(Venice circa 1470 - after 1530)
The Holy Family with the Infant Saint John the Baptist and Saint George,
oil on panel, 80 x 111.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Rome, circa 1985;
where acquired by the present owner

Exhibition:
Huashan Creative Park, Taipei, The face of Leonardo, Images of a Genius, 27 June 2015 – 20 September 2015 (as Marco Basaiti)

Literature:
M. Lucco, A l’occasion de la redécouverte d’un tableau du Musée des Beaux-Arts, nouveau regard sur l’œuvre de Marco Basaiti, in: Bulletin des musées et monuments lyonnais, Lyon 1993, 1, pp. 16–17, no. 27 (as Marco Basaiti)

The present painting is registered in the Fototeca Zeri under no. 33057 (as Meloni Altobello).

This work was previously attributed to Altobello Meloni and has been given to Marco Basaiti by Mauro Lucco after examination of the original.

This composition can be compared to other works by the Basaiti such as the Madonna and Child in the Allentown Art Museum, Pennsylvania, the Sacra Conversazione in the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino, and above all the Madonna and Child in Warsaw. While the folds of the Virgin’s robes are almost identical in both works, in the Warsaw painting the figure on the left of Saint Joseph is omitted while there are some variations in the representation of the Saint George.

Marco Basaiti was influenced by the work of Giorgione, using landscapes as the settings for his Sacra Conversazione such as in the present composition. Whilst following the example of his master, Alvise Vivarini, he also assimilated the teachings of Antonello da Messina and Giovanni Bellini. Indeed, in the present work, the close study of nature - the colour of the dusk sky, the low light, the trees shown in silhouette and the rock in the left foreground - are all ideas reflecting the landscape setting of the Three Philosophers by Giorgione in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. The figure on the right identified as Saint George is modelled on similar figure in the Pala di San Cassiano by Antonello da Messina.