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拍品专文
First published by Adelina Modesti in 2004, Babette Bohn has recently suggested that Elisabetta Sirani’s Infant Saint John the Baptist is likely datable between 1658 and 1660 (private communication, 29 October 2022). Sirani returned to this subject on numerous occasions, each time varying the composition