EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1.
Brief Description of item
Domenico Zampieri, called Il Domenichino (1581-1641)
Saint John the Evangelist, 1620s
Oil on canvas, 259 x 199.4 cm (102 x 78 ½ in)
The painting is in good condition for a work of its date and size.
2.
Context
Provenance:
Possibly Cardinal Benedetto Giustiniani (1554-1621); his brother Marchese
Vincenzo Giustiniani (1564-1637), Palazzo Giustiniani, Rome, and by descent
until about 1806; sold in Paris to [Alexis Delahante], who sent the painting to
London; [W. Harris, Bond Street, London]; Richard Hart Davis, M.P. (17661842), Grosvenor Square, London, and Mortimer House, Clifton,
Gloucestershire; sold with his collection in about 1813 to Phillip John Miles,
M.P. (d. 1845), Leigh Court, Somerset; by descent to Sir Cecil Miles, 3rd Bt;
his posthumous sale, Christie’s, London, 13 May 1899, lot 19 (bought in); [M.
Colgaghi, London]; A.L. Christie, Tapeley Park, Devonshire, and
Glyndebourne, East Sussex,
Exhibited:
London, Royal Academy, Exhibition of Works by Holbein & Other Masters of
the 16th and 17th Centuries, 9 December 1950-7 March 1951, no. 328; Rome,
Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Il Seicento Europeo: Realismo, Classicismo,
Barocco, December 1956-January 1957, no. 90; London, Thomas Agnew &
Sons, England and the Seicento: a loan exhibition of Bolognese paintings
from British Collections, 6 November-7 December 1973, no. 28; Washington,
National Gallery of Art, The Treasure Houses of Great Britain: Five Hundred
Years of Private Patronage and Art Collecting, 3 November 1985-16 March
1986, no. 499; London, National Gallery, on loan July 1992-April 1994.
Key references:
G.P. Bellori, Le vite de’ pittori, scultori et architetti moderni (Rome, 1672),p.
206; G. Vasi, Indice storico del Gran Prospetto di Roma (Rome, 1804), p.
345; J. Young, A Catalogue of the Pictures at Leigh Court near Bristol, the
Seat of Philip John Miles, Esq. M.P. (London, 1822), no. 5; W. Buchanan,
Memoirs of Painting (London, 1824), vol. 2, pp. 154 and 193, no. 16; G.F.
Waagen, Works of Art and Artists in England (London, 1838), vol. 2, pp. 1401; ibid., Treasures of Art in Great Britain (London, 1852), vol. 3, p. 182; J.
Pope-Hennessy, The Drawings of Domenichino in the Collection of His
Majesty the King at Windsor Castle (London, 1948), pp. 25 and 104, nos.
1246-7; L. Salerno, ‘The Picture Gallery of Vincenzo Giustiniani, II: The
Inventory, Part 1’, Burlington Magazine 102 (March, 1960), p. 102; G.R.
Reitlinger, The Economics of Taste (London, 1962), pp. 261-4; E. Borea,
Domenichino (Milan, 1965), pp. 86 and 188, no. 94; H. Brigstocke, William
Buchanan and the 19th century Art Trade (London, 1982), p. 52; R. Spear,
Domenichino (New Haven & London, 1982), pp. 64, 250, 270-1, no. 100, pl.
325; G.M. Merz, ‘Reynolds’s borrowings’, Burlington Magazine 137 (1995),
pp. 516-7, fig. 49; G. Perini, ‘Paura di volare’, in Domenichino, 1581-1641,
exh. cat. (Rome, Palazzo Venezia, 1996-7), pp. 84-5 and 114, note 405; S.
Danesi Squarzina, La collezione Giustiniani (Milan, 2003), Inventari I, pp. 1367, no. 86, pl. 49, and pp. 343-5, no. 170; Inventari II, p. 289, no. 73 and p.
374, no. 101.
3.
Waverley criteria
The painting meets Waverley criterion 2 owing to its outstanding aesthetic
importance as one of the grandest ‘single-figure’ compositions of the Roman
Classical Baroque style.
