(Mazzo di Valtellina, Sondrio, circa 1510–1579 Rome),
after Michelangelo Buonarroti
Pietà,
oil on copper, 39.5 x 28.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
art market, Rome, 1969;
Donini collection, Bologna and Rome;
thence by descent to the present owner

We are grateful to Francesca Parrilla for confirming the attribution after examining the present painting in the original and for her help in cataloguing this lot.

The present painting relates to a drawing by Michelangelo, now in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (inv. no. 1.2o/16). Giorgio Vasari records the drawing in his biography in the 1568 edition of the Vite and he states that it was made by Michelangelo for Vittoria Colonna during the 1540s.

Michelangelo’s compositional invention represents the Virgin seated on the ground leaning against the foot of the cross, with her arms raised and her palms turned heavenwards in a gesture of profound despair. Bound round her chest she wears a band adorned with a cherub’s head, previously used by Michelangelo to ornament the forehead of the Madonna in the Pitti Tondo – a low relief sculpture now in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence; the deceased body of her son is supported in the mother’s lap. Two angels flank the Virgin and support Christ’s arms, which turned downwards at the elbow, reflecting the gesture of the mother.

Marcello Venusti arrived in Rome during the 1540s, where he was appreciated in the circle of the Farnese family, in particular on account of his ability to replicate the ‘inventions’ of Michelangelo, whilst also introducing a personal element into his works. Thanks to his family-run studio, located from the early 1550s, on the ground floor of their house in Campo Marzio, the painter was able to meet the high demand for his work.

The Pietà under discussion here is a rare and refined rendering of the subject on copper, the ideal support for the depiction of pictorial details and delicate passages of light and shade, such as those describing the figure of Christ in the present painting, lending the form an enhanced sculptural quality. The tonalities of colour describing the background are rich and softly modulated, which confer a melancholic atmosphere on the scene, typical of Venusti’s sense of taste. Beyond the Virgin, the mountain landscape and the walled city of Jerusalem, enrich the narrative, while the instruments that are the emblems of the Passion are laid out in the foreground.

A similar version of this work is conserved at Windsor Castle (Royal Collection Trust, inv. no. RL 1062).