Marco Marziale
active c. 1492–1507
NG 803 
The Circumcision

Nicholas Penny, with contributions by Lisa Monnas, 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).

Oil on canvas, 223.4 × 152.7 cm

Signed and dated on a cartellino:

MARCVS MARTIALIS VENE/TVS IVSSV M^CI EQVITIS/ ET IVR[I]CON. D. THOME / .R. OPVS HOC. P. AN./ M^OCCCCC^O [1500]

Support

The dimensions given above are those of the stretcher. A certain amount of lining canvas is exposed, at most 0.8 cm on the left and right edges, and between 0.3 and 0.4 cm on the upper and lower edges (where, however, it is concealed by brown gummed paper). The canvas is of an uneven tabby weave of medium weight. The cusping of the canvas weave on all edges suggests that only the tacking edges have been trimmed. This canvas has been lined, with glue, onto a machine‐woven tabby‐weave canvas and backed with a loose lining. The softwood stretcher is an English one of 1869/70. It has one vertical and two horizontal crossbars.

There are two horizontal seams in the original canvas, both curving upward towards the edges. One of these passes through the lamp (just below the lid) and the other just below the priest’s hands. The upper left and right corners of the painting have been made up with two irregularly shaped additions; the larger of these, on the right, appears to contain nail‐holes. It seems that the canvas was prepared with an arched top (as was common, indeed usual, for altarpieces) but that there was a change of plan.

Materials and Technique

The only visible pentimenti are those in the lettering on the left portion of the first arch. No underdrawing has been discerned, but incisions are apparent: for the lines of the arches and, more lightly, for the letters (where they are not precisely followed), though not, it seems, for the ornament; also for the grille doors of the incense cupboard, the flowers and scrolls of the baluster support above, and the diaper‐pattern weave of the overhanging cloth.

Gold leaf was used to represent the gilt mosaic vaults. The gold was laid onto an oil mordant (which contains a little red lead) and glazed, with dabs of brown paint pigmented with softwood pitch, to suggest the tesserae of which the mosaic is composed. In the shadowed areas the tesserae are represented by irregular scraps of gold leaf. Venetian painters at this date frequently preferred to represent gold with white and yellow pigment, but this was not always the practice of, for example, Cima da Conegliano, who sometimes used gilding with the pattern of tesserae painted over it,¹ and both Montagna and Buonconsiglio made copious use of gold leaf in the canvas altarpieces they painted in Vicenza around 1500.²

Although the medium was sometimes supposed not to be oil, it has now been identified by GC–MS as heat‐bodied walnut oil. This was employed alone for the white headdress of the woman on the right of the composition, but was mixed with [page 105][page 106][page 107]a little pine resin in the translucent glazy paints such as the green verdigris paint in the lining of the priest’s robe, and the red lake glazes on the brocade robe of the man at the right edge of the painting.³ Joseph’s orange cloak is painted with orpiment and realgar which have undergone some deterioration. Ultramarine has been used for Mary’s blue cloak, with an azurite underpaint. The slightly more purple blue cloak of the woman behind Mary contains ultramarine mixed with a little red lake, while the greenish blue scarf around her neck is painted with azurite. The kneeling boy’s red cloak is painted with vermilion which has been glazed with red lake in the shadows. The dark grey pigments stibnite and galena have been identified in the grey border of the cloak. Only a few other occurrences of stibnite as a pigment in easel paintings have been reported, all in early sixteenth‐century works, and only one other occurrence of galena has been published, on the National Gallery’s altarpiece by Costa and Maineri (NG 1119).⁴ The paint on the triangular additions at the top corners is identical to that on the main part of the canvas, showing that they are not later additions.

Conservation

The painting was measured for its new stretcher by ‘Morrill’ on 28 December 1869 and sent to be lined on 26 January 1870. It returned to the Gallery on 7 February and minor restoration was carried out in watercolours by Raffaelle Pinti, making use of the new winding easel, between that date and 6 April, when the painting was framed and glazed.⁵ A special note was made to the effect that it was not varnished⁶ (presumably the old varnish was merely thinned). In August 1938 it was dusted and ‘surface polished’, and some spots were retouched by ‘Henry’.

Condition

The condition is outstandingly good, especially for a painting on canvas, and this may be connected with its provenance: it has belonged to only one other collection since its removal from the church for which it was painted; it passed only once, rapidly and without intervention, through hands of the art trade; it arrived in the National Gallery at the period in the nineteenth century when the practice of conservation was at its most cautious; it was glazed as soon as it was placed on exhibition in London. Sacchi believed the painting to be of ‘tempera forte’ or ‘mezz’olio’.⁷

There are some areas in which the paint has flaked. In a number of these (notably in the architecture) the losses have never been retouched, but in others discoloured retouchings are now apparent, especially in the face of Joseph and along the lower canvas seam in the damask sleeve of the male donor. The worst flaking or abrasion seems to be in Joseph’s orange cloak, where there is a good deal of repainting, but the shadows of the cloak, probably painted with an earth pigment, are better preserved. The vermilion of the kneeling boy’s cloak has undergone some discoloration to a grey colour in the regions of the cloak where it has been used alone. The blacks are unusually well preserved (notably those in the damask worn by the female donor), as are the greens (in the cloak of the woman immediately behind Christ more than in the lining of the priest’s cloak). The rose‐coloured damask of the male donor’s robe has retained its colour but elsewhere the pink has faded – in the border of the Virgin’s white veil, in the priest’s stole, in his attendant’s headdress, and in the pattern on the yellow and black striped fabric on the female donor’s right sleeve.

Inscription

The words spoken by the aged prophet Simeon when he took Christ in his arms are written (with ingenious compressions involving the interlinking or subordination of letters) on four of the arches of the vaults: NVNC DIMITTIS SERVVM TVVM DOMINE SECVNDVM VERBVM TVVM/ IN PACE QVIA VIDERVNT OCVLI MEI SALVTARE TVVM QVOD/ PARASTI ANTE FATIEM OMNIVM POPVLORVM/ LVMEN AD REVELATIONEM GE[NTI]VM ET GLORIAM PLEBIS TVE ISRAEL. This text, familiar from the Latin liturgy as the Nunc Dimittis, the Canticle or Song of Simeon, is from Luke’s Gospel, 2:29–32: ‘O Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word. For mine eyes have seen thy salvation which thou hast prepared, before the face of all people; A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.’

