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Lot Essay
This striking panel showing Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness is a rare surviving work in oil by Giovanni Francesco (Gianfrancesco) Penni, who, along with Giulio Romano, was Raphael’s most important assistant in Rome. In recent times, the picture belonged to two great art-world figures of the twentieth century, Denys Sutton, the long-standing editor of Apollo Magazine and, subsequently, Philip Pouncey, one of the pre-eminent connoisseurs of Italian Renaissance paintings.
As Penni spent much of his career collaborating with Raphael and latterly, following his master’s death in 1520, working alongside Giulio Romano, his own independent artistic output in oil was not substantial. Although this panel was published for the first time by Paul Joannides in 1993 (op. cit.), Penni’s authorship was originally recognised in the late 1960s by Philip Pouncey, the picture’s subsequent owner and widely recognised as one of the great experts from the last century on Raphael and his circle.
Pouncey noted on the verso of a photograph of this painting that the figure is similar to that in a preparatory study (Oxford, Ashmolean Museum) for the grisaille of Alexander preserving the works of Homer, Raphael's trompe l’oeil relief executed in c.1514 beneath his celebrated Parnassus fresco (1509-11; Vatican Museums) for the Stanza della Segnatura, unquestionably the crowning achievement of the Urbino artist's career. Long regarded to be from Raphael's own hand, the Oxford sheet is now considered by some scholars to be one of Penni's finest drawings in red chalk and the work in which he comes closest to his master (see T. Henry and P. Joannides, Late Raphael, exhibition catalogue, Madrid, 2012, p. 227). When the present painting was included in the 2012/13 Late Raphael exhibition, Paul Joannides proposed a date of c.1516 and compared the pose of Saint John with the figure of a man lifting water in the background of Fire in the Borgo (1514-17; Vatican Museums), the fresco designed by Raphael and executed by his workshop (ibid., p. 228). In drawing both this comparison, and that with an attendant figure in the loggia fresco of the Baptism of Christ (1517-19; Vatican Museums), another Raphael workshop production, Joannides makes the interesting link that in these three independent works ‘all three men attempt to achieve salvation through water’ (ibid.).
Penni’s treatment of the beautifully rendered landscape reveals his deep interest in Northern painting and prints. While the inclusion of the goat on the rocky outcrop is a motif clearly indebted to Dürer’s 1504 engraving of Adam and Eve, the extravagant vegetation seems to recall the Danube school and, specifically, Albrecht Altdorfer (c. 1480-1538), whose work Penni must have known through engravings and woodcuts, if not from his highly individual paintings. The staccato brushstrokes can be compared with the landscape in the Madonna del Passeggio (Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland), which is thought to have been executed by Penni under his master's supervision.
Raphael's studio evidently received a number of commissions around 1517-18 for images of Saint John the Baptist in the wilderness, examples of which are found in the Uffizi and Louvre. Unlike those works, both of which are on a grand scale and were likely intended as altarpieces for private chapels, the present rendition, executed on panel rather than canvas, was probably ordered for private devotion and possibly for a patron who shared the Saint’s name, Giovanni.
This picture belonged to Denys Sutton (1917-1991), the distinguished collector, editor and exhibition curator. He was appointed as editor of Apollo Magazine in 1962, where he was to remain for a quarter of a century. Sutton formed a notable collection that represented his broad but discerning taste. Some of the collection was sold by Christie's in 1997 and 2005, including works by important early Florentine artists such as Agnolo Gaddi, Francesco di Giotto di Bondone and Filippino Lippi..
The other distinguished former owner of the painting, Philip Pouncey was appointed assistant-keeper at the National Gallery at the age of just twenty-three. He took up his position on 1st January 1934, the same day that Kenneth Clark arrived as the gallery’s newly-appointed director. Following the end of the second World War, he transferred to the British Museum where he was appointed Deputy Keeper of the Department of Prints and Drawings. During his time there, Pouncey co-authored the three highly-regarded volumes of the catalogue of Italian drawings at the British Museum. His 1962 catalogue, undertaken with John Gere, still stands as the seminal work from the post-war period in distinguishing hands among the drawings of Raphael and his immediate followers.
One of Pouncey’s better-known pronouncements, often repeated by Professor Michael Jaffé and famously uttered by Anthony Blunt in Alan Bennet’s 1988 play A Question of Attribution, was that there were three types of art historian: those who immediately see what something might be; those who see it when it is pointed out to them; and those who never see it all. Pouncey undoubtedly belonged to the first group; his visual memory, empathy with the creative process and judgement of the ‘personality’ of individual artists gave him an almost unrivalled ability to identify mis-attributed and overlooked works of the Italian school.
