The Collection of Hester Diamond Part I

Benvenuto Tisi, called Garofalo

Nativity

Auction Closed

January 29, 04:53 PM GMT

Estimate

200,000 - 300,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Benvenuto Tisi, called Garofalo

Ferrara 1481 - 1559

Nativity

oil on panel

17 ⅝ by 21 ½ in.; 44.7 by 54.6 cm.

With Colnaghi, London, by 1976;
Private collection, Europe, by 1979;
With Matthiessen Fine Art Ltd, London;
From whom acquired, 1989.

E. Sambo, "Sull'attività giovanile di Benvenuto Tisi da Garofalo," in Paragone, XXXIV, 395, 1983, pp. 26-27, reproduced plate 38 (as dated to the 1510s);
E. Mattalliano, in From Borso to Cesare d'Este: The School of Ferrara, exhibition catalogue, London 1984, p. 78, no. 24 (as dated circa 1510);
A. Pattanaro, Benvenuto Tisi detto "Il Garofalo," gli anni della formazione e della prima maturità, doctoral thesis, Padua 1985-1986, vol. II, no. 24 (as dated circa 1507);
A.M. Fioravanti Baraldi, Il Garofolo, Rimini 1993, pp. 96-97, cat. no. 20, reproduced (as dated circa 1510);
A. Ballarin, Dosso Dossi, Cittadella 1994-1995, vol. I, p. 281, cat. no. 266, reproduced in color fig. LXI, vol. II, reproduced in black and white plate 164c (as dated circa 1507-1508).

This charming Nativity is an early work by Benvenuto Tisi, called Garofalo, one of the most outstanding painters of the Ferrarese High Renaissance. It is notable for its gentle tonality, its compositional balance, and its detailed setting—from the small group of colorful angels near Christ, to the verdant rolling hills of the landscape, and to two doves perched atop a stone ledge on the ruins. Datable to circa 1507-1510, it is illustrative of his youthful style, one defined by an enthusiastic admiration of Venetian artists, particularly Giorgione, whose works he certainly knew. Garofalo painted a number of similar depictions of Nativities and Adorations early in his career, probably in response to a strong demand for small and highly finished easel pictures. The present panel, for example, follows a small Nativity in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Ferrara and it anticipates a panel of the same subject in the Musée des Beaux Arts in Strasbourg.

Garofalo worked in Ferrara during what Cecil Gould characterized as the city's Golden Age, spanning the second half of the fifteenth century and much of the sixteenth, when the Arts flourished under the patronage of the ruling Este family. He trained under the Cremonese painter Boccaccio Boccaccino in Ferrara from 1497, and he counted Ludovico Mazzolino and Ortolano among his contemporaries, as well as Dosso and Battista Dossi for much of his career. Following the examples of three great fifteenth-century Ferrarese painters—Cosme Tura, Francesco Cossa and Ercole de' Roberti—Garofalo grew up in an age that was more open to influences from other artistic centers, notably Bologna, Padua and Venice. A prolific painter due to his long career, Garofalo's style migrated from an early Venetian Giorgionesque flowering, as visible in the present example, to a long maturity of classicizing works, influenced by a Roman sojourn in Raphael's atelier. For all of his career however, Garofalo demonstrated a love of color which is one of the hallmarks of Ferrarese painting.