The cartellino affixed to the top of the cupboard is inscribed MARCVS MARTIALIS VENE/TVS IVSSV M^CI [Magnifici] EQVITIS/ ET IVR[I]CON. [Jurisconsulti] D. THOME / .R. OPVS HOC. P. AN./ M^OCCCCC^O and concludes with a monogram composed of an M crossed by a bar supporting a cross. The inscription may be translated as ‘Marco Marziale of Venice by the magnificence of the Knight and Jurist Tommaso R. who set it up in the year 1500’.

The word ‘Ave’ is written on the balls from which the tassels of the cushion beneath the infant Christ depend. Around the rim of the dome, which is pierced by arched windows, and across the centre of the apse there is a line of invented exotic script, perhaps intended to suggest Hebrew (though only to a public which has no real knowledge of it). Lettering of a similar kind appears on Christ’s hat and cloak and elsewhere in Marziale’s Supper at Emmaus in Berlin (fig. 1, p. 103).

Three capital Ds interlaced within a circle are embroidered in yellow on the neck of the female donor’s dress and in gold on the blue border of her black cloak, and the same letter appears in the studs of the fillet (lenza) passing across her brow. The significance of this is discussed below. Acronyms and cryptic monograms were popular in north Italy around 1500, as is suggested by several other portraits: that of a boy long attributed to Giovanni Ambrogio Preda (NG 1665), dated 1494, with its monogram AMPRF; the profile portrait of a woman also attributed to him (NG 5752), with L and O on the buckle, together with a Moor’s head; the portrait by Caroto in the Louvre (Inv. 894), with CA and HB (interlaced) in the brow‐band.

Attribution and Date

The painting is inscribed with the name of Marziale, and the attribution has never been disputed. It is dated 1500, but there is reason to suppose that it might have been begun a year or more before (see below).

The Painting in San Silvestro

The first published record of the painting can be found in Panni’s guide to the churches of Cremona published in 1762, which describes it as the high altarpiece of the parish church of San Silvestro, Cremona.⁸ However, it is not described as such in detailed episcopal visitations of the church made in 1599 and 1688, nor in Giuseppe Bresciani’s mid‐seventeenth‐century manuscript account of the city’s churches, but Bresciani records both an inscription which documents an ordering of the chancel in 1592 and the fact that a ‘quadro di pittura molto antico della circuncisione’ was placed in the choir, behind the high altar.⁹ This was a common alteration, made in accordance with reforms that were carried out in the late sixteenth century: the high altar was moved forward and given a conspicuous tabernacle, the choir was placed behind the altar and included on its east wall the painting originally made for the altar. (A good example of such a rearrangement is the placing of Cima da Conegliano’s altarpiece The Baptism in S. Giovanni in Bragora, Venice.) Choir paintings of this kind almost qualified as altarpieces, and new ones were designed so that from the nave they would appear as part of the imagery of the altar (for example Guido Reni’s Adoration of the Shepherds in the church of the Certosa di San Martino in Naples). Thus it is reasonable to conclude that Marziale’s painting may have been made for the high altar, though this has not been proved.

The episcopal visitations indicate that several of the side chapels belonged to the Raimondi family, who are recorded in the inscription as having paid for this painting – one of these side chapels was established in 1481 and another in 1497 – but it is clear that they had no burial rights in the chancel. It does seem possible that this painting was made for one of the side chapels. If the painting served as the high altarpiece it would have been a gift made by them, in which case it is likely to have been accompanied by fixtures and vestments, and the visitation of 1688 does note the existence of copes adorned with the arms of the Raimondi. These were thought by the visiting bishop to have an improper prominence. The portraits of the donors in the painting would also then have been disapproved of. Strict reformers such as Carlo Borromeo regarded both heraldry and effigies as offensive in such a context, and in the case of the copes the use of the family’s arms implied a reproach to the abbey of Nonatola, of which S. Silvestro was a dependency, for the abbey should certainly have taken responsibility for vestments.

Subject and Treatment

The text on the architecture refers to the Presentation, but the painting represents the Circumcision in the Temple of Jerusalem. Fifteen figures are present. The centre is occupied by Joseph (carrying a forked staff and a pair of doves), the Virgin Mary, the infant Christ and the officiating priest (evidently the prophet Simeon, as will be shown below). The wizened dark‐skinned woman behind Joseph and the Virgin must be the prophetess Anna, aged ‘four score and four’, who ‘served God with fastings and prayers night and day’ in the Temple (see Luke 2: 37–38). The gloved figure behind Simeon, supporting his cope and holding a book, must be an acolyte or attendant, and his headdress is surely intended to indicate this. The veiled woman who stands directly behind Christ may be Mary Salome, who conventionally attends the Virgin Mary.

The other figures presumably represent portraits of the donors and their family. This is certainly true of the two full‐length figures of a man and woman in profile on the left and right, who must be the chief donors, and of the kneeling boy, presumably their child. The idiosyncratic character of the two male heads behind Simeon (the fourth and fifth from the right) suggests that they are also portraits. The expressions and features of the two other women (first and third heads from the left) and the other man (first on the right) are more conventional, though their position and the women’s hats certainly suggest that they are not part of the biblical narrative. There is, nonetheless, a strong contrast between the manner in which the hair of the first and third female heads and that of the black‐haired woman in profile between them is rendered; the coiling metallic locks of the former are worn also by the veiled woman (Mary Salome?) behind Christ. It may be that a different standard was demanded for the portraits of the principal donors. These figures – especially the heads – are of a quality unparalleled in Marziale’s œuvre, and free from his usual pinched and wooden manner. It is tempting to suppose that he was working from portrait paintings or drawings made by another artist. These would have included the clothes: those of the female donor are in the court style then favoured in Milan (see below), and the lenza around her head and the long broad plait, or coazzone, are also Lombard in style. If Marziale was supplied with drawings he would not have needed to paint the altarpiece in Cremona, and that he did not paint it there is suggested by the confusion concerning its shape (for which see the section on support).

