Lucio Massari

Palazzo Pallavicini, Bologna (by at least the late 18th Century, see note);
Marchese Giovanni Pallavicini-Fibbia, by whom apparently moved in 1911 (according to customs marks on the reverse of the painting) to his palace in Vienna;
J. Wombek, 1915 (according to a label on the reverse of the frame);
Thence by descent in the family until 2004.

M. Oretti, Le Pitture che si ammirano nelli palagi e case de' Nobili della città di Bologna, Ms. B104, Sec. XVIII, Bologna, Biblioteca Comunale dell'Archiginnasio, c. 98.;
A. Brogi, "Un Lucio Massari ritrovato", in Arte a Bologna. Bollettino dei musei civici d'arte antica (in the process of publication).

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com , an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has not been restored for a number of years. The canvas has a very old, Italian loose lining. The paint layer is stable and although the cracking is a little raised here and there, the lining is not insufficient. The paint layer is quite dirty and will clean to reveal a considerably brighter palette, with more depth in the darker colors. Under ultraviolet light no restorations of significance are visible, due to the heavy layer of dirt. A visual appraisal of the figures and the lighter colors looks positive. There is some old restoration here and there in the gold gown of the angel, yet many other places, the crowds, the scull, the figure of the Magdalene and the cupid, seem to be in very healthy state. The darker colors are less easy to predict, but there are no breaks in the surface to indicate structural damage. There are a couple of restorations at the base of the wing against the shoulder and again in this angel's gold cloak, which under close inspection, are visible to the naked eye but which are not visible under ultraviolet light. There may be other restorations which are not apparent; however, overall a visual appraisal suggests that the condition of this picture is well above average. It should be properly cleaned and even though some restorations may be revealed during this process, the condition seems to be generally very healthy.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

The present note is excerpted from an article by Dr. Alessandro Brogi, in the course of publication.  We are grateful to him for making his text available, and for being the first scholar to attribute this work to Lucio Massari.

Lucio Massari was an artist of considerable reputation in his own time but who— as with many other artists of his stature— has only been "rediscovered" by scholars during the 20^th Century.  Having received his training in the bottega of Ludovico with whom he was a collaborator during the first decade of the 17^th Century, working on different projects in Bologna and elsewhere which were overseen by the older master (the Oratorio di San Colombano, the cloister of San Michele in Bosco, the Oratorio della SS. Trinità in Pieve di Cento, and others), Massari showed himself aware from his very earliest known works of the classical reminiscences of Annibale and of other fellow artists who had adopted the doctrine of the Ideale. This influence was mixed in Massari with that of—no less important for his formation— Bartolomeo Cesi, of whose bare and severely archaizing language he became an interpreter of the most serious doctrines put forward by the culture of the Controriforma in a Bologna dominated by the Carraccesque aesthetic.

The attribution of this Magdalen to Massari finds ample confirmation in comparison with securely attributed works of the artist, from the Histories of Coriolanus, Scipio and Julius Caesar, frescoed in the Palazzo Bonfiglioli Rossi at Bologna in the middle of the first decade of the century, to the ravishing frescoes created in 1612 for the Florentine Charterhouse at Galluzzo in the Cappella delle Reliquie, painted soon after Massari's trip to Rome at the end of the preceding decade.  Together with some works executed in Bologna after his return from Florence, such as the Noli me Tangere for the church of the Celestine order (circa 1613, still in situ), the Prodigal Son, signed and dated 1614, or the Lamentation painted in 1620 for a provincial oratory (both today in the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna), it appears that the Florentine cycle provides the most compelling comparison: in the full and grandiose size of the forms, modeled by a tempered natural light; in the gracefulness of the gestures; in the undulating play of the drapery that contrasts with their apparent severe calm; in the firm drawing but of palpable finesse in the areas of shadow and light; in the rendering of the fleshtones of the angel and of the Saint, and in that of her exquisite red hair.  It must also be said, in an work such as this, Massari shows that he must have taken some artistic suggestion from the noble classicism of Reni, examples of which he would have known in Rome and which would have been easily at hand in the works leaving that master's studio in Bologna during the second decade of the seicento.  Analogous recollections of Reni are discernable also in another canvas of the same subject, a Penitent Magdalene today in the collection of the Museo Civico, Carpi, datable to the same moment, the second half of the 1610s.  The Carpi Magdalene shows notable assonance with ours, even if the invention of the present canvas appears to rather more resolved and felicitous: notably the idea of the angel in profile that bends over with fullness of gesture towards the saint, the refined articulation of his arms and of his delicate hands, of the adoring gaze and haggard—  but still very beautiful—  face of the saint, stupendously foreshortened from below.

Carlo Cesare Malvasi, the famous 17^th Century biographer of Bolognese painters, lavish in his praise of Massari ("well understanding and graceful hands," "beautiful arie di teste," "aggiustatura," and "of great reserve and decorum" in his bearing) does not mention this painting, possibly because in his time it was inaccessible.  What is helpful in tracing the painting's provenance, however, is another reference in the early sources, a bit later in date than Malvasia but even for that not insignificant. The erudite Bolognese Marcello Oretti wrote a number of manuscripts in the later half of the 18^th Century full of information on local painters and their works; he records in the Palazzo Pallavicini in Bologna, as a work by Massari, a "S. Maria Egiziaca comunicata dall angelo con un angioletto (a Saint Mary of Egypt given communion by the angel with a small angel)".

The Pallavicini provenance of the present painting as well as the precise correspondence of the number of figures would appear to leave no doubt that the present painting is that mentioned by Oretti, even taking into account the difference in the two saints (confusion between Mary Magdalene and Mary of Egypt is not unusual).  Moreover, there are iconographic discrepancies that support the fact that the painting cited by Oretti could not be another picture, and that he simply confused the two penitent saints.  Mary of Egypt was given the host for the last time not by an angel, but by Saint Zosimus, an aged Hieromonach of Palestine who recorded her life in his writings.  In painting Mary of Egypt is always depicted, according to tradition, as a rather old and suffering woman.  Another painting certainly by Massari with the same subject, a communion of the Magdalen, exists, but in that example the angels that attend the saint are three in number, and all of them adult; reason enough to exclude the possibility that it was the one mentioned by Oretti .