(Rome 1574–1616)
Christ amongst the doctors,
oil on unlined canvas and original stretcher, 103 x 131 cm, in a gilded, possibly original, 17th Florentine cassetta frame

Provenance:
possibly Juan de Lezcano, 1631, two paintings of this subject are cited in his inventory, dated 22 January 1631 as no. 9 (“La disputa de cristo con los doctors, quadro mediano del detto Borgian original” and no. 10 “un Cristo mediano que sta en acto de disputar original del […] Borgian”);
Probably Cardinal Decio Azzolino, Rome, 1675 (“Tela d’imperatore a giacere, historia di Christo fra i dottori. Mano del Borgiani, cornice alla fiorentina intagliata e dorata”);
Family of Ludovico Roncalli, Foligno from 1699 mentioned in the family inventory (“la disputa di Christo del Borgiani con sua cornice”);
1803, Antonio Elmi, Foligno (“Terza Camera detta Galleria: […] quadro di palmi cinque per largo rappresentante la Disputa dei Dottori con cornice dorata a buono, Opera di Michelangelo [da Caravaggio]”);
Pandolfi Elmi, Foligno during the 19th Century;
and by descent to the present owner

Documentation:
Archivio di Stato di Napoli, Notai del ’600, notaio G. D. Cotignola, Inventario di Juan de Lezcano (1634), form 100, prot. 47, c. 278r;
Riksarkivet, Stockholm, Azzolinosamlingen, K 450, Inventario di Guardaroba, lista dei dipinti, c. 18r;
Archivio di Stato di Foligno, Archivio Roncalli, Inventario di Decio Roncalli, 1699;
Archivio di Stato di Foligno, Archivio Pandolfi Elmi, Inventario di Antonio Elmi, 28 February 1803, c. 25v

Literature:
M. Gallo, Orazio Borgianni, l’Accademia di S. Luca e l’Accademia degli Humoristi: documenti e nuove datazioni, Storia dell’arte, 76, 1992, pp. 296-345, 328 nota 205;
M. Gallo, Orazio Borgianni pittore romano (1574-1616) e Francisco de Castro conte di Castro, Rome 1997, pp. 116-117;
T. Montanari, Il cardinale Decio Azzolino e le collezioni d’arte di Cristina di Svezia, Studi Secenteschi, XXXVIII, 1997, pp. 187-264, p. 252, n. 139;
A. Vannugli, Orazio Borgianni, Juan de Lezcano and a “Martyrdom of St. Lawrence” at Roncesvalles, The Burlington Magazine, CXL, 1998, 1138, pp. 5-15, p. 8, tav.6;
E. Borsellino, La collezione d’arte del cardinale Decio Azzolino, Rome 2000, p. 87, n. 168;
A. Vannugli, La collezione del segretario Juan de Lezcano. Borgianni, Caravaggio, Reni e altri nella quadreria di un funzionario spagnolo nell’Italia del primo Seicento, Rome 2009, p. 407

We are grateful to Marco Gallo for confirming the present painting as an important fully autograph work by Orazio Borgianni after inspection of the original.

We are also grateful to Marco Gallo for the catalogue entry for the present painting and for the additional information regarding the provenance.

The present work is in exceptional condition, on the original unlined canvas and possibly in the original frame.

Marco Gallo has dated the present work to the mature phase of Orazio Borgianni´s career, circa 1613–1615. The present work adapts and develops a smaller composition formerly in the Weitzner and Fiano-Almagià collections which was sold with notable success on the London art market in the summer of 2012 (1).
The present Pandolfi Elmi work has been published by Marco Gallo in a monograph of the artist in 1997(2), and in an article by Antonio Vannugli in the Burlington Magazine.