Altarpieces of the Circumcision were generally associated with confraternities dedicated to the Holy Name and it is unusual for individual patrons to be included in them. The conflation of the Circumcision with the Presentation in Marziale’s painting is found in many altarpieces in the Renaissance, but it is most unusual to find Simeon depicted circumcising Christ. However, it was usual in smaller Venetian paintings of the Circumcision, a genre to which Marziale himself contributed, as will be shown. (Other Renaissance Circumcision altarpieces, the conflation of the Circumcision and the Presentation and paintings of Simeon in Venice are all the subject of separate appendices.)

The Donors’ Identity

The patron is identified on the inscribed cartellino (see above) as Tommaso Raimondi (d. 1510), a noted jurist and poet, who must be the figure standing on the right. It follows that the most prominent woman standing on the left must be his wife, [page 109]Doralice Cambiago (fig. 1), and the Ds which adorn her clothes in three places confirm this. Eloquent testimony to the eminence of this family in Cremona at the close of the fifteenth century and to the value they placed on art survives in the exceptionally elegant façade of Palazzo Raimondi at 178 Corso Garibaldi (formerly Corso di S. Luca), with its coupled Ionic pilasters and vestigially diamond‐pointed rustication executed in three different colours of stone (fig. 2). The shields beside the main entrance of the palazzo state that it was begun in 1495 and completed in 1496, but the date 1499 appears on one of the exquisite Corinthian capitals of the cortile, carved by Gian Gaspare Pedone (fig. 3). These capitals commemorate Tommaso’s brother Eliseo (d. 1512) and his wife, Lorenza degli Osi, as well as Tommaso and Doralice. A spectacular chimneypiece dated 1502 and signed by Gian Gaspare Pedoni, now in the Palazzo Municipale, was taken from this palace.¹⁰ In one of the inscriptions on the façade Eliseo declares himself responsible for the design of the palace (‘Romanae architecturae æmulum / Opus Heliseo Raymundo auctore’); he also designed another one, executed by Bernardo da Lera (Contrada Bertesi, no. 8), and is said to have composed a treatise on architecture.¹¹ It is noteworthy that Eliseo was one of the delegates who negotiated Cremona’s incorporation into the Venetian empire in October 1499,¹² and he may have recruited Marziale when he was in Venice. In any case, we might expect Eliseo to be commemorated in the family’s painting for the church of S. Silvestro, just as he was in the neighbouring [page 110]family palace. He may be identified as the bearded man standing beside Tommaso, in which case his wife may be the woman standing behind Doralice. However, these marginal figures are inconspicuous and conventional in appearance, and it seems more likely that Eliseo is the dark‐haired man wearing a cap similar to his brother’s and standing behind Simeon, in which case his wife may be the woman standing behind Joseph. (This dark‐haired man resembles the donor in Marziale’s Supper at Emmaus in Berlin, fig. 1, p. 103, although that figure’s hair is lighter in colour.) The kneeling child has been plausibly identified as Marco, Tommaso and Doralice’s son, who died on 18 October 1568. The small long‐haired, drop‐eared, bell‐collared white dog may have been a family pet: it resembles animals in other pictures of that date and was doubtless of a breed then in fashion. Tommaso was a Knight of the Order of Jerusalem and wrote an account of his pilgrimage to the Holy Land (Peregrinatio ad loca Sancta Hierusalem).¹³ It is possible that he wished to commission an altarpiece in which it would be appropriate to include a reconstruction of the Temple of Jerusalem. Eliseo, whose marriage was childless, had made Tommaso and his son his heirs in his will, but in 1510, two years before he died, he revoked that clause with a codicil.¹⁴

The Prominence of the Donors

Marziale may have painted this altarpiece in Venice. The alterations to its shape favour this hypothesis, and the fact that it was painted on canvas would have made transport easier. The portraits might be seen to argue for the artist’s presence in Cremona, but it is possible that he was provided with portraits to copy. In composition the altarpiece is an expansion of a type of painting invented in Venice (as discussed below), yet ‘full‐scale donors seldom, if ever, appear in Venetian altarpieces before 1500’ and they are relatively rare thereafter.¹⁵ The Raimondi may have seen Lorenzo Costa’s painting of 1488 in S. Giacomo Maggiore, Bologna, in which the Bentivoglio are gathered around the Virgin’s throne, or Francia’s altarpiece made for the same family in S. Maria della Misericordia, Bologna (now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale), commissioned in 1498. In the latter painting Anton‐Galleazzo Bentivoglio, newly returned from pilgrimage to the Holy Land, kneels beside the Virgin, on a par with Saint Augustine. It is likely that the Raimondi would also have known the Pala Sforzesca painted for S. Ambrogio ad Nemus, Milan, in 1494, and now in the Brera, but again the family members, however prominent their placement in the composition, are kneeling.¹⁶

Also unusual is the fact that the male donor is placed on the right rather than the more honorific left, perhaps to associate him with Simeon. The male donor in Bartolomeo Montagna’s Presentation of c. 1515–20 (Milan, Brera) also appears on the right, behind Simeon (though here again the donor is in a kneeling position). The only other example known to me of an altarpiece of the Circumcision that includes donors is the painting signed by Marco del Moro now in deposit in the Accademia, Venice, but painted for the Church of the Gesuiti in that city, which probably dates from the 1570s (fig. 4). Men stand behind Joseph and women behind Mary, and three children kneel in the foreground. It seems likely that these figures belonged to a confraternity. It is interesting that here too they stand and that the males are on the right.¹⁷

Architecture and Furnishings

Some aspects of the building depicted in the painting are naïve, especially the similar heights of the cornice and the architrave, but it is carefully drawn, highly ambitious and without parallel in Marziale’s other work. The figures occupy only a small part of the space – some of them are below the barrel vault, but none is beneath the groin vault, the dome with its pendentives, the farther of the two barrel vaults or the apse. The orthogonals of the entablature form a strong V shape, which is echoed in the composition of the figures, directing attention towards the circumcision.