DETAILED CASE
1.
Detailed description of item(s) if more than in Executive summary,
and any comments.
This important masterwork of Italian seventeenth-century painting epitomizes
the grandeur and nobility of the Classical Baroque style in Rome. Saint John
the Evangelist, the author of the fourth gospel and, by tradition, the
Apocalypse, is boldly depicted at a moment of revelation, his pen arrested.
The putti have been assisting with the books, but the Evangelist has turned to
raise his eyes toward the true source of his inspiration. At his feet is his
attribute, an eagle, the bird thought to fly closest to heaven. The landscape
behind presumably represents the island of Patmos, where John was exiled
by Domitian and was believed to have written the Apocalypse.
Depictions of divine inspiration were a mainstay of Baroque artists and the
heroic pose and focused, serene gaze of Domenichino’s figure make it one of
the finest interpretations of the classical tradition. Although Domenichino is
well represented in UK public and private collections, none of the paintings
can equal the grand scale and conception of this, one of his greatest easel
paintings. It is undoubtedly the best work by the artist remaining in private
hands and its export would be lamentable for the representation of Italian
Baroque painting in this country.
2.
Detailed explanation of the outstanding significance of the
item(s).
Domenichino was one of the most important Italian artists of the seventeenth
century. After training with Denis Calvaert and Ludovico Carracci in his native
Bologna, he moved to Rome in 1602 to work with Annibale Carracci in the
creation of the Farnese Gallery. After the deaths of Annibale (1609) and
Caravaggio (1610), Domenichino became Rome’s leading painter, a position
he maintained until 1631, when he moved to Naples. Inspired by Annibale, he
based his work principally on the study of nature and Roman classicism as
manifest in the art of antiquity and the Renaissance. However, like his
mentor, he turned again and again to the colour and emotion of northern
Italian art and in particular the works of Correggio and the Venetians.
Domenichino was instrumental in the development of a hyper-classical style,
so evident in Saint John the Evangelist, that influenced the course of the
Italian Grand Manner and subsequent neo-classical movements as well.
Much of his reputation is based on his monumental fresco decorations, but his
easel paintings and numerous surviving drawings demonstrate his mastery of
figure design on all scales. Domenichino was also a significant force in the
development of the ideal landscape, inspiring Poussin and Claude, and his
ability is well demonstrated in the poetic vista behind Saint John.
For the private market, Domenichino made something of a speciality of
depicting single figures, especially saints and sibyls, being inspired by the
divine, although most often on a smaller scale. Domenichino constantly
reworked his ideas and this painting was one of two monumental treatments
of Saint John the Evangelist made in the 1620s. The composition is clearly
related to the pendentive fresco in San Andrea della Valle, Rome (1624-5), in
which Domenichino unified the illusionism of Correggio in Parma Cathedral
with the grandeur of Michelangelo’s Prophets and Sibyls on the Sistine
Ceiling. In the fresco, the saint floats in the open sky, while in the painting
under consideration, freed from the illusionistic context, the figure becomes
still and the design even more concentrated and perfected. One can sense
Domenichino’s study of the Laocoön and Michelangelo’s ignudi, but their
tortured character is transformed into a figure that conveys internalized
spiritual exaltation. Two preparatory drawings at Windsor demonstrate that
the painting was planned with the artist’s customary care. The overall
composition was established and squared in Pope-Hennessy no. 1246,
although the artist introduced numerous small revisions in the painting. No.
1247 is a study for the standing putto on the left.
