Alessandro Bonvicino, called Moretto da Brescia

Giovanni Battista Vittadini, Villa La Cazzola, Arcore, Monza (see note);
Sold in 1909 with the help of Bernard Berenson;
With Galerie D'Atri, Paris;
Private collection, Germany;
Private collection, London.

G. Carotti, La Villa Vittadini in Arcore, in Ville e Castelli d'Italia, Lombardia e Laghi, Milan 1907, pp. 667-674;
G. Frizzoni, I nuovi acquisti della Galleria Imperiale dell'Eremitage a Pietroburgo, in Rassegna D'Arte 1909, anno 9, p 2f (as Girolamo Romanino);
B. Berenson, North Italian painters of the Renaissance, London 1910, p. 283 (as Romanino);
A. Nova, Girolamo Romanino, 1994, p. 231, under cat. no. 19 (as location unknown, where an attribution to Moretto is first suggested based on the Berenson fototeca photograph);
A. Morandotti, Fonti per la storia del collezionismo: il ruolo della fotografia a Milano nell'Italia postunita, in Gli usi della Fotografia, ed. R. Cassanelli and G. Guerci, Quaderni d'Archivio 7, Comune di Cinisello Balsamo 1999, p. 46;
A. Ballarin, La Salome del Romanino ed altri studi sulla pittura bresciana del Cinquecento, Padova 2006, p 31 e fig 158;
A. Morandotti, Il collezionismo in Lombardia. Studi e ricerche tra '600 e '800, Milan 2008, pp. 283, 293, note 93.

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 been recently restored. The panel on the reverse is un-reinforced, although there were originally two horizontal supports at the top and the bottom. The piece of wood is flat and the paint layer is stable. Running diagonally in the outstretched leg of the child and in the shelf beneath his leg there is an area which looks as if it is a filling, which has received restoration. Under ultraviolet light, no retouches are immediately visible and to the naked eye no obvious restorations are detectable except in the area mentioned above. It would not be unlikely for there to be a few retouches in the faces and in the figure of Christ and these areas are slightly thin, particularly the forearm of Christ and the face of the Madonna. However, the bulk of this picture looks very healthy. The varnish is slightly dull and could be improved but overall the picture is in healthy condition and could be hung as is.
"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."

Although given in the past to another Brescian painter, Giroloamo Romanino (1484/7-1560), the present work has since been rightly attributed to Moretto da Bresica. The past confusion in attribution is not entirely surprising, especially given that the two artists actually worked together on a few occasions, the most famous example being the artists' collaboration in 1521–4 for the decoration of the Cappella del Sacramento in San Giovanni Evangelista, Brescia. The false attribution to Romanino appears to have already been in place when by 1907, the painting formed part of the Vittadini collection, and was later listed in Berenson's 1910 checklist of North Italian painters. The work appears to have remained attributed to Romanino until 1994, when Alessandro Nova rightly suggested that the work could be by the young Moretto.

There was a great demand for Moretto's religous works and easel paintings of this type, produced predominantly for a local clientele in Brescia, and meant for private devotion. Similar to other works featuring the Madonna and Child, the figures here are rendered with great naturalism and are imbued with a contemplative piety. One can also see here the influence of both Titian's early works, as well as the work of Paris Bordone. Moretto would have been exposed to the great artist's of Venice given that Brescia was under Venetian rule during his lifetime and he may have also visited Venice at some point during his career, though this is unclear.

The child shown here may be compared to that in Moretto's La Raccolta della manna (San Giovanni Evangelista, Brescia) from 1521. Their pose in both pictures is almost identical, with his legs splayed as he twists dramatically to his right. However in the present work, the child reaches to grasp onto a small dog, while in the Brescia composition he reaches for a tambourine.

We are grateful to Everett Fahy for confirming the attribution to Moretto da Brescia, based on firsthand inspection.

Note on Provenance:

The earliest record of this beautiful Madonna and Child is when it was in the possession of Giovanni Battista Vittadini (1855/6-1904), a Milanese collector and businessman who took a keen interest in the arts.¹  Vittadini was one of a group of five founders of the very influential journal Rassenga d'Arte, a monthly publication dedicated to "antique" art.  He was also charged with the arrangement of the collections of the Castello Sforzesco, which was being restored by his friend Luca Beltrami.²

Vittadini was a significant collector himself, and put together a sizeable collection, mostly focused on Lombard art. His collection was described at length by Giulio Carotti (see literature), and included in addition to Renaissance pictures, other works of art and a good collection of porcelain, of which Vittadini was regarded as an exceptional connoisseur.  In 1894, he bought the 16^th century Villa Cazzola in Arcore—a small town outside of Milan-- from the noble Durini family, and set about adapting and modernizing it.  There, he arranged his gallery of pictures in the manner then in vogue with other fashionable Milanese collectors (see fig. 2).³  The present Madonna and Child, in fact, may be seen in the photograph of part of his collection, on a wooden easel in the front of the room along the left wall. He appears to have corresponded and worked with a number of the most important scholars of his day, including Tancred Borenius and Bernard Berenson, whose fototeca  included a photograph of the present painting, and with whom Vittadini helped organize the sale of many pictures from the collection.  Despite the civic-minded example of other collectors, Vittadini did not leave his collection to city of Milan, and it was broken up after his death.  His widow, however, did allow the Brera to acquire the predella to the famous and important Polyptych delle Grazie by Vincenzo Foppa which he had bought in circa 1900/01.

1.  For a fuller discussion of Vittadini's many activities, please see A. Morandotti, op. cit., pp.282-286, and footnotes 48-73.
2.  Luca Beltrami (1854-1933) was a fascinating figure.  Architect, writer and cultural arbiter, his activities were varied and important.  In addition to work on the Castello, he built a number of important buildings in Milan, including the Palazzo Marino and the Permanente, as well as having the oversight of restoration of a number of other buidlings and monuments.  He was also an art historian, and wrote on a number of subjects, including a lengthy work on the Duomo.
3.  The arrangement of the Vittadini collection must have been somewhat influenced by that of the Poldi Pezzoli in the center of Milan; indeed, Vittadini wrote an article about the museum, and clearly was inspired by it (see G.B. Vittadini, "Novità artistiche del Museo Poldi Pezzoli in Milano", in Archivio storico dell'arte,VII, 1895, pp. 199-217.