The deep reveals of the arched windows cut in the dome and the prominent inscriptions on the arches recall those in [page 111][page 112]the basilica of S. Marco (although the decoration is unlike that in the basilica) – a reminder that mosaic was a living art in Venice.¹⁸ Indeed, the city was exporting its specialist craftsmen to Rome and Florence at this date, and the pattern here incorporates attenuated vases and long‐necked birds with vegetal tails, which belong to the vocabulary of the then fashionable all’antica decoration. One of the motifs – most clearly seen at the left on the first panel of the decoration on the first section of the barrel vault – may be intended to suggest the Star of David; another, the pattern of the cage doors on the cupboard beneath the circumcision table, may be intended to suggest the cross of Jerusalem (fig. 5).

These cage doors must be meant to be of gilt metal. The depiction of the foreshortened door is a virtuoso perspectival performance of a kind which is associated with intarsia decorations. Inside the cupboard is a thurible – an incense burner of a quasi‐architectural form, designed for suspension (the chain hangs from the cupola) – and an incense boat. Neither is Hebraic in appearance, but they do at least reflect Marziale’s awareness that incense played an important part in Jewish worship. Other artists, especially those with contacts with Ferrara, had a much better knowledge of such practices, and Costa, in his altarpiece of the Presentation in Bologna, included – in addition to Hebrew inscriptions – menorahs, a spice box and a tallith.¹⁹

The clear glass and gilt‐metal oil lamp (fig. 6) suspended from the centre of the groin vault, and thus behind (although it appears to be directly above) the group of figures, is of a kind invented in Venice and commonly found in north Italian altarpieces of this date. Such fictive lamps must have echoed those which often hung in front of altars.²⁰ In this particular case the metal seems to be enamelled as well as gilt. A very small flame is apparent. One such glass cesendello with enamel decoration (incorporating the stemma of the Tiepolo family) is displayed in the glass museum at Murano. The bird’s egg above the lamp would have glowed magically by day (such eggs were often suspended without lamps), but even more so when illuminated from below.²¹ Not all such lamps look as if they document actual examples, but this one surely does. However, if the egg is an ostrich egg (as was usually the case), it is rather small.

Marziale’s Smaller Painting of the Circumcision

The central portion of Marziale’s altarpiece seems to be derived from a slightly earlier painting of the Circumcision on panel, now in the Museo Correr, Venice (fig. 7),²² which came from the Conservatorio delle Penitenti at S. Giobbe (where it was recorded in 1795).²³ One of Marziale’s earliest known works, it is signed by him and dated 1499. The lighting in this panel comes from the left, as is usual, especially for a painting of this type, but in the altarpiece it comes from the right, presumably to correspond to the actual light conditions in S. Silvestro.

When a tracing of the National Gallery’s painting was placed over the Correr panel²⁴ it was found that the Christ Child and the three hands on him correspond almost exactly, and also that Simeon’s head, although considerably nearer to the Child than in the larger painting, is close in size and similar in outline, which is also true of the heads of Anna and the Virgin. It would thus seem very likely that when Marziale made the altarpiece he used parts of the cartoon that had been made for the panel, or vice versa. The clothes are similar both in colour and in detailing – for instance, the Virgin’s red dress with its arabesque pattern on the upper arm and cuff, and the orphrey of the cope worn by Simeon.

In the Correr panel there is an apse behind the figures, but it was painted without the use of gold. Such a background is unusual in a painting of this format and suggests that a larger composition may have preceded it, or that Marziale may have been preparing his large altarpiece when he painted it. The text of the Nunc Dimittis inscribed on the arches in the altarpiece is repeated in the panel, in minute lettering around the borders of the table‐cloth, which is otherwise identical in pattern.

Two of the attendant figures in the panel are related to figures in the altarpiece: the veiled woman behind Christ, perhaps Mary Salome, is similar, in reverse, to her equivalent in the altarpiece, and the young man behind Simeon, while wearing a headdress similar to that worn by Simeon’s assistant in the altarpiece, occupies the position taken in the altarpiece by a portrait head. In both cases the tilt of the head is similar.

Two differences between the compositions are perhaps of significance. In the panel Joseph’s hair is depicted as a series of separate locks, and those falling nearest to his temples are given a metallic coil like that favoured by some of Mantegna’s followers – it may be that in the altarpiece Marziale felt that he had indulged this taste sufficiently in the women’s hair. It is also noteworthy that in the altarpiece the Virgin’s veil, with [page 113]its remarkably stiff and complex folds, is derived from that which Bellini invented for the attendant female in his version of the subject (fig. 13), though here the veil is reversed, which may explain why the debt has escaped notice; however, it was not taken from a cartoon or tracing reversed, as might be suspected. The veil worn by the Virgin in the panel is softer, but its folds follow the same basic pattern as in the altarpiece. This does again suggest the possibility that, despite the obvious conclusion to be drawn from the dates on the two paintings, the Correr panel may in fact derive from the design made for the larger altarpiece or, at least, it may have been painted at the same time.

Garments and Textiles

In 1871 the Art Journal urged ‘art manufacturers’ to adopt patterns found in Renaissance paintings in the National Gallery.²⁵ On 14 February 1872, soon after Marziale’s painting was put on display, John Ruskin wrote to William Ward from Oxford asking him to make a careful drawing from the unshadowed portion of Tommaso Raimondi’s damask sleeve, to serve as a pattern for the wallpaper in his new house at Brantwood in the Lake District. This paper can be seen in a view of Ruskin’s study there (fig. 8), densely hung with water‐colours by Turner, and it was also used in the drawing room.²⁶ Marziale’s work is also mentioned by G.T. Robinson in his article on fabric sources in June 1886,²⁷ and in the same year both Raimondi’s sleeve and Simeon’s cope were illustrated in Sydney Vacher’s Fifteenth century Italian ornament chiefly taken from brocades and stuffs found in pictures in the National Gallery London,²⁸ which was intended to provide models for modern work – no doubt for High Anglican vestments as well as for wallpapers.

