Antonio d'Enrico, called Tanzio da Varallo

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 work is painted on a wooden panel which seems to have original reinforcements at the top and bottom. The panel is more or less flat. The paint layer has shown no signs of instability. The work has been cleaned, varnished and retouched. There is a restoration in the center of the left side, measuring about 2 inches square, but the retouches are otherwise small and not numerous. The face, beard and hair of the figure are in wonderful condition, with only a few spots of retouching in the darker colors of the mouth, in the hair to the right of the face, and in the lobe of the ear on the left.
"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."

One of the most strikingly original painters of the early seicento, Tanzio combined the innovations of Caravaggio (whose style had developed in the same tradition of Lombard painting) with his own more robust and eccentric idiom. He trained in his native Varallo with his older brothers, the sculptor Giovanni and the fresco painter Melchiorre d'Enrico, but left in early 1600 for Rome. It is there that he come into contact with the prevailing Caravaggesque style. Tanzo is also believed to have made a trip to Naples and the Abruzzi also, returning to his home town around 1615. His work is defined by the combination of the Caravaggesque realism he learnt on his travels South, with the modified elegance of Lombard Late Mannerism. We are grateful to both Marco Tanzi and Filippo Maria Ferro for independently endorsing the attribution of this Ecce Homo to Tanzio. This subject, and the small scale devotional nature of this panel is unique within Tanzio's oeuvre. Both Ferro and Tanzi propose a date of execution to the mid 1620's, the moment at which Tanzio emerges from the dominating influence of Caravaggio. During this mature period Tanzio looked more the early Baroque style, and to Daniele Crespi in particular whose work of the early 1620s shared Tanzio's move toward stark, simple narratives and new clarity of form. Tanzio's Visitation in the Church of San Brizio, Vagna, is known to date from these same years and is consistent with this Ecce Homo in its modeling and tonality.¹ The face of Saint Joseph in the Vagna Visitation, depicted in half shadow behind the figure of Elizabeth, turned slightly and so in three-quarter view, is particularly comparable to this depiction of Christ, not only in the angle of his tilted head, but also in the highlights of his skyward looking eyes, and the painterly furrowed brow.

Tanzio's painstaking rendering of the texture of Christ's skin, of the saline blurring under His eyes and of the glistening blood and sweat, evoke within the onlooker a degree of empathy and spiritual contemplation that prove this panels just worth as a private devotional image. It's mystical fervor evokes the works of Tanzio's Spanish and Flemish contemporaries that he likely encountered in his aforementioned travels. Ferro notes particularly the influence of Dieric Bouts's painting that is regarded as a reliquary at the Church of Sacro Monte, in Varallo. In the same church a polychrome wood figure of Christ of 1510 by Tanzio's neighbor, the painter and sculptor Gaudenzio Ferrari, must have inspired Tanzio in his rendering of this emotive Ecce Homo (fig. 1).

1. See M.B. Castellotti, Tanzio da Varallo; realism fevore e contemplazione in un pittore del Seicento, exh. cat., Milan 2000, p. 121, cat. no. 25, reproduced p. 122-3.