Pietro Faccini

Private collection, France;

Thereafter acquired by the present owner, by 2006.

Daniele Benati first recognized this depiction of the Return of the Prodigal Son as an unpublished painting by Pietro Faccini, a Bolognese artist whose oeuvre consists of fewer than forty known paintings. The composition derives from a lost work by Annibale Carracci painted circa 1590 that, according to early sources, hung over the altar of the Zambeccari Chapel in the Church of the Corpus Domini in Bologna.

As a student at the Carracci Academy in the late sixteenth century, Faccini must have been granted direct access to his teacher’s initial composition. In Faccini's rendition, he employs swift, slightly loose brushwork and lavishes attention on the principal group, dwelling on the welcoming gesture of the open-armed father toward his son. Conversely, the figures in the middle ground are merely suggested by touches of black and white paint and the fluid forms of the angels in the sky seem to dissolve amid the notional clouds. Throughout, his palette—dominated by reds, golden yellows, and fabrics rendered with cangantismo effects—reflects an awareness of Venetian painting.

¹ Carracci’s painting was later acquired by Prince Philippe d’Orleans and brought to France, where it was engraved by J.B. Tilliard in 1786 before the collection was dispersed; for the engraving, see London, British Museum, inv. no. 1855,0609.341.