As Penni spent much of his career collaborating with Raphael and latterly, following his master’s death in 1520, working alongside Giulio Romano, his own independent artistic output in oil was not substantial. Although this panel was published for the first time by Paul Joannides in 1993 (op. cit.), Penni’s authorship was originally recognised in the late 1960s by Philip Pouncey, the picture’s subsequent owner and widely recognised as one of the great experts from the last century on Raphael and his circle.
Pouncey noted on the verso of a photograph of this painting that the figure is similar to that in a preparatory study (Oxford, Ashmolean Museum) for the grisaille of Alexander preserving the works of Homer, Raphael's trompe l’oeil relief executed in c.1514 beneath his celebrated Parnassus fresco (1509-11; Vatican Museums) for the Stanza della Segnatura, unquestionably the crowning achievement of the Urbino artist's career. Long regarded to be from Raphael's own hand, the Oxford sheet is now considered by some scholars to be one of Penni's finest drawings in red chalk and the work in which he comes closest to his master (see T. Henry and P. Joannides, Late Raphael, exhibition catalogue, Madrid, 2012, p. 227). When the present painting was included in the 2012/13 Late Raphael exhibition, Paul Joannides proposed a date of c.1516 and compared the pose of Saint John with the figure of a man lifting water in the background of Fire in the Borgo (1514-17; Vatican Museums), the fresco designed by Raphael and executed by his workshop (ibid., p. 228). In drawing both this comparison, and that with an attendant figure in the loggia fresco of the Baptism of Christ (1517-19; Vatican Museums), another Raphael workshop production, Joannides makes the interesting link that in these three independent works ‘all three men attempt to achieve salvation through water’ (ibid.).
Penni’s treatment of the beautifully rendered landscape reveals his deep interest in Northern painting and prints. While the inclusion of the goat on the rocky outcrop is a motif clearly indebted to Dürer’s 1504 engraving of Adam and Eve, the extravagant vegetation seems to recall the Danube school and, specifically, Albrecht Altdorfer (c. 1480-1538), whose work Penni must have known through engravings and woodcuts, if not from his highly individual paintings. The staccato brushstrokes can be compared with the landscape in the Madonna del Passeggio (Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland), which is thought to have been executed by Penni under his master's supervision.
Raphael's studio evidently received a number of commissions around 1517-18 for images of Saint John the Baptist in the wilderness, examples of which are found in the Uffizi and Louvre. Unlike those works, both of which are on a grand scale and were likely intended as altarpieces for private chapels, the present rendition, executed on panel rather than canvas, was probably ordered for private devotion and possibly for a patron who shared the Saint’s name, Giovanni.
This picture belonged to Denys Sutton (1917-1991), the distinguished collector, editor and exhibition curator. He was appointed as editor of Apollo Magazine in 1962, where he was to remain for a quarter of a century. Sutton formed a notable collection that represented his broad but discerning taste. Some of the collection was sold by Christie's in 1997 and 2005, including works by important early Florentine artists such as Agnolo Gaddi, Francesco di Giotto di Bondone and Filippino Lippi..
The other distinguished former owner of the painting, Philip Pouncey was appointed assistant-keeper at the National Gallery at the age of just twenty-three. He took up his position on 1st January 1934, the same day that Kenneth Clark arrived as the gallery’s newly-appointed director. Following the end of the second World War, he transferred to the British Museum where he was appointed Deputy Keeper of the Department of Prints and Drawings. During his time there, Pouncey co-authored the three highly-regarded volumes of the catalogue of Italian drawings at the British Museum. His 1962 catalogue, undertaken with John Gere, still stands as the seminal work from the post-war period in distinguishing hands among the drawings of Raphael and his immediate followers.
One of Pouncey’s better-known pronouncements, often repeated by Professor Michael Jaffé and famously uttered by Anthony Blunt in Alan Bennet’s 1988 play A Question of Attribution, was that there were three types of art historian: those who immediately see what something might be; those who see it when it is pointed out to them; and those who never see it all. Pouncey undoubtedly belonged to the first group; his visual memory, empathy with the creative process and judgement of the ‘personality’ of individual artists gave him an almost unrivalled ability to identify mis-attributed and overlooked works of the Italian school.