Defendente Ferrari active in Piedmont 1510 - 1535

G. Marangoni, "Arte Retrospettiva: Defendente de Ferrari da Chivasso," Emporium, vol. XLIV, no. 264, December 1916, p. 436, illus. p. 419;
Amsterdam, Muller's, Ludovic de Spiridon Collection, June 19, 1928, p. 16, plate 35;
Der Cicerone, Sales Price Supplement, 1928, volume 20, p. 129. 
B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Central Italian and North Italian Schools, Edinburgh 1968, p. 103 (as Defendente and studio).

This impressive Pietà has been in a private collection for the better part of a century and has thus remained relatively unknown to scholars.  Although it once formed part of the famous Spiridon collection, the picture was missed in the early editions of Berenson, and by the subsequent literature.¹  Upon its recent reappearance it was recognized as a work of Defendente Ferrari first by Everett Fahy on the basis of photographs and it has now been reintegrated into the artist’s oeuvre.

The painting exemplifies the elegant and emotional idiom of Piedmontese art in the early years of the cinquecento of which Defendente was one of the primary exponents.  It is typical of his style: emotive and beautifully colored, gracefully composed.  Defendente specialized in such depictions, and returned to the subject of the Pietà throughout his career, either as part of larger altarpieces, or as single devotional images. Perhaps the grandest example is that in the Cathedral of Chivasso, the only extant work by Defendente in his native city. It is a single, large altarpiece, depicting the figure of the Christ laid out in a rocky landscape supported by the young Saint John the Evangelist and surrounded by the Marys.  While still a student of his master Giovanni Spanzotti, Defendente had also painted this theme; in fact the figures of the Virgin and the Mary with the white headdress to the left of the present composition derive from works by his master in which Defendente most probably had a hand.²

The present work, however, would appear to date to later in Defendente’s career, most probably to the mid 1520s.  The figure of the Christ, seated on the edge of his tomb held up by the Virgin herself and with both arms outstretched, appears in at least two other dated examples by the artist.  One is the right wing of a small, traveling triptych by the artist, dated 1523, formerly with the Congregation of the Padri Rosminiani, Stresa.  The other picture, a Pietà of 1524 which includes other Saints is now in the collection of the Villa Palmieri, Florence.³   All three works should date to approximately the same moment.

1   The painting was published by Guido Marangoni on the title page of his survey of the works of Defendente; subsequent scholars seem to have missed this article, including Luigi Mallé in his survey of the works of the artist and his associates (see Spanzotti, Defendente, Giovenone, Nuovi Studi, Turin 1971)

2  The figure of the woman with the white headdress at left, probably meant to represent Mary Cleophas, is derived from a painting of the Deposition in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, given to Spanzotti and his studio, and the Virgin relates to that in a Pietà formerly in a private collection, Vercelli, attributed to Spanzotti and his pupil Defendente (see Mallé op. cit., illus. 60-61).

3  Mallé (op. cit. p. 61) notes another Pieta dated 1524, formerly in Aigremont, and according to him back in Turin, but which now seems to be untraced.