Saint John the Evangelist was made for one of the Giustiniani brothers, who
rank among the most important collectors and patrons in the first half of the
seventeenth century in Rome. The elder, Cardinal Benedetto, died in 1621
and even though a painting of this subject was recorded without attribution in
his inventory, the style of Saint John the Evangelist makes it far more likely
that it was made for Marchese Vincenzo later in the decade. Vincenzo had
first employed Domenichino in 1609 for the frescoes of the Life of Diana in his
palace at Bassano Romano. The inventory of the family palace at S. Luigi dei
Francesi, Rome, made following Vincenzo’s death in 1637 records that
Domenichino’s Saint John was hanging with works of the same size depicting
the other Evangelists: Saint Matthew by Nicolas Régnier, Saint Mark by
Francesco Albani, and Saint Luke by Guido Reni. The Giustiniani were
progressive collectors with eclectic tastes and in this ensemble the Marchese
seemingly wanted to invite comparison of the work of four of the best
contemporary painters. It is lamentable that the other three paintings are lost
because the high quality of Domenichino’s Saint John suggests that the
competitive situation and the important patron compelled the artists to
produce their best work.
The greater part of Domenichino’s surviving drawings, almost 1800 in
number, are in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle. Significant paintings
by the artist are also found in British collections, although none can compete
with the impressive ‘wall power’ of Saint John the Evangelist. The most direct
comparison can be drawn with the Saint Agnes, oil on canvas, 213.4 x 152.4
cm (Royal Collection), which is not quite as large, but also concentrates on a
single saint using similar compositional devices. It was painted about 1620
and demonstrates that Saint John was made much later in the decade, when
the spell of Raphael had been tempered by renewed study of Michelangelo
and both design and colour had become more bold. The Persian Sibyl, 16235, oil on canvas, 79 x 69 cm (London, Wallace Collection) is a fine half-length
study of divine inspiration. Although not strictly applicable as a UK holding,
another single-figure, Saint Mary Magdalen (Sir Denis Mahon, on loan to the
National Gallery of Ireland) is a useful comparison as it seems to pre-date
Saint John the Evangelist by only a few years.
The only relevant painting in private hands is The Cumaean Sibyl, oil on
canvas, 131 x 198 cm (Scotland, Private Collection), which was painted in the
early 1620s, not long after Saint Agnes. Although it is a good autograph work,
it does not approach the scale or excellence of execution of Saint John the
Evangelist.
With the exception of eight frescoes of the Life of Apollo from the Villa
Aldobrandini, Frascati (1616-18), the holdings of The National Gallery include
only small works from earlier in Domenichino’s career: Vision of Saint
Jerome, before 1603, oil on canvas, 51.1 x 39.8 cm; Saint George and the
Dragon, about 1610, oil on wood, 52.7 x 61.8 cm; Landscape with Tobias and
the Angel, 1610-13, oil on copper, 45.1 x 33.9 cm. The National Gallery is
also able to show Landscape with a Fortified Town, 1634-5, oil on canvas,
112 x 193 cm (on loan from Sir Denis Mahon).
Other major examples of Domenichino’s paintings in the UK are quite
disparate and include: Portrait of Monsignor Giovanni Battista Agucchi, 16034, oil on canvas, 60.3 x 46.3 cm (York City Art Gallery), also attributed to
Annibale Carracci; The Vision of Saint Jerome, about 1607, oil on copper,
49.3 x 37.5 cm (Sir Denis Mahon on loan to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford);
Adoration of the Shepherds (after Annibale Carracci), 1607-8, oil on canvas,
143 x 115 cm (Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland); Landscape with Saint
Jerome, about 1610, oil on panel, 59.8 x 44 cm (Glasgow, Kelvingrove); and
the Madonna della Rosa, about 1630, oil on canvas, 110.5 x 83.8 cm
(Chatsworth, The Devonshire Collection).
The holdings of Domenichino’s work in the UK underscore the need to retain
this large, important painting from the late 1620s. Its grandeur and rhetorical
clarity were planned for an important Baroque setting and this commanding
character was demonstrated when it was displayed in a large room of Italian
seventeenth-century masterworks at The National Gallery from 1992 to 1994.
There is simply no other painting by the artist to equal it in private hands
either in this country or abroad and its export would be lamentable for the
representation of the artist and the Baroque period in this country.
Dr Nicholas Penny
Director
The National Gallery
Report prepared by
Dr Dawson Carr, Curator of Spanish and Later Italian Paintings
25 January 2010