Simeon (by Lisa Monnas)

Simeon wears a set of Christian vestments: a cope, stole and alb. Over his head he wears an amice – a rectangle of white linen, with tapes for fastening and an applied decorative panel. The latter usually matched the apparels, or embroidered ornamentation, of the alb, as shown here. The amice is normally placed over the priest’s head while he is vesting himself, to prevent silk vestments from becoming soiled. It is then rolled down into the neck of the vestment, appearing as a decorative band around the neck. Unusually, Simeon is here shown wearing the amice over his head while performing the circumcision. Presumably the amice represents the tallith, or shawl, used to cover men’s heads during prayer in Jewish worship.

The young man standing behind Simeon wears a similar combination of Christian vestments and ‘exotic’ dress. Like Simeon, he wears an amice on his head. Around his neck there is a striped shawl, another departure from Italian dress of the period. Stripes were often employed to create an exotic effect in the depiction of biblical scenes.

Simeon’s cope has a wide, embroidered orphrey band along the front edge and a detachable hood (made from a cloth of gold quite unrelated in design to the main cloth of the cope), a construction which is customary for this type of vestment. The addition of a narrow band woven or embroidered with a pseudo‐kufic script along the hem of the vestment is, however, unusual and is probably another ‘exotic’ touch. The material of the main body of the cope is a white silk damask brocaded in coloured silks. Several surviving silk textiles are of related design. All of them are five‐shaft satin damasks with a white‐on‐white pattern of cusped lobed elements forming an ogival trellis within which there are brocaded bunches of flowers or vases of flowers flanked by addorsed parrots or vases containing peacock feathers and stylised dianthus flowers, sometimes with a scrolling cloud motif from which rays of sunlight emanate.²⁹ Marziale has added more colour to the design than is found in any surviving brocaded damask of this type. Silk designers, with a view to economy, naturally restricted the amount of colour and the amount of brocading. In the Supper at Emmaus (1506, Accademia, Venice) Marziale reused the damask design from Simeon’s cope, with some additional features. He inserted a prominent pomegranate motif – symbolic of the Resurrection – on the robe of the standing figure, just where there are hands gesturing towards Christ, probably to underscore the Eucharistic aspect of the painting. As in NG 803, rather more details of the design in the Supper at Emmaus are shown brocaded, in more areas, and with more colours of silk than in existing textiles.³⁰

The Donors (by Lisa Monnas)

Perhaps the most striking features of Doralice’s dress are the applied embroidered bands at the neck of her bodice and the hem of her mantle, which display her initials, underlining the fact that this sumptuous ensemble was tailor‐made for her. The splendid striped sleeves are made of a cloth which is different from that of the body of the dress. With the shirt strategically showing through in places, and with its decorative trailing ribbons, the sleeve recalls some features (though not the cut) of Beatrice d’Este’s dress in the Pala Sforzesca. The stripes are composed of alternating panels of black velvet and cloth of gold with a barely discernible pattern defined by a fine red outline (possibly velvet, or a lampas silk?). The linen shirt has seams embroidered with fine black embroidery at the shoulder and at the cuff.

Doralice’s dress has a pomegranate design woven in a fine red outline upon a white ground. An example of this type of patterning (that is, a red linear pattern on a white ground), though with a rather different design, is preserved in the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Vienna.³¹ Her mantle is of a sumptuous deep‐blue damask woven with a pomegranate design of the type characterised as ferronnerie – a design which is very similar (if not identical) to that of the cloth from which her husband’s coat is made, so there is a visual link between the two donors.

Tommaso Raimondi wears a splendid coat with ostentatiously broad sleeves, displaying a large amount of expensive cloth; its cuffs and collar are faced with cloth of gold (most probably of lampas weave) bearing a pattern finely outlined in red. The motifs are barely discernible, but appear to be the sort of busy arrangement of small fruits and flowers typical of this type of cloth in the late fifteenth century. Over his right shoulder Tommaso seems to be wearing a stole of cloth of gold which matches the facing of his coat. The main cloth of the coat is a damask silk with a very large‐scale ferronnerie design.³² Damask silks woven with pomegranate designs are known to have existed much earlier in the century – see, for example, Benozzo Gozzoli’s Adoration of the Magi of 1459 in the Medici Chapel of the Medici‐Riccardi Palace in Florence. Silks (both velvets and damask) with ferronnerie designs were depicted by Carlo Crivelli throughout his career. Ferronnerie damasks seem to have remained in fashion, in Lombardy at least, until the end of the century. Lodovico Sforza wears one in the Pala Sforzesca. Such silks were woven in a range of pattern sizes, and the larger the pattern, the more expensive the weave. While the pattern of the cope worn by Simeon is comparable in size to the repeats in existing textile models, the ferronnerie designs worn by Tommaso Raimondi and his wife are strikingly large compared to surviving examples, with the double advantage of displaying their wealth and being legible by spectators viewing the altarpiece from a distance.

The Table-cloth

The table‐cloth of fine linen (fig. 9) embroidered with yellow and blue silk, with some passages of openwork and incorporating eight‐pointed stars and rectangles divided by diagonal bands, probably records a cloth imported from Egypt, because, as Marianne Ellis has noted, it corresponds closely with a fragment of mamluk work dated to the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century.³³

