(Bologna 1560–1609 Rome)
The Virgin in prayer,
oil on canvas, 62.3 x 41.5 cm, framed

A red wax seal on the reverse of the canvas: […] ICORDIE.S.MA […]

Provenance:
Bologna, Palazzo Gnudi Scagliarini (mid-19th Century);
European private collection

We are extremely grateful to Professor Daniele Benati for confirming the attribution of the present painting after examination in the original. We are also extremely grateful to Nicholas Turner for independently confirming the attribution of the present painting after examination in the original.

Benati and Turner have both dated this previously unknown painting to the middle of the 1580s. Benati dates the present composition to between 1584-1585, when Annibale introduced a more graceful style of painting to his work that reflected his admiration of Correggio, having abandoned the more carefree and rough manner of his first works (see the Crucifixion with Saints, Bologna, church of Santa Maria della Carità, dated 1583; The Butcher’s Shop, Oxford, Christ Church Museum of Art). This is evident in the present composition, expressed through subtle and delicate brushstrokes and iridescent glazes. However, the thick white impasto should also be noted in the areas of the veil, the edges of the pages of the book, and the moulding at the front of the ledge. Annibale’s directness of touch, which was ultimately inspired by Titian, and the wide range of different paint textures seems to recall his work of circa 1585, for example, The Baptism of Christ, in S. Gregorio, Bologna, which is dated 1585 (Posner, cat. no. 21), and The Annunciation, recently sold at Christie’s, New York, 30 January 2013, lot 31, which shares a similar expression of the Virgin’s “humility, and the downward look of her head.”

The Virgin in the present painting can be compared to figures from the fresco decoration of a room in the Palazzo Fava, the Stories of Jason, which was the major collective enterprise of the three Carracci cousins in 1584: see for example the boy with a vase in the background of the scene of the Funeral of Jason, who is represented from the same perspective; or the figure of Orpheus in the Meeting between Jason and Cyzicus. Other closely comparable images are the angels in the Baptism of Christ, painted by Annibale for the Canobi altar in the church of Santi Gregorio e Siro between 1583 and 1585, and the Allegory from the Hampton Court collection. At this time Annibale´s proximity to his cousin Ludovico, who directed the work in the Palazzo Fava, became closer, nonetheless according to Benati “this does not constitute grounds for perplexity in attributing the present work”, since by now the individual characteristics of the three Carracci had become clear and definite. Furthermore, the present painting recalls an invention that Annibale had already included in another painting of the Madonna from the Martello Collection in Florence (see D. Benati, in The Martello Collection, Further Paintings, Drawings and Miniatures 13th-18th Century, edited by M. Boskovits, Florence, 1992, no. 42, p. 116; D. Benati, Un San Sebastiano di Annibale Carracci da Modena a Dresda, in: Nuovi Studi, 1, 1996, p.112, note 26, fig. 205). As was common artistic practice in the 17th century, Annibale returned to the same image, leaving it unchanged from a structural point of view, but significantly revising the compostion stylistically. As is the case with the contemporary series of paintings representing the Ragazzo che beve, it appears as if Annibale viewed each painting as an opportunity for personal study, aimed at the continual refinement of his painterly style. The Madonna from the Martello collection, which is similar in height but wider, is executed in a rougher manner, similar to the painting of the Crucifixion and Saints (1583) now in the Church della Carità. The present canvas however displays a rather more accurate form and expresses a different feeling of solemn grace with reference to Correggio.
The Virgin, depicted with youthful traits, joins her hands in the act of prayer before an open book on the bookrest of a prie dieu prayer stool. The slanted positioning of this prie dieu recalls the compositional format of Carracci’s “St Catherine” in the Galleria Doria-Pamphilj, Rome. The Virgin’s devotion and her physical beauty are simply a manifestation of her inward purity, which is externalised in her prominently arched eyebrows, her rounded eyelids that cover her gaze from the viewer as she reads her prayer, her fine, narrow nose and her flawlessly moulded mouth, with rosy-red lips...the Virgin’s exquisitely wrought features reflect the idealized physiognomic types found in Correggio’s early, “Leonardesque” Madonnas, as conditioned by the influence of his cousin Ludovico Carracci, and Federico Barocci. Nothing seems to disturb her devoted concentration, which makes it unlikely that the present painting was originally accompanied by a pendant with the Angel of the Annunciation, as has been suggested. The Virgin in Prayer would have been independent composition, intended for the personal devotion of a private commissioner.

The present painting is a very important addition to the corpus of Annibale Carracci’s early works.