PROVENANCE
The present painting was inherited by the present owner from the collection of the conti Pandolfi Elmi of Foligno(3), where it had been conserved since at least the end of the 18th century. The painting is mentioned, with an attribution to Caravaggio and with the same antique frame that still accompanies it today, in the 1803 inventory drawn up on the death of conte Antonio Elmi: “Terza Camera detta Galleria: (…) quadro di palmi cinque per largo rappresentante la Disputa dei Dottori con cornice dorata a buono, Opera di Michelangelo [da Caravaggio]”.(4)

The long and distinguished provenance of the present painting may partly match that of the Christ amongst the Doctors from the Weitzner collection (sold in London in 2012). The inventory of paintings owned by Juan de Lezcano, a friend and protector of Borgianni written in 1631 in Naples, mentioned a “Disputa de Cristo con los doctores, quadro mediano del (…) Borgian original” and a “Cristo mediano que sta en acto de disputar original del (…) Borgian”.(5) These two paintings must both have shown the young Christ amongst the doctors, disputing (in old Italian, the verb disputare used to mean “discuss with someone”), so the second work might also have in effect shown the scene mentioned in the Gospel of Saint Luke (2:41-50), in which the 12-year-old Christ was in discussion with the rabbis in the Temple of Jerusalem. The rather generic indication of the size (in both cases, the inventory describes paintings that are mediani, in other words of “average size”) has led scholars to identify the first picture mentioned as the smaller Weitzner one, whereas there is no further news of the second one mentioned in the inventory.(6) However, it cannot be excluded that either one of these inventory entries refer to the present Pandolfi Elmi picture. It should be noted that some details of the iconography of these two paintings seem to contain references to the politics of don Francisco de Castro, count of Lemos, an influential protector and patron of Borgianni, who was Spanish ambassador to Rome between 1609 and 1616, and for whom Lezcano was secretary. Therefore, both the Weitzner and the Pandolfi Elmi picture could be linked to a specific commission from de Castro and Lezcano, and it should not be excluded that for some time they were both in the latter’s possession.(7)

There are good reasons for recognizing the present Pandolfi Elmi picture in the description of a canvas recorded in 1675-76 in the inventory of a prestigious collection owned by the powerful Cardinal Decio Azzolino (noted for being a close friend and collaborator of Queen Christina of Sweden, as well as her universal heir): “Tela d’imperatore a giacere, historia di Christo fra i dottori. Mano del Borgiani, cornice alla fiorentina intagliata e dorata”.(8) This describes a canvas painted in landscape format (a giacere) that was not small, as denoted by the term d’imperatore. This last point, as Vannugli noted in 2009, gives us good reason to exclude the possibility of it being the smaller Weitzner picture, as E. Borsellino instead affirmed when publishing the Azzolino inventory in 2000; however, it should be noted that he did not know of the existence of the present Pandolfi Elmi version. It must be supposed that the cardinal bought the painting after about 1669, which is the proposed date of an initial inventory of his pictures, containing a list of the pictures in which there is no trace of the Disputa.(9)

In June 1689 the cardinal left all his goods to a cousin, the marchese Pompeo Azzolino di Fermo (1654-1706), who because of the numerous debts linked to the legacy of Queen Christina and of the cardinal, began selling a number of works of art from the queen’s collection to various aristocratic buyers (amongst them the Ottoboni), before moving to Naples in the entourage of the duca di Medinaceli. In 1692, he sold the inheritance (or what was left of it) to principe Livio Odescalchi.(10) It is to be supposed that Borgianni’s Disputa, despite being bound by the fidei commissum of the cardinal’s bequest, was itself sold by Pompeo Azzolino in those years; it is indeed documented that he did sell some works that had belonged to Cardinal Decio.11 Moreover it is known that Azzolino and Christina of Sweden used to swap paintings, to the point that the two collections were considered “open”, complementary and not perfectly identifiable(12). It is also possible that Borgianni’s picture was, despite being listed in one of the cardinal’s inventories, included within Christina’s collection some time after 1676, and therefore considered sellable. In any event there is no trace of the Disputa in the inventory of Pompeo’s assets drawn up after his death: this document shows that he had sold most of the cardinal’s collection of paintings, as the list reveals only about 50 works, and of these only ten seem to have originated from this collection.(13)
A Disputa di Gesù al tempio (Christ amongst the doctors) by Borgianni, which should be this Azzolino version, is documented in the collection of the noble Decio Roncalli (died 1689) at Foligno, who left it together with his other property to his sons, Pietro, Giovanni Martino, Ercole, Ludovico, Leonardo and Pier Marino. On 30th April 1699 they divided their father’s picture collection between them, and the “Disputa di Christo del Borgiani con sua cornice”, valued at 200 scudi, went to Ludovico (1663–1723)(14). As the inventory shows, this valuation, which probably reflected the price paid for the picture, was much higher than that given to paintings by Raphael, Perugino and Reni in the same collection, and shows that Borgianni’s picture was judged to be of the highest quality. The rich and noble Roncalli family originally came from Bergamo, but was in Rome and Foligno in the 17th century, where members of the family held a number of public posts. It is interesting to note that Ercole (1657-1726), Decio’s son and Ludovico’s brother, was a gentiluomo di camera to Queen Christina, who in that period was very ill and would die two weeks later(15). There must thus have been a direct relationship between the Roncalli family and the crowded court of Queen Christina (The queen had probably met the Roncalli in her documented journey to Folgino in 1655), in which Azzolino played an important role, and it is almost certain that Ercole Roncalli, Cardinal Decio and Pompeo Azzolino (who was a cavaliere d’onore to Queen Christina) knew each other well. The fact that Bishop Francesco Azzolino, Pompeo’s brother, whilst on travels through his diocese of Ripatransone, should die at Foligno on November 16th, 1694(16) is also interesting.
Over the course of the 18th century, the Elmi most probably purchased the painting from Ludovico Ronncallli, or from one of his heirs. The two families lived in nearby palazzi, and both the branch of Ludovico Roncalli and that of Antonio Elmi became related with the Jocobilli family of Foligno during the 18th century.

