(active in Valencia 1513–1542)
The Madonna and Child, with the Infant Saint John the Baptist,
oil on panel, 67 x 54 cm, framed

Provenance:
with Galleria Eusebi, Fano 1984;
Private collection, Milan, 1991;
Private European collection

The present painting is registered in the Fototeca Zeri under no. 37272 (as Girolamo Genga).

We are grateful to Orazio Lovino for suggesting the attribution of the present painting on the basis of a photograph and for his help in cataloguing this lot.

Felipe Pablo de San Leocadio was the son of the Italian painter Paolo da San Leocadio (c. 1447–1520). The first systematic study of his oeuvre was carried out by Chandler R. Post (A History of Spanish Painting, vol. I–XIV, Cambridge, Mass., 1930–1966; vol. XI, 1953, pp. 277–289; vol. XII.II, 1958, pp. 754–755; vol. XIII, 1966, pp. 419, 422–424), who managed to identify a body of works around the altarpiece of Santo Domingo, Valencia, commissioned in 1525.

The painter is first documented on 27 January 1513, being mentioned as ‘mestre pintor’ [‘master painter’] in a document regarding the altarpiece of the church of San Jaime in Villarreal, commissioned in 1512 (see J. M. Doñate Sebastiá, Los retablos de Pablos de Santo Leocadio en Villarreal de los Infantes, in: Boletín de la Sociedad Castellonense de Cultura, XXXIV, October – December 1958, no. 4, pp. 260-261). He is last documented in 1542, when he was living in the quarter of San Martin in Valencia (M. Falomir, La pintura y los pintores en la Valencia del Renacimiento 1472-1620, Valencia 1994, pp. 98-99, 107).

In addition to the present devotional painting, there are another two examples of this typology by Felipe Pablo, the first is close in style and the other shares similar dimensions, these are: the Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist in the church of San Esteban, Valencia (57 x 44 cm) which was restored to him by Chandler Post (see J. Gómez Frechina, in: F.V. Garín Llombard, V. Pons Alós (eds.), La Gloria del Barroco, exhibition catalogue 2009, p. 544, no. 149) and the Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist in the Galería Bernat, Madrid (66 x 54 cm) which has been previously assigned to his father, Paolo.

In the present composition the Madonna, seated on the ground, wraps her right arm around the Christ Child’s waist. The Child stands on her legs and leans forward with curiosity to look at the sticks bound into a cross (presaging the passion and death of Christ), which are held up by the Infant Saint John the Baptist who is depicted in the depths of the lower left corner. Reacting to the Child leaning out, the Virgin holds onto his left foot, in a formal solution which also appears in the Madonna of Humility, which formerly was attributed to Pedro Machuca (see op. cit. Post, 1958, p. 745, fig. 33) or the Master of Barletta (see G. Previtali, in: Andrea da Salerno nel Rinascimento meridionale, exhibition catalogue, Florence 1986, p. 24, note 12), but which is probably closer to Felipe Pablo; and also in a Madonna with the two Saint Johns in a private collection, given to a follower of San Leocadio (see X. Company, Il Rinascimento di Paolo da San Leocadio, Palermo 2009, p. 217, no. 12.8).

The source of light from the left illuminates the sacred group which is set against a landscape arranged in three tiers of depth. In the middle ground we see a hilly landscape with a rocky outcrop covered with vigorous foliage similar to that found in the Madonna in San Esteban, in Valencia, while in the river landscape we find a bridge and Flemish timber-framed houses; the distance is filled by remote mountains and valleys.

This panel’s colour palette is dominated by blues, greens and pinks, and the painting is conducted with particular interest for details such as the transparent veil and the curled hair of the Virgin, the waves of the river water or the foliage of the trees, simultaneously forming a uniform structure where necessary, for example in the construction of the broad folds of the drapery, or various passages of landscape. Felipe Pablo de San Leocadio’s hand can be recognised in the expressive character of the faces, which he tends to push almost to the grotesque, giving them swollen lips, flat noses, droopy eyelids and swollen necks. These physiognomic features are dispensed with moderation here in the Infant Saint John the Baptist and the Christ Child, who are similar to their counterparts in the San Esteban panel. The head of the Virgin is also similar in both these works and is rendered as an oval with rounded eyebrows springing from the strongly defined nose.

The type of the Madonna reflects the influence of Paolo da San Leocadio, as can be seen by comparing it to the Saint Catherine of the Sacra Conversazione in the National Gallery, London (inv. no. NG4786) or to the Virgin of the Annunciation in the Serra de Alzaga collection, Valencia. The overall appearance of the present work, however, shows it to have been made in the wake of the influence of Fernando Yáñez de la Almedina and Fernando de los Llanos. The two Fernandi had already coloured the style of the elder San Leocadio with their import of Italian renaissance innovations, which they had acquired in Italy at the start of the sixteenth century, and made visible on the wings of the high altar of Valencia Cathedral (1507–1510), thereby playing a fundamental role in the development of the figurative language of the younger San Leocadio. This relationship of stylistic dependency recently found important confirmation in the rediscovery of two fragments of a dismembered altarpiece, one by Llanos and the other by Felipe Pablo de San Leocadio, now in the Museu de Belles Arts de València (see F. Benito Doménech, La Col.ecció Orts-Bosch al Museu de Belles Arts de València, ed. by. F. Benito Doménech/J. Gómez Frechina, vol. I, Valencia 2006, pp. 54-57, nos. 13-14): these bear witness to the direct contact that existed between Felipe Pablo and one of the two Fernandi. Indeed, from these two artists, Felipe inherited an interest in landscape and urban views and picked up a description of type clearly derived from the examples of Leonardo, realistically developed – in the case of the panel under discussion – through careful observation of works such as the Madonna del huso by Llanos in the Prado (inv. no. P003081), and the Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist by Yáñez in National Gallery of Art, Washington (inv. no. 1939.1.305), or the two panels assigned to the two Fernandi in the Galleria Palatina, Florence (inv. 1890 nos. 1335, 1432).

The present painting is a long way from the stylistic moment represented by the only sure point in the chronology of Felipe Pablo’s career, that is the altarpiece of Santo Domingo, Valencia (1525–1531, Museu de Belles Arts de València), in which the figures are unsure and clumsy, the draperies generic and the landscape and city views reduced to miniature stage sets. Instead, this is a work of calibrated classicism of an elevated quality, close to that which distinguishes the fine small painting for San Esteban, Valencia, and the Adoration of the Shepherds in the Prado (inv. no. P008216; considered by Post to be his masterpiece). Until the emergence of new reliable studies revising the painter’s career, a date for the present painting can be proposed around the end of the second decade or the start of the third decade of the sixteenth century, when, following the death of his father, the artist finally abandoned the fifteenth century style to embrace with greater freedom the examples of Yáñez e Llanos.