Gaetano Gandolfi

Charles de Burlet, Berlin, by 1922;
Dr. Otto Burchard, Berlin, by 1927;
His sale, Berlin, Cassirer and Helbing, 22 May 1928;
Fritz Haussmann, Berlin,and Switzerland, by 1935;
Private collection, Zurich, from whom acquired by the previous owners circa 1950.

Florence, Palazzo Pitti, Mostra della Pittura italiana del Seicento e del Settecento a Palazzo Pitti, 1922, no. 432;
Berlin, Wertheim Gallery, Italienische Malerei des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, 1927, no. 64;
Wiesbaden, Italienische Malerei des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, 1935, no. 85.

U. Ojetti, L. Dami and N. Tarchiani, in Mostra della Pittura italiana del Seicento e del Settecento a Palazzo Pitti, exhibition catalogue, Florence, Palazzo Pitti, 1922, p. 93, no. 432;
L. Bianchi, I Gandolfi, Rome 1936, p. 164, cat. no. 139;
P. Bagni, I Gandolfi, Padua 1992, p. 287, cat. no. 271, reproduced;
D. Biagi Maino, Gaetano Gandolfi, Turin 1995, pp. 399-400, cat. no. 205, reproduced fig. 233.

This is Gandolfi's bozzetto or preparatory sketch for the altarpiece of the same subject in the Oratory of the Blessed Virgin of the Nativity and Saint Giustina at Villa Tanari, Bazzano (see fig. 1; also Biagi Maino, under Literature, p. 400, cat. no. 206, reproduced fig. 234).  The finished altarpiece follows the initial design of the present sketch in every detail. The Villa Tanari was built in 1790 to the designs of the architect Angelo Venturoli, one of the leading exponents of a revived Palladian style at the end of the 18th century. The completion of the villa would point to a dating in the 1790s for the present work, and on grounds of style Biagi Maino suggests a comparison with other works from early in the same decade; for example, the altarpiece of The Holy Family with Saint Egidius of 1792 in the Church of Saint Egidius in Bologna, or the Finding of the True Cross from the following year, now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna (op. cit., pp. 401 and 403, cat. nos. 211 and 222, reproduced figs. 239 and 249 respectively).