(active in Milan circa 1530–1570)
Christ carrying the cross,
oil on panel, 87.2 x 54.4 cm, framed

Provenance:
Collection of Camillo Panza (according to a label on the reverse);
sale, Christie’s, New York, 29 January 2015, lot 242 (as Girolamo Figino);
Private European collection

We are grateful to Francesco Frangi for confirming the attribution of the present painting and for his help in cataloguing this lot.

The iconography of Christ depicted in half-length, carrying the cross, against a dark background, devoid of detail, gained considerable success in Northern Italy in the last decades of the fifteenth century (see S. Ringbom, Icon to narrative, 1965, ed. 1984, pp. 147-155). The most significant examples of this treatment of the subject include the drawing by Leonardo da Vinci from the early 1490s, now conserved in the Galleria dell ‘Accademia, Venice, which was probably a study for a small painting of which there is no further record to date. Leonardo’s influence was widespread amongst Milanese painters including Marco d’Oggiono, Andrea Solario and Giampietrino, all of whom painted this devotional subject in their own individual manner, but all of whom featured the half-length figure against a completely dark background in their work.

The present painting should be considered within this iconographic tradition, but it also additionally reflects a precise stylistic continuity with the figurative culture which evolved in the wake of Leonardo’s work. This is particularly recognizable in the distinctive enameled quality and the carefully shaded handling of the flesh tones which are reminiscent of the works of Marco d’Oggiono, Giampientrino and Cesare Magni.

Therefore this panel belongs within the context of the Milanese followers of Leonardo, however not within the circle of his immediate followers. This work belongs to a slightly later date, particularly identifiable due to the emphasis on drawing and the monumentality in the rendering of the figure and his voluminous scarlet mantle. These features are fully appropriate to the stylistic approach of the intriguing, only recently rediscovered, Milanese painter, Girolamo Figino (see in particular F. Frangi, Girolamo Figino ritrovato, in: Nuovi Studi, II, 1997, 3, pp. 31-40; for a summary of his biography see R. Sacchi, in: Pittura a Milano. Rinascimento e Manierismo, ed. by M. Gregori, Cinisello Balsamo 1999, p. 266). Figino was active in the middle of the sixteenth century, and despite working so long after the death of Leonardo, he remained faithful to the language of the master and modelled his figures in accordance to a prescribed form.

The expressive peculiarities particular to Figino are recognized clearly through the impressive series of altarpieces which punctuate his catalogue, from the early Sacre Conversazioni in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin and the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge (Ma.) datable to the 1530s, to the Madonna del Velo of the church of Sant’Ambrogio, Milan painted in 1559–1560, and the Sacra Famiglia con San Siro in the Milanese Church of San Marco, from 1559. The present painting of Christ is particularly close to the latest of these works, the two altarpieces still in Milan. All three paintings share a similar dark colouring of the flesh tones, a greater solidity and sculptural quality in the figure, underscored by the complex fall of the drapery, arranged with insistent rhythmic folds which seem to be a recurrent motif of Girolamo Figino’s pictorial practice.

In the context of Figino’s recurrent stylistic practice, the strong right hand of the Christ figure in the present painting, positioned at the exact center of the painting, supporting the cross, cannot be overlooked. This unusual treatment presents a highly significant singularity. The odd arrangement of the fingers is unorthodox, with the middle and ring fingers placed close together, and the little, and index fingers positioned apart: this motif, one might even call it a draughtsman’s devise, appears in almost all the painter’s known works, from the early panel in Cambridge mentioned previously, to the later Madonna col Bambino con Santa Marta e la Maddalena from the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence which is emblematic of the artist’s mature, and impeccably achieved academic interpretation of Leonard’s formulae.