DATING THE PRESENT PAINTINGThe Weitzner picture has been dated to between 1610 and 1612 on the basis of a stylistic analysis of its blend of naturalism and monumentalism, and for the synthesis of Roman classicism and Venetian anti-classicism which is also apparent in the large and celebrated altarpiece of the Holy Family (circa 1610) in the Galleria Nazionale D’Arte, Palazzo Barberini in Rome. The present Pandolfi Elmi version was painted a few years later and dates from the period of the altarpiece of the Nativity of the Virgin in the Sanctuary of Nostra Signora della Misericordia in Savona (circa 1613), as is indicated by the greater and more rapid liquid-like brushstrokes, together with strongly Caravaggesque elements including the dark background. In this composition Borgianni increased the space for the figures and Solomonic columns in the background (inspired by those of the ciborium in the old basilica of Saint Peter’s, begun by order of Constantine), which according to tradition came from the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem. It shows a deliberately dark and mysterious space, creating a powerful atmosphere in which Christ’s words seem to echo down through the centuries. Borgianni used this to create Caravaggesque effects(17), with a serious note of epic tragedy that the Weitzner version, with its lively character inspired by Venetian painting, does not possess.

The present dramatic Disputa is an extraordinary example of Borgianni’s late Caravaggesque style, in which all the best features of his painting are blended to display a profound awareness of the 16th-century Italian artistic tradition, as well as the influence of Spanish tenebrism and the style of El Greco, together with the creative and personal rapport with Caravaggio’s naturalist style and the prefiguration of the Baroque style.

It was not unusual for Borgianni to produce more than one version of a composition, particularly in the production of his easel paintings, as he would sometimes repeat his most successful compositions. According to Gallo more than one autograph version is known of the Holy Family with Saint Anne and the dove(18) (one in the Roberto Longhi collection in Florence, the other in a private English collection). This is also the case with Saint Christopher carrying the Christ Child(19); another example is the Dead Christ with two autograph versions(20) (one in Roberto Longhi collection in Florence, the other in Galleria Spada in Rome).

