(Florence 1554–1622 Arezzo)
The Virgin and Child,
signed lower centre: OPS. DE/GOSTA/NTINI/DESE/RVIS,
oil on panel, tondo, diameter 86.8 cm, framed

Provenance:
Roberta Eugenie Bulkley (1847–1920), Cleveland, by the 1880s;
thence by descent to her son, Robert Johns Bulkley (1880-1965), Cleveland;
with Adams, Davidson & Company, Washington D.C., 1968 (according to an advertisement in Connoisseur, vol. 169, December 1968 and listed as Eugenio di Giulio Costantini);
Mr. & Mrs. Preston Howard Saunders, Cleveland;
by whom given to The Cleveland Museum of Art in 1971 [In Memory of Senator Robert J. Bulkley, acc. no. 71.278];
sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 27 January 2011, lot 305

Literature:
Connoisseur, vol. CLXIX, 1968, p. LXXX, illustrated (advertisement, Adams, Davidson & Company, Washington D.C. as by Eugenio di Giulio Constantini);
Bulletin of The Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. LVIV, June 1972, p. 157;
Cleveland Museum of Art, Catalogue of Paintings: Part Three. European Paintings of the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries, Cleveland 1982, pp. 413-415, no. 181, illustrated;
A. Chong, European & American Painting in The Cleveland Museum of Art: A Summary Catalogue, Cleveland 1993, p. 221, illustrated;
R. J. M. Olson, The Florentine Tondo, New York 2000, p. 229, illustrated fig. 8.2

The present tondo represents the Madonna and Child. The latter is seen in the act of attempting to clamber onto his Mother’s lap, one leg stretching out over her, as he straddles her knee. In the foreground a prominently positioned rock bears the artist’s signature, beyond the pyramidal group of the figures, a marine landscape with a fortified city fills the background. The cloud-streaked sky is illuminated by reddening dusk light.

This work is one of the rare examples of the pictorial production of the Florentine artist Costantino dei Servi, who was also active as an architect and an engineer. The artist had a highly successful career, not only working in Italy between Florence, Rome and Emilia Romagna, but also at numerous foreign courts including those at Paris, Prague and even Persia.

Costantino dei Servi was in the studio of Santi di Tito and soon elaborated a personal style based on that of the Mannerists who were dominant in Florence at that time, as well as looking to the example of the great masters of the previous generation, such as Andrea del Sarto. Likewise, his choice of picture format here also seems deliberately archaic, given that the painting dates to around the final year of the sixteenth century. Indeed, the adoption of the tondo was maybe intended as an homage to the great masters that had made the city of Florence famous when, from the mid-fifteenth century through to the second decade of the following century, this form became widely diffused. The iconography of the present work, with the unusual position of the Child on the Mother’s knee, derives from Andrea del Sarto’s fresco, The Madonna del Sacco in the cloister of the basilica of Santissima Annunziata in Florence. The monumentality of the figures, meanwhile, derives from Michelangelesque examples and primarily from that of the Doni Tondo (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence).


Technical analysis
The panel is about 3 cm thick and includes a vertical wooden bar. The conservation is good, with some abrasions and small integrations. The work, as shown by X-radiograph (see literature, The Cleveland Museum of Art, European paintings of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, p. 415), is painted over an earlier composition, which is either Umbrian or Tuscan and depicts an adoring Madonna with her Children and St. John in a landscape.

No underdrawing can be detected by IR reflectography meaning that it was probably made with an iron-gall ink, transparent to IR radiation. Some changes can be detected through the IR images: the Madonna’s veil on the right was originally longer until it was covered by the sea and the sky, some corrections can also be seen in the Child’s legs and in the Madonna’s hands andfingers.

We are grateful to Gianluca Poldi for the technical examination.