Acquisition by the Gallery

The first evidence of any interest in Marziale by the National Gallery occurs in the correspondence of the second Director, William Boxall, who in October 1866 was offered Marziale’s Adulteress before Christ by Cavaliere F. Discart of Modena [page 115](through William Perry, the Consul General in Venice). Boxall was sufficiently interested to arrange for Cavalcaselle to view it, but he rejected it as inflated in price.³⁴ On 14 August 1869 Boxall was in Cremona, and it may have been because he had seen the Marziale that he wrote to his friend the great connoisseur Giovanni Morelli, then in Munich (the letter has not survived). Morelli replied to his ‘Carissimo ed Egregio’ friend on 24 August explaining that he had been afflicted ‘d’una specia di spleen’, which was cured by walking in the Alps. He gave Boxall news of pictures on the market, among them ‘a large picture in tempera on canvas by Marco Marziale, the best and most important work by this master that I ever saw’.³⁵ A week later, on 2 September, Boxall received a letter from Layard, a Trustee of the Gallery and a friend of Morelli, who had seen two altarpieces by Marziale, together with other pictures (a ‘Bellini’ and a ‘Carpaccio’) in the possession of the Milanese dealer Baslini – ‘one, the circumcision, would scarcely do for the National Gallery, the other is rich in colours, has some fine heads and is a good specimen of this rare master’.³⁶ On 14 September Morelli wrote again, describing it as a ‘chef d’œuvre’ which he hoped the Gallery would buy.³⁷ Morelli had also written to Layard; his letter of 23 August had singled out one of the Marziales as especially beautiful, but Layard was perhaps not sure to which one he referred (although it was certainly the Circumcision, since Morelli observed that it was painted in tempera – a claim often, but mistakenly, made concerning it). Boxall visited Baslini on 21 September and purchased both altarpieces, together with a Virgin and Child by G. Montagna, for £1,680.³⁸ The Circumcision cost £1,000 (£1,005 according to the Annual Report). In making arrangements for the transport of these pictures, in a letter to McCracken (the Gallery’s London agent) on the same day, Boxall emphasised that ‘special precaution’ should be taken not to let the pictures cross the Channel in stormy weather, since painting in tempera was ‘liable to be ruined by getting wet’.³⁹ To the Keeper, Wornum, in a letter also of 21 September, he conceded that none of those acquisitions was ‘of the most pleasing school’.⁴⁰ On the following day he wrote at more length:One of the pictures by Marziale is I think most desirable for the National Gallery – It is painted in tempera on canvas and will require to be very delicately handled. It is said to be the best and most important work of the painter. It is severe and simple with little beauty but with a grand mantegnesque feeling… There is the signature of the painter, the name of the Donor and the year 1500 beautifully and distinctly written on a label… so that at all events in one sense it will satisfy Lord Winchilsea’s canon – that every picture purchased for the Gallery should be able to prove its authenticity in a court of Justice. The second picture by Marziale is a Madonna enthroned painted in oil and quite worthy of the gallery but as it requires to be got together with some trifling restoration to be made I hope that you will keep both the pictures in their cases and not suffer them to be seen till I return. Marziale has little feeling for beauty and tho’ neither of these pictures will be likely to please a certain class of critics, they are beyond question of importance in the history of art – and besides which they are the two best works of a very rare master.⁴¹ [page 116]On 3 January 1870 Wornum reported to Boxall that the Marziale was in the hands of ‘Morrill’, the Gallery’s restorer, who ‘will no doubt make as good a job as can be of it’.⁴² According to Wornum’s diary it was hung ‘in a glass case’ on 7 April 1870.

Provenance

Probably painted as the high altarpiece of S. Silvestro (see above) and recorded in the choir there in 1762.⁴³ It was still there in 1794⁴⁴ but soon afterwards was sold, probably to Conte Giovanni Battista Biffi (see pp. 361–2), whence it passed into the possession of the Sommi‐Picenardi (see pp. 393–4).⁴⁵ It was inherited by the Marchese Araldi Erizzi and sold in 1869 to the Milanese dealer Baslini, from whom it was bought by the National Gallery in the same year.

The Frame and Display

The painting is exhibited in an unusual carved and gilded frame, which is probably an early nineteenth‐century English imitation of an early or mid‐eighteenth‐century English model. It has an outer moulding with radial flutes (the flutes filled with husks) and there is fretwork in the frieze. It seems likely that the painting was given this frame as a temporary expedient (perhaps because of a coincidental fit) and that the frame originally belonged around another painting in the collection. The painting certainly had another frame in 1932, because Draper’s bill, submitted on 11 November that year, mentions deepening the rebate of a ‘reverse reel top pattern frame’ for NG 803,⁴⁶ doubtless a frame of the pattern discussed in this catalogue in connection with Boccaccino (NG 806). The reason for the alteration was perhaps to provide glazing; previously the painting and frame were encased in a shadow box (the ‘glass case’ mentioned in Wornum’s diary), as can be seen in a photograph of 1923 showing Room VI (present Room 29), where the painting is displayed as a pendant to Crivelli’s Annunciation (NG 739). These paintings framed a cluster of works by or close to Bellini, with Giovanni Bellini’s Circumcision (NG 1455) above his Doge Lorenzo Loredan (NG 189) in the centre. Marziale’s painting was thus in a place of honour. In the same year the Director, Charles Holmes, wrote with admiration of the ‘odd pleasant oppositions of indigo blue and orange, of cold grey and glowing gold, with which the customary Venetian palette of green and rosy red and ultramarine is here so audaciously enriched’.⁴⁷ This must be one of the last favourable comments which the painting has attracted in print, at least in English. For over half a century it has been consigned to the Lower Floor of the Gallery.

Appendix I
The Circumcision and its Significance

According to the Gospel of Saint Luke (2: 21), Christ was circumcised ‘when eight days were accomplished’ and ‘his name was called Jesus’ as ordained by the angel ‘before he was conceived in the womb’. At that date this operation would have been performed at home, by the head of the household; today, among almost all Jews it is performed by a mohel. Circumcision was (and remains) an essential sign of orthodoxy within the Jewish faith. It has to be performed on the eighth day after the birth, even when this falls on the Sabbath or the Day of Atonement. The idea – common in medieval and Renaissance art – that Christ’s circumcision took place in the Temple arose from a desire to give the event a special solemnity, and perhaps also because it had been conflated with the Presentation and the Purification (as discussed below). Pilgrims to the Holy Land were told that the event took place in the church at Bethlehem because the cave where Christ was born was too dark, and ‘it may be that the circumcisers disliked the smell of the stable’.⁴⁸

The Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine gives us an idea of how the Circumcision was understood by Christians more than a thousand years after it took place. The feast (1 January) was regarded as an octave of the Nativity; it was the day when the Son of God received the name divinely appointed for him; it was the day upon which his blood was first shed (the first of the five times this occurred and thus the beginning of our redemption, foreshadowing the Passion); it was a demonstration of the Incarnation and proof that the Son of God had truly become flesh and blood; it was an act of obedience to the institutions of the law of Moses – and Christ, by obeying these, removed from the Jews any justification for their conduct toward him. In addition, Voragine noted that the relic of Christ’s foreskin was preserved in Rome in the Sanctum Sanctorum.⁴⁹

Further authoritative commentary on the Circumcision was provided by four sermons on the subject by Saint Bernard, [page 117]to which reference was often made by Renaissance theologians. Bernard (like Aquinas) followed Saint John Damascene and other early church fathers who related the ceremony to that of baptism, which had replaced it, and which is when Christians receive their names; indeed, baptism is ‘Circumcision of the whole man’ (‘quae totisu est hominis integra circumcisio’). Bernard considered it to be a mark of chastity, a wound inflicted on the ‘organ of Leviathan’, the part of the body that is least easy to control – although there is no evidence of this attitude in Judaic tradition. For him it was a sign of Christ’s humility that in addition to taking human form he submitted to this token ‘circumcision’ of sinful flesh, akin to the ‘brand inflicted on a thief’ (‘cauterio latronis’), for he was without sin.⁵⁰

Renaissance sermons delivered on the feast of the Circumcision strongly emphasise the shedding of blood,⁵¹ but painters (with the notable exception of Barocci⁵²) placed the emphasis elsewhere – most commonly on the name of Jesus. The meaning of his name and of all other names given to Christ, notably those in the prophecy of Isaiah (9:6), were also much expanded upon by Bernard and by subsequent preachers.⁵³ The chapels dedicated to the Circumcision contain numerous texts related to the name of Jesus.⁵⁴ It has recently been pointed out that anti‐Jewish polemics in the fifteenth century sometimes represented the ceremony of circumcision as grotesque, but this could have had no relevance for depictions of Christ’s circumcision.⁵⁵

Appendix II
Altarpieces of the Circumcision

Altarpieces depicting the Circumcision were rare in Italy during the fifteenth century, but they became increasingly popular towards the close of the sixteenth. Some of them are associated with the veneration of the Most Holy Name of Jesus, promoted by the preaching of the Franciscan friar Saint Bernardino, who introduced as a devotional aid the badge with the trigram IHS, and others are associated with the Jesuits, the religious company that was devoted to the name of Jesus. Examples in the former category include Signorelli’s altarpiece (fig. 10) painted for the Oratory of the Compagnia del Sacro Nome, attached to S. Francesco, Volterra, c. 1486–9; examples in the latter category include the high altarpiece of the church of the Gesù in Rome by Girolamo Muziano (now Palazzo Gesù, 1587–9) and that of the Jesuit church in Ancona by Orazio Gentileschi (now in the Pinacoteca Comunale, c. 1605–10). However, the most common patrons were confraternities – often Dominican – dedicated to Il Nome di Dio (altarpieces by Barocci, Boscoli, Claudio Ridolfi and Pietro Mera belong to this category).⁵⁶ It is common to find an angel holding a scroll bearing the words ‘Vocatum est nomen eius Jesum [or Jesus]’ or an IHS in a glory.⁵⁷ Marziale’s painting is unusual inasmuch as it seems not to have been painted for such a confraternity, and has a conspicuous text which relates to the Presentation of Christ in the Temple rather than to the name of Jesus.

Appendix III
The Conflation of the Circumcision with the Presentation and the Purification

In the Gospel of Saint Luke, the very brief mention of the Circumcision (2: 21) is followed by an account of the Purification of the Virgin and the Presentation of Christ in the Temple (2: 22–5): ‘And when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished, they brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord… And to offer a sacrifice according to that which is said in the Law of the Lord, a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons. And, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon.’ In Marziale’s painting it is the aged prophet Simeon’s canticle which is inscribed in the arches of the building, and he himself is performing the circumcision (as will be discussed below), while Joseph clutches a pair of doves.

There was little appreciation of the fact that the Purification and the Presentation would have been more than a week apart, but only a little education was required to know that the Circumcision was a separate event. Indeed, the difference was underlined by distinct feast days, that of the Circumcision falling on 1 January and that of the Purification and Presentation on 2 February. But there were theological reasons for associating these events; Saint Bernard, indeed, paralleled the Circumcision and Purification, noting that they both represented a submission to the Law of Moses, which had been made as an example to us (purification would hardly have been needed after a virgin birth). One of the earliest Italian altarpieces of the Circumcision–that of c. 1400 (fig. 11) in the Pinacoteca Comunale, Ancona⁵⁸ – features a Gothic temple, with Christ being held by Simeon in the left compartment, Christ being circumcised in the centre, and the Virgin entering the temple with him on the right. It might be argued that Marziale, obliged to comply with a unified conception of time and place, simply merged these scenes. It should be noted that paintings of the Presentation would be expected to be paintings also of the Purification, since the feast of Hypapante (marking the reception of Christ by Simeon, in origin a feast of the Eastern Church) was established in the eleventh century, occurring on the same day as that of the Purification (associated with the blessing of candles and hence known as Candlemas), but altarpieces of the Presentation do not include references to the Circumcision.⁵⁹

At least one Spanish Counter‐Reformation author was agitated by the conflation in a painting by Pedro Campaña of ‘el misterio de la Circuncisión con el de la Purificación’,⁶⁰ but there can be no doubt that such conflation could receive orthodox theological sanction. The altarpiece (now in Palazzo Comunale, Ascoli Piceno; fig. 12) that Simone de Magistris painted in 1589 for the chapel of the Confraternità del Nome di Dio o del Buon Gesù in S. Maria della Rocca, Offida, includes Simeon greeting the Child, but surgical equipment is carried behind him. The name of Jesus blazes in the heavens, and the events are witnessed by Pope Sixtus V and (probably) his legate Cardinal Sforza, as well as by Isaiah and David. Since the confraternity had been founded only a few years previously by a learned Dominican preacher, it seems most unlikely that this very careful and unusual treatment reflects vulgar error or local tradition.⁶¹

Careful examination of other paintings of the Circumcision reveals that elements of the Presentation or the Purification have been incorporated into them. Thus in Lanino’s altarpiece in the Oratorio del Gesù at Casale Monferrato of 1554 (modelled on a Dürer print) a candle is carried;⁶² and in Claudio Ridolfi’s painting of the Circumcision, made in about 1616 for the altar of the Compagnia del Nome di Gesù (also known as the Confraternità della Circoncisione) in S. Tommaso, Verona (now Museo di Castelvecchio), there is a pair of doves in a basket in the foreground.⁶³ The conflation presumably helped reinforce the themes of cleansing and of joyful acknowledgement of a new future for mankind.