BIOGRAPHY
After learning the rudiments of painting in Rome, Orazio Borgianni moved to Spain around 1598, where he worked in Pamplona, Toledo, Madrid and Saragozza for important noblemen and court dignitaries. After returning to Italy around 1605, he made use of his great knowledge of 16th-century North Italian painting acquired during his travels in Italy and Spain: In his rare works (approximately 70 are known today, almost all conserved in leading museums or in churches), he displayed a new and creative synthesis of Correggio’s use of space, alongside Tintoretto, Bassano and Titian’s Venetian use of colour, often interpreted through the filter of El Greco’s sensitivity and with a feeling for composition derived from Raphael and his followers. It is no coincidence that in his writings, the great classicist critic Giovan Francesco Bellori should compare Borgianni to Giulio Romano. Borgianni´s oeuvre displays a brilliant interpretation of the great Italian artistic tradition of the 16th century with the addition of Spanish tenebrism, which led on the one hand to spectacular anticipations of the Baroque, as in the enormous, dizzying Melchiorri altarpiece of 1608 with the Vision of Saint Francis, now in the Antiquarium of Seize near Latina and for a long time attributed to Giovanni Lanfranco. It also led to intelligent revivals of some of Raphael’s features in an apparently Caravaggesque style, as is apparent in the tender Holy Family altarpiece of circa 1610 in the Galleria d’Arte Antica in Palazzo Barberini in Rome. There are also the heroic and luminous transfigurations of El Greco’s style crossed with the style of Emilian artists, seen in the altarpiece depicting Saint Charles Borromeo interceding before the Holy Trinity of 1612 in the church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane in Rome. Nor should we overlook the impressive premonitions of the formal crisis of 18th century painting, as exemplified by the grandiose altarpiece showing the Nativity of the Virgin, datable to the middle of 1613 in the Santuario di Nostra Signora della Misericordia in Savona, whose form appears worthy of Giuseppe Maria Crespi or Alessandro Magnasco.

