(Ferrara active circa 1500 – after 1527)
The Madonna and Child with Saints Sebastian and James the Greater,
oil on panel, 43.5 x 60 cm, framed

Provenance:
sale, Christie’s, London, 8 December 1995, lot 71 (as Giovanni Battista Benvenuti, called l’Ortolano);
Private European collection;
where acquired by the present owner

We are grateful to Mauro Lucco for confirming the attribution of the present painting on the basis of a digital photograph and for his help in cataloguing this lot.

The present painting depicts the seated Madonna with the Christ Child on her lap. Flanking them and shown in conversation with the central group are Saint Sebastian on the left and Saint James the Greater on the right. The horizontal format of the panel ensures all the figure are shown half-length.

This painting by Giovanni Battista Benvenuti, called l’Ortolano demonstrates his technical ability that shaped a personal style. The present figure of Saint Sebastian can be compared to the Saint Sebastian in the Museo del Tesoro di Assisi, Perugia, as well as to the central figure in the panel of Saint Sebastian with Saint Roch and Saint Demetrius in the National Gallery, London (inv. no. NG669) wherein each representation of Saint Sebastian is shown in a similar position. The appearance of the Child is similar to that deployed around the same time in the Circumcision in the Uffizi, Florence (inv. no. 00292725) while the features of the Virgin, whose head is a little inclined to the left, reoccur in the Madonna and Child with Angels in Glory in the Museo di Ferrara (inv. no. 594), wherein, however, her gaze is turned to the ground. The background landscape with distant blue mountains fading to closer green fields reoccurs in the Adoration of the Child in the Louvre (inv. no. M.I.603).

Born at Ferrara around 1485, little is known of Giovanni Battista Benvenuti’s activity (see E. Borea, in: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Rome 1966, ad vocem); his moniker of l’Ortolano derives from his father’s occupation as a gardener. His early training must have taken place in Ferrara in the ambit of modest local painters such as Domenico Panetti and Coltellini. He soon distanced himself from them by introducing an insistent interest in natural lighting in his work, thereby lending a new solidity to the figures and objects he represented in a sober and severe atmosphere. The range of his cultural inspiration was initially confined to local art of the quattrocento from Ercole Roberti to Boccaccino and Perugino, but later became enriched by innovations brought from Rome, indeed the influence of Raphael’s Saint Cecilia can be seen, for example, in his Saint Margaret now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Copenhagen (inv. no. 520). Additionally, Giovanni Battista Benvenuti, called l’Ortolano, developed a personal stylistic language that owed much to developments in Venice, which he may have visited with Benvenuto Tisi, il Garofalo, with whom he formed part of the most significant members of the sixteenth century school of painting at Ferrara alongside Dosso Dossi and Ludovico Mazzolino

The present painting demonstrates the artist’s knowledge of Venetian painting around 1510. Indeed, the iconography of this Sacra Conversazione was almost entirely unknown at Ferrara at this date and is certainly of Venetian derivation. Given that this influence is only apparent from the time of his Circumcision formerly with Matthiesen, London, which has a landscape background derived from the engraving of an Astronomer by Giulio Campagnola, dated 1509, a date of around 1510 is, according to Mauro Lucco, also tenable for the present painting.