In Signorelli’s altarpiece mentioned above (fig. 10), the grey‐bearded old man behind the circumcision group must be Simeon, because he is holding up his arms (the arms which held Christ), is evidently making a prophecy, and, furthermore, has a halo (for which no other figure in this company, except the Holy Family, could qualify). In other cases we may suspect that Simeon is intended as one of the witnesses to the event, sometimes as the person who holds Christ while the operation is performed (as in the Lanino altarpiece, where the inspired and aged woman behind him may represent Anna, or in Romulo Cincinato’s altarpiece of the early 1570s, now in the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid). In one crucial respect, however, Marziale’s Circumcision seems to differ from all other altarpieces of the subject, for not only is Simeon present but he appears actually to be performing the operation. This seems to reflect a tradition in Venice and elsewhere in north‐east Italy – a tradition exemplified in many paintings, although not in any other altarpieces. Probably the earliest known instance is Mantegna’s exquisite panel of the 1460s in the Uffizi, but it is best known from a type of painting very popular in Venice, one of which was painted by Marziale himself.

Appendix IV
Paintings of Simeon in Venice

Nothing in the Gospel of Saint Luke indicates that Simeon was a priest or a high priest in the Temple, but the Apocryphal Protoevangelist describes him as the successor to Zaccarias, and in one version of the Apocryphal Acts of Pilate he is described as a high priest.⁶⁴ He was also venerated as a saint, probably more so in Venice than anywhere else in Italy (the city was unusual in having several churches dedicated to saints of the Old Testament, for example S. Zaccaria, S. Moisè, S. Samuele, S. Giobbe). Simeon’s presence among the saints flanking the Virgin and Child is not uncommon in paintings made in north‐east Italy c. 1500 and in the following decades,⁶⁵ but he usually appears in paintings of the size and format of the panel by Marziale in the Correr (see fig. 7, p. 113). The majority in this latter category represent him taking the infant Christ into his arms, but a significant number show him performing the circumcision – and that it is Simeon who is depicted is clear from his identical appearance in the two variant types of painting.

The earliest example of a painting of Simeon with the Holy Family may be Mantegna’s Presentation in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, which looks as if it dates from the mid‐1450s.⁶⁶ Bellini’s version of the same composition now in the Querini‐Stampalia Gallery, Venice, probably dates from the following decade. Bellini also devised another composition of this subject, which exists in several versions; so too does his composition of the Circumcision, the best rendering of which is the signed painting in the National Gallery (fig. 13). Thirty‐four copies of the latter are listed by Heinemann.⁶⁷ The invention has been dated to before 1502 because the copy signed by Marco Bello in the Accademia dei Concordi, Rovigo, is dated to that year,⁶⁸ but in view of the use made by Marziale of the veil of the woman on the right (pointed out above) Bellini’s picture must have existed by 1499. The popularity of paintings of this subject and format gradually declined after 1520 – a late example probably by Licinio may date from around 1540.⁶⁹

More than fifty paintings of this type (or types) made in or near Venice between 1480 and 1530 have survived. There must have been a reason why they were made. In the case of the Mantegna it has been proposed that it was a votive offering marking the safe birth of the artist’s first child⁷⁰ (the presence of portraits of the artist and his wife lend some support to this) and perhaps these paintings served as something like the ‘birth plates’ that had been popular in Florence at an earlier date.⁷¹ Although two examples of this type of painting are currently displayed in Venetian churches – one above a door in S. Maria Formosa and the other in an apse chapel of S. Zaccaria – there is no reason to suppose that they were made for churches, and the latter seems to have been presented to the church in the early nineteenth century.⁷² Presumably most of these paintings were made for the home. Certainly Mantegna’s ‘quadro in tavola picola’ with half‐length figures showing ‘Nostra Donna che presenta il puttino alla circoncisione’ (the verb is perhaps significant) was recorded by Michiel in the house of Pietro Bembo.⁷³

The local veneration of Simeon is likely to be relevant. The Venetian church which is dedicated to him (S. Simeone Profeta, or S. Simeone Grande) is said to have been founded in 967 and certainly it existed by 1073.⁷⁴ Simeon’s relics were prized. Charlemagne obtained one of his arms, which was kept at Aachen; another (one should say the other) was in the Abbey of St Denis. A relic of Simeon in the church of St Katharina, Cologne, was the pretext for Stefan Lochner’s altarpiece of the Presentation in that church (now Darmstadt, Landesmuseum). But his entire body was venerated in Constantinople, to where it had been translated from Syria in the second half of the sixth century. After the sack of [page 120]Constantinople in 1203 the body was removed by the Venetians to their new possession in Zara (Zadar) in Croatia. When Zara was part of the Angevin kingdom during the period 1350 to 1409, Elizabeth of Hungary inspired five noblemen to create a silver shrine for the saint. The shrine is still there, but the Venetians claimed that they had removed the relic to the church of S. Simeone Grande in Venice, where a sarcophagus and a marble slab certainly appear to belong to shrines of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries which may have been removed from Zara. In Venice a new shrine was made in front of the high altar, and the full‐length marble effigy from this – one of the finest effigies of early fifteenth‐century Italy – is now displayed at the east end of the north aisle.⁷⁵ Nevertheless, it must be conceded that, had the cult of Simeon been very active, there would have been a confraternity devoted to him, yet there is no record of one.

Notes