Copies of Venetian Renaissance paintings on stringed instruments and the provenance of Giorgione’s Benson Holy Family in Washington
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2020-10-07
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Colnaghi Studies Journal
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Colnaghi Foundation
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School of Culture and Communication
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Journal Article
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Anderson, J. (2020). Copies of Venetian Renaissance paintings on stringed instruments and the provenance of Giorgione’s Benson Holy Family in Washington. Colnaghi Studies Journal, (7), pp.10-21
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Copies of Renaissance paintings on instruments of the violin family are extremely rare. In this article two exceptional examples of this genre are investigated from an art historical perspective for the first time. They are two violoncellos, dated Rome 1778, and 1816, that reproduce the Madonna and Child in Giorgione’s Benson Holy Family in the National Gallery of Art, Washington (1497) and the central motif of the Madonna and Child in Albrecht Dürer’s Madonna of the Rosegarlands (1506), National Gallery, Prague. Both these fine instruments are in private collections belonging to distinguished cellists. Since the year it was created Dürer’s Madonna of the Rosegarlands has been one of the most discussed and celebrated images, whereas Giorgione’s Holy Family was not well known until it arrived in Washington in 1951. How and where these two paintings were accessible to a copyist is perplexing and raise questions about the provenance of the paintings they reproduce. Both instruments were made by the Roman luthier Luigi Amici, whose shop was in close proximity to the Vatican for an unknown patron or patrons, perhaps religious, who appreciated Venetian Renaissance painting from the first decade of the High Renaissance.