The Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist, with Saint Joseph and two angels announcing the Crucifixion, oil on canvas, 121 x 162 cm, framed

We are grateful to Dr. Marco Ciampolini for confirming the attribution of the present painting on the basis of a digital photograph. The painting will be included in his forthcoming addendum to the catalogue raisonné of the works of Raffaello Vanni.

This hitherto unpublished painting is an important addition to the works of Raffaello Vanni, son of the renowned late Mannerist painter Francesco Vanni, who following his father’s death in 1610 moved to Rome, where he studied briefly with Guido Reni and at length with Antonio Carracci He later became interested in the Baroque classicism of Romanelli and ultimately adopted a Cortonesque style of painting.

In the section on Raffaello Vanni from his recent work on 17th-Century Sienese painters, Pittori Senesi del Seicento (Siena 2010, p. 1068, fig. on p. 1067), Marco Ciampolini published a subject identical in composition but somewhat inferior in terms of quality and size (oil on canvas, 112 x150 cm), which was offered at Sotheby’s, London, on 28th May 1998 (no. 86, col., catalogued as Follower of Massimo Stanzione), which should be considered as a studio copy of the present work.The painting here is therefore the prototype of the subject that evidently had some fortune.

The present canvas is in fact stylistically close to Vanni’s works from the early 1640s; in particular the Saint Helena in the church of Santa Maria in Publicolis in Rome, painted in 1644 for Cardinal Marcello Santacroce, which reveals an identical stage of stylistic evolution. The saint has a typology that is similar to that of the Madonna in the present painting, and it is possible to suggest that the painter used the same model. The use of colour to shape the soft drapery is identical, as is the red robe of Saint Helena with delicate folds that also recurs in the Madonna. Also apparent are the same soft delicacy of the milky complexions that links the two works to the Madonna and Child with Seven Seraphim in the collection of the Monte dei Paschi di Siena bank (cat. 2961), another cornerstone of the year of 1644, a year which saw the definitive success of the painter, not only in Siena, but also in Rome, where the great undertaking of the fresco decoration of the Palazzo Patrizi awaited him.

The present composition is set in a domestic setting, where the Virgin is sewing embroidery when the Child draws her attention to two angels that are raising the Cross. The Madonna abandons her work and with a melancholic expression tenderly embraces the Child whilst the Infant Saint John tries to comfort him. Saint Joseph, watchful in the background, arrives with a donkey, probably to flee with the family to Egypt. Although depicting a premonition of the Passion, the scene has no dramatic accents. Nevertheless, the composition is energetic both in terms of the dynamism of the groups and the charged poetics of the affections, elements which anticipate the later Baroque style of painting.

We are grateful to Dr. Marco Campolini for his help in cataloguing this lot.