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Lot Essay
Painted on an impressive scale and rich in its coloration, this Adoration of the Shepherds is an early work by Bonifacio de’ Pitati. In an unpublished entry for his forthcoming monograph, Peter Humfrey dates the painting to 1528-29. This same year, Bonifacio was first documented as a painter, though it is assumed he had been working for some time prior to this date in the workshop of Palma Vecchio.
Although the attribution to Bonifacio of the Adoration of the Shepherds was questioned when it was first published in 1986 (Simonetti, loc. cit.), Mauro Lucco rightfully reinserted the painting into Bonifacio's oeuvre a decade later, remarking upon the work's notable quality; a position that has been subsequently accepted by scholars. Lucco dates the painting to 1520, believing it to have been executed around the same moment as the artist's Sacra Conversazione in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (loc. cit.). Nicholas Penny and Phillip Cottrell, meanwhile, date it to slightly later, in line with Humfrey's dating of around 1529-30. By this time, Bonifacio had been employed by various retiring magistrates to produce wall paintings for Venice’s state building, the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi, which housed financial magistrates. Indeed, Penny and Cottrell both compare this Adoration of the Shepherds to Bonifacio’s Adoration of the Magi painted for the Camerlenghi between 1529 and 1530. The painting is also stylistically close to the artist’s canvas of the same subject sold at Christie’s London in 2021 (fig. 1), which is similarly dynamic in the poses of the shepherds, yet infused with an overall peaceful calm.
Penny proposed that the precise physiognomy of the faces of the five adoring shepherds here suggest they may have been portraits of the male members of a Venetian family (loc. cit.). Humfrey counters this, however, stating that those of Joseph and the shepherd at right are no less portrait-like and that in fact this verisimilitude is typical of Bonifacio's treatment of male figures at this stage of his career.
We are grateful to Peter Humfrey for his assistance in the cataloguing of this lot.
Although the attribution to Bonifacio of the Adoration of the Shepherds was questioned when it was first published in 1986 (Simonetti, loc. cit.), Mauro Lucco rightfully reinserted the painting into Bonifacio's oeuvre a decade later, remarking upon the work's notable quality; a position that has been subsequently accepted by scholars. Lucco dates the painting to 1520, believing it to have been executed around the same moment as the artist's Sacra Conversazione in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (loc. cit.). Nicholas Penny and Phillip Cottrell, meanwhile, date it to slightly later, in line with Humfrey's dating of around 1529-30. By this time, Bonifacio had been employed by various retiring magistrates to produce wall paintings for Venice’s state building, the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi, which housed financial magistrates. Indeed, Penny and Cottrell both compare this Adoration of the Shepherds to Bonifacio’s Adoration of the Magi painted for the Camerlenghi between 1529 and 1530. The painting is also stylistically close to the artist’s canvas of the same subject sold at Christie’s London in 2021 (fig. 1), which is similarly dynamic in the poses of the shepherds, yet infused with an overall peaceful calm.
Penny proposed that the precise physiognomy of the faces of the five adoring shepherds here suggest they may have been portraits of the male members of a Venetian family (loc. cit.). Humfrey counters this, however, stating that those of Joseph and the shepherd at right are no less portrait-like and that in fact this verisimilitude is typical of Bonifacio's treatment of male figures at this stage of his career.
We are grateful to Peter Humfrey for his assistance in the cataloguing of this lot.