Notes:
(1) Concerning the Weitzner picture, see Sotheby’s Old Master & British Paintings, Evening Sale, London, July 4, 2012, lot 30.
(2) The present work was published for the first time in M. Gallo, Orazio Borgianni, l’Accademia di S. Luca e l’Accademia degli Humoristi: documenti e nuove datazioni, Storia dell’arte, 76, 1992, pp. 296-345, 328 note 205, and M. Gallo, “Del Gran Giulio adeguar sul Tebro i vanni”. Il raffaellismo di Orazio Borgianni, in Caravaggio e il caravaggismo, edited by S. Danesi Squarzina, G. Capitelli and C. Volpi, Rome 1995, pp. 139-174, 162 note 37, subsequently publishing it in M. Gallo, Orazio Borgianni pittore romano (1574–1616) e Francisco de Castro conte di Castro, Rome 1997, pp. 116-117. The picture was then mentioned and illustrated by A. Vannugli, Orazio Borgianni, Juan de Lezcano and a “Martyrdom of St. Lawrence” at Roncesvalles, The Burlington Magazine, CXL, 1998, 1138, pp. 5-15, 8.
(3) For information regarding the Elmi family, see G. Metelli, Gli Elmi del rione Feldenghi, Bollettino storico della città di Foligno, XI, 1987, pp. 151-162.
(4) Archivio di Stato di Foligno, Archivio Pandolfi Elmi, Inventory of goods belonging to Antonio Elmi, 28 February 1803, c. 25v.
(5). Archivio di Stato di Napoli, Notai del ’600, notaio G.D. Cotignola, Inventory of goods belonging to Juan de Lezcano (1634), form 100, prot. 47, c. 278r.
(6) M. Gallo, Orazio Borgianni pittore romano (1574–1616), op. cit., pp. 116-119; A. Vannugli, La collezione del segretario Juan de Lezcano. Borgianni, Caravaggio, Reni e altri nella quadreria di un funzionario spagnolo nell’Italia del primo Seicento, Rome 2009, pp. 403-407.
(7) In his will of 1615, Borgianni nominated Castro and Lezcano as his executors, and also bequeathed some pictures to Castro, see M. Gallo, Orazio Borgianni, l’Accademia di S. Luca e l’Accademia degli Humoristi: documenti e nuove datazioni, Storia dell’arte, 76, 1992, pp. 296-345, 333-338; A. Vannugli, La collezione del segretario Juan de Lezcano, op. cit., pp. 439-440.
(8) Riksarkivet, Stockholm, Azzolinosamlingen, K 450, Inventory of the storeroom, list of paintings, c. 18r: cf. T. Montanari, Il cardinale Decio Azzolino e le collezioni d’arte di Cristina di Svezia, Studi Secenteschi, XXXVIII, 1997, pp. 187-264, 252 no. 139; E. Borsellino, La collezione d’arte del cardinale Decio Azzolino, Rome 2000, p. 87, no. 158; A. Vannugli, La collezione del segretario Juan de Lezcano, cit., p. 407. In another inventory of the picture gallery, executed post mortem and often lacking the indication of the names of the artists (these were generally indicated as “incerto”), the painting is quoted as «Altro quadro d’imperatore rappresentante la disputa di n.ro Signore con figura [sic] intagliata, e dorata d’Incerto» (ASR, Notai A.C., Laurentius Bellus, 1689, Vol. 916, cc. 712v-722v, 715r: published in Borsellino, La collezione d’arte del cardinale Decio Azzolino, ibid., p. 105 n. 50).
(9) The document in question, datable to circa 1667–1669, and conserved in the Riksarkivet in Stockholm, Azzolinosamlingen, K 436, no. 30/8, cc. 1r-7v, is published in E. Borsellino, La collezione d’arte, op. cit., pp. 57-71 (Doc. 1, IA-A).
(10) See T. Montanari, La dispersione delle collezioni di Cristina di Svezia. Gli Azzolino, gli Ottoboni e gli Odescalchi, Storia dell’arte, 90, 1997, pp. 250-300. As M. Epifani writes, “Bella e ferace d’Ingegno (se non tanto di coltura) Partenope”. Il disegno napoletano attraverso le collezioni italiane ed europee tra Sei e Settecento, doctoral thesis, Università degli studi di Napoli “Federico II”, a.a. 2006-2007, p. 43, “in 1692, the inheritance [from the queen and the cardinal] was sold by marchese Pompeo Azzolino – who had probably already sold many works in the three years beforehand – to principe don Livio Odescalchi. Upon the death of this last in 1713, the collections were further dispersed: the paintings were bought by Philippe II, Duke of Orleans, (…) while the statues were sold to Philip V, King of Spain”. It is significant that there is no trace of a Disputa by Borgianni in either the Odescalchi collection or that of the Duke of Orléans; the painting must thus have been sold by Pompeo before 1692. Regarding the kinship between Cardinal Decio and Pompeo (often wrongly named as his nephew), see V. Wärnhjelm, Romolo Spezioli, medico di Cristina di Svezia, Settentrione, new series, 1994, 25-38, 25 note 2.
(11) T. Montanari, La dispersione delle collezioni di Cristina di Svezia, op. cit., p. 272 nota 47.
(12) T. Montanari, Il cardinale Decio Azzolino e le collezioni d’arte di Cristina di Svezia, op. cit., pp. 206-209.
(13) E. Borsellino, La collezione d’arte del cardinale Decio Azzolino, op. cit., p. 35.
(14) Archivio di Stato di Foligno, Not., series I, vol. 1275, notaio B. Pagliarini, 1699, c. 543r: cf. G. Metelli, Per la storia dei palazzi di Foligno in età barocca, Quaderni della Commissione Storica, IV, 1986, 2-3, p. 107.
(15) B. Lattanzi, La famiglia Roncalli, Bollettino storico della città di Foligno, III, 1979, pp. 42-56, 53-54. The queen nominated Ercole as the “Gentiluomo Domestico” to her court with a decree dated April 2, 1689.
(16) V. Nigrisoli Wärnhjelm, Una lettera inedita del cardinale Decio Azzolino jr sulla nascita della Biblioteca Comunale di Fermo, in Medici e medicina nelle Marche. Lo Studio Firmano e la storia della medicina. Fermo 1955-2005, Fermo 2005, pp. 165-170, 167 (already published in Atti della XXXVI tornata dello studio firmano per la storia dell’arte medica e della scienza, edited by A. Serrani, Fermo 2002-2003, pp. 185-196, 188).
(17) This explains the traditional and generic attribution of the painting to Caravaggio mentioned in the Elmi inventory of 1803; it frequently happened in inventories and evaluations of the 18th and early 19th century that works by painters of the so-called Caravaggesque circle be attributed to Caravaggio tout court.
(18) M. Gallo, Orazio Borgianni pittore romano (1574-1616), op. cit., pp. 11, 71.
(19) M. Gallo, Orazio Borgianni pittore romano (1574-1616), op. cit., p. 116, note 89.
(20) M. Gallo, Orazio Borgianni pittore romano (1574-1616), op. cit., pp. 107-113

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