giorgio Vasari, together with Peruzzi’s drawing of the Adoration on which it is based, in the possession of Count Battista Bentivoglio and both works probably remained in the family collection until the end of the eighteenth century. The posthumous inventory made in 1656 of Count Costanzo Bentivoglio (grandson of Costanzo, a nephew of Battista Bentivoglio, first owner of Peruzzi’s drawing) records a painting of the Adoration in the ‘sala grande’ of the family palace.²⁴ The value of 10,000 lire assigned to this work is very high when compared with the valuations of other pictures in the same inventory, and shows that the Adoration was regarded as a family treasure. This item, described as a picture on panel, was most likely Girolamo’s painted version of Peruzzi’s celebrated drawing. The same ‘quadro di pittura’ is mentioned as a work by ‘Baldassarre da Siena’ (Peruzzi) in the division of property agreed between Costanzo’s heirs, Filippo Maria and Ludovico, together with a Virgin and Child with Saints by ‘Raffaelle d’Urbino’ (a copy by Innocenzo da Imola of the Madonna del Divino Amore, untraced). It was agreed in 1696 that these two paintings, valued at 8,000 and 6,000 lire, should be assigned to Ludovico and Filippo Maria respectively.²⁵ The painting would thus have been separated from Peruzzi’s drawing, which had passed to the branch of the family then living in Florence. Marcello Oretti, recording the paintings displayed in the Holy Sacrament processions in Bologna in 1769, included Peruzzi’s Adoration (which must have been Girolamo’s painting), temporarily removed from ‘an altar in the Palazzo Bentivoglio in via della Mascarella’.²⁶ If this was correct, then we must imagine that painting was kept in a small oratory – a very rare case of a cabinet painting turned into a devotional work (the reverse was of course common). A year later Oretti recorded the same picture in the Palazzo Bentivoglio as the property of Count Francesco.²⁷

A picture identifiable with NG 218 appears in the catalogue of the Lapeyrière sale that took place in Paris on 19 April 1825. The description and the dimensions of lot 41, the Adoration of the Kings by Baldassare Peruzzi, said to have been in the house of Count Costantino Bentivoglio, match those of the picture catalogued here. In the preface to the catalogue this painting is listed among those that had become available as a result of the French Revolution. It is very likely that the painting was purchased at this sale by the London‐based French dealer Alexis Delahante. In any case it was offered in his London sale (Harry Phillips) on 20 May 1826 (lot 131).²⁸ It was bought in at the high price of 320 guineas (£336). The picture was again consigned by Delahante in the sale held in the same auction house on 9 July 1828 (lot 122), where it was sold for 245 guineas. The name of the buyer is unknown, but the painting next featured in the private contract sale organised by the Scottish dealer William Buchanan in February 1830 (no. 20).²⁹ The dimensions given in the catalogue (4 ft 2 in × 3 ft 8 in/127 × 112 cm) are somewhat smaller than those of the National Gallery painting. The catalogue states that the picture had been in the ‘Royal Collection of Naples, and was carried thence to France, during the period of the Revolution’.

It seems that the picture was not sold, since it appeared in a minor sale organised by George Stanley on 20 November 1830. Even if lot 13 is simply described as ‘Peruzzi, Adoration of the Kings’, its identification with the Buchanan picture is confirmed by the presence, in the same sale, of a portrait of the Duke of Mantua attributed to Raphael, which had also featured in Buchanan’s sale in February. No buyer or price is recorded in this auction and we have found no further mention of the picture before 1841, when it was published in the catalogue of the collection of Edmund Higginson (1802–1871), with a provenance mentioning Lapeyrière and ‘Gray’.³⁰

On 6 June 1846 the Adoration of the Kings featured in Higginson’s sale (lot 227), where it was bought in for 510 guineas (£535 10s.). It was presented to the National Gallery by the owner in 1849, presumably partly because the National Gallery had acquired Peruzzi’s drawing a decade earlier, at a period when it seemed possible that the Gallery would become a repository for old master drawings.

Provenance

Painted for Battista Bentivoglio; recorded in 1560 in the residence of the late Andalò Bentivoglio, son of Battista;³¹ with the Bentivoglio family by descent and last recorded in Palazzo Bentivoglio in 1770. Reputedly in the royal collection in Naples; certainly in Paris, where included in the Lapeyrière sale 1825; next offered for sale in London by Alexis Delahante in 1826 and 1828 and by William Buchanan by 1830. In the collection of Edmund Higginson by 1841; bought in at his sale in 1846. Presented by Higginson to the National Gallery in 1849.

Framing

The painting is exhibited in a so‐called Watts frame – a type of cassetta frame with bold outer ornament of composition, usually (as in this case) of egg and dart, and smaller inner ornament (in this case a twisted ribbon, also of composition), with a frieze consisting of oak oil gilded without gesso preparation so that the figure of the wood is visible. Frames of this type became popular in London in the 1880s and seem to have been employed at the fashionable Grosvenor Gallery [page 307]exhibitions, but they remained popular for many decades. In the National Gallery they were favoured especially for the English paintings.³²

Appendix 1
The Patron: Battista Bentivoglio

Battista Bentivoglio belonged to a collateral branch (noted for its loyalty to the papacy) of the Bentivoglio, who were the ruling family of Bologna during the fifteenth century. His father, Andalò, was elected to the Council of Elders (the Anziani, the highest magistrates of the city’s ruling council) six times between 1481 and 1506, and in 1484 he served as podestà of Lucca. He was dead by 1516. Vasari called Battista ‘Giovambattista’, confusing him with a brother.³³

Battista was born on 13 July 1483. He was elected to the Anziani in 1526. Battista was an educated and cultivated man and, like other members of his family, a close friend of the humanist Gianantonio Flaminio (1464–1536). From Vasari’s life of Peruzzi we learn that the artist made several drawings for the facade of S. Petronio while staying with Battista.³⁴ The work of Raphael seems to have had a strong appeal for him. He commissioned a copy of Raphael’s Madonna del Divino Amore from Innocenzo da Imola, whom he had summoned to work in Bologna.³⁵ It was probably Battista who recommended Innocenzo to the Olivetan friars of S. Michele in Bosco when they wished decorate their new sacristy and commission a new painting for the high altar. This is suggested by the fact that he served as the artist’s guarantor when the contract was drawn up in 1517.³⁶ According to this document, the preparatory drawing for the altarpiece of the Virgin and Child in Glory with Saints (now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna) was in Battista’s possession. The central figure of Saint Michael the Archangel derives from the cartoon of the same subject made by Raphael, which had been in the collection of Alfonso I d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, since 1518. This provides further evidence of Battista’s predilection for the inventions of Raphael and another example of him valuing a finished drawing.

Battista enjoyed a similar relationship with Girolamo da Treviso. In November 1523 he acted as the artist’s guarantor in the contract for his S. Biagio altarpiece, a document that was signed in his own house (‘in domo habitationis predicti Comitis Baptiste’).³⁷

It is difficult to know whether Battista had an art collection, but he was certainly an art lover. A few years after the death of Battista’s only son and heir, Andalò, Pietro Lamo recorded in his Graticola di Bologna (published in 1560) ‘due carte di chiaro scuro di mano di Raffaele d’Urbino rare’ (presumably these were finished drawings rather than prints), together with the Adoration of the Kings by Girolamo da Treviso and what may have been Peruzzi’s drawing itself.³⁸

Appendix 2
Peruzzi’s Adoration of the Kings

The signature ‘BAL. SENEN. F’ – that is, ‘Baldassarre Senensis [Baldassare Peruzzi of Siena] fecit [made this]’ – suggests that Peruzzi regarded his drawing as a work of art in its own right rather than a preparatory study.³⁹ It belongs to the category of highly finished drawings that were made for display and were valued by collectors, a category that may have owed some of its appeal to the circulation of engravings, many of which were also uncoloured. Peruzzi may also have had in mind the possible execution of his invention in another medium, perhaps as a print or as a painting, but, if the latter, then we would expect it to have been the model for a painting of larger size. More than fifty years after its creation, the drawing was engraved by Agostino Carracci (fig. 7).⁴⁰

It should also be borne in mind that Peruzzi’s chief employment during this period was the design of the facade of S. Petronio.⁴¹ This would also have involved the production of finished architectural drawings containing numerous figures – albeit sculptural figures attached to a building rather than living ones flowing round and climbing upon one.

An inscription in Carracci’s engraving of Peruzzi’s Adoration of the Kings, made in 1579, records that the drawing then belonged to Conte Costanzo Bentivoglio. It is therefore likely to have been kept in the Bentivoglio palace, situated between via Moline and via Mascarella (now the via Belle Arti) in Bologna.⁴² In the mid‐seventeenth century the [page 308] drawing was with the heirs of Count Prospero Bentivoglio, as reported by Filippo Baldinucci (1624–1696) in his Notizie dei Professori di Disegno.⁴³ It remained in the Bentivoglio family, but in Florence rather than Bologna, until 1759, when it was sold from there to Richard Dalton (about 1715–1791), possibly for the Prince of Wales.⁴⁴ In 1839 Lord Vernon (1800–1873) gave it to the National Gallery. In 1994 it was transferred to the Department of Prints and Drawings of the British Museum.

Appendix 3
The local fame of Peruzzi’s Adoration of the Kings

Peruzzi’s Adoration had a deep impact on painters as well as sculptors active in Bologna in the 1520s and 1530s.⁴⁵ An early example of its influence is found in the fresco of the Adoration of the Kings painted by Biagio Pupini in the church of the Annunziata in Bologna, usually dated to 1523–4, many parts of which are directly derived from the Adoration by Peruzzi.⁴⁶ A more personal use of Peruzzi’s model is seen in some of the paintings made by Girolamo da Carpi when he was in Bologna (see the entry for NG 640, pp. 278–85).

The Adoration of the Kings by Girolamo Marchesi da Cotignola (Cassa di Risparmio, Cesena), painted probably around 1525, is perhaps the most extravagant interpretation of Peruzzi’s composition.⁴⁷ The intarsia panels with the Miracle of Saint Dominic and the Martyrdom of Saint Catherine executed by Fra Damiano Zambelli (about 1480–1549) for the choir of S. Domenico were similarly inspired by Peruzzi’s model.⁴⁸ Indeed, Marchesi might have provided the cartoons for some of these panels (others were designed by Sebastiano Serlio [1475–1554], who was in Bologna between 1520 and 1528).⁴⁹

The theatrical architecture of Peruzzi’s Adoration inspired sculptors such as Alfonso Lombardi (about 1497–1537), whose marble bas‐relief with the Adoration of the Kings, made in 1532–3 for the Arca of Saint Dominic in S. Domenico, Bologna, is a ‘compressed copy’ of the central lower part of Peruzzi’s composition.⁵⁰ Lombardi’s debt to Peruzzi’s model is also evident in the lunette of the Ghisilardi monument in the same church – in this case inspired by the group in the clouds.⁵¹

An especially interesting example of the influence of Peruzzi’s drawing is the little‐known Adoration of the Kings in the church of S. Procolo in Bologna, which combines painting with low and high relief in terracotta (fig. 8).⁵² Traditionally attributed to Bartolomeo Cesi (1556–1629), it is more reminiscent of works by the sculptor and medallist Giovanni Zacchi (born 1515), who was active mainly in Bologna during the middle decades of the sixteenth century.⁵³ Malvasia writes, in his biography of Cesi, that the artist took to painting as well as modelling and that an Adoration of the Kings made of terracotta was so lively that others considered it by Alfonso da Ferrara (Alfonso Lombardi), which he then decorated with a ‘beautiful, although weakly painted, background’ derived from Peruzzi.⁵⁴ Some facial types and the arrangement of the composition on both sides are reminiscent of those made by Girolamo da Treviso.⁵⁵

As has already been mentioned, Agostino Carracci made an engraving of Peruzzi’s composition, dated 1579, with only minor variations.⁵⁶ It shows the whole design more clearly than in the original, which is now much abraded.⁵⁷ The reform of art instigated by the Carracci family in Bologna and Rome entailed rejection of much that is now designated as mannerist, but it did not preclude admiration for Peruzzi’s tour de force. In 1603 Francesco Cavazzoni (1559–1612) noted that the Adoration was ‘cosa molto studiata e lodata da tutti gli valenti artefici’ (‘much studied and praised by all talented artists’).⁵⁸ The fame of this work continued into the eighteenth century, although its influence was by then much less obvious.

Appendix 4
Other copies of Peruzzi’s Adoration of the Kings

Since Peruzzi’s Adoration was in private hands from the time of its creation, a relatively small number of copies are [page 309] likely to have been made directly from it. Only one other painted copy is recorded as having been made in the sixteenth century, probably in connection with Agostino Carracci’s engraving of 1579, to which it corresponded closely.⁵⁹ In the mid‐nineteenth century this painting on canvas (149 × 107 cm) belonged to the Bolognese historian Michelangelo Gualandi.⁶⁰ It has been attributed to Bartolomeo Cesi, or to Cesi in collaboration with Agostino Carracci, although it is dated 1576, several years before the engraving. Marcello Oretti, listing the works of art in the Hercolani collection, mentions a ‘wonderful drawing’ of the Adoration of the Kings by Agostino Carracci himself, presumably preparatory for the engraving.⁶¹ This drawing is mentioned by Oretti in another passage of the same manuscript and also in a list of pictures displayed in Bologna during the Holy Sacrament processions in 1759.⁶²

A picture formerly in the Northwick collection is referred to in editions of the National Gallery catalogue from 1915 as a ‘repetition’ of NG 218.⁶³ Cavalcaselle records two others: a ‘feeble, red‐toned’ version in the Ellesmere collection (for most part formed earlier in the nineteenth century) and another one ‘still more modern … feeble and very varnishy production’ in Dudley House, noted as coming from the Fesch collection and possibly by Prospero Fontana, as stated by Waagen.⁶⁴ Cavalcaselle also listed a picture ‘the colour of a reddish tone (wood)’ in the Escorial (in a place called ‘Aposento de Felipe II’), ‘very much in spirit of Peruzzi … like a theatrical scene, with the coliseum, pillars, temples and a marble Caesar on a pedestal in the distance’.⁶⁵ In the Amstelkring Museum, Amsterdam, there is a painted version of Peruzzi’s drawing (116 × 105.5 cm) made by an unknown Netherlandish artist, possibly in the second quarter of the sixteenth century.⁶⁶ The painter introduced some changes, especially to the landscape and to the physiognomies.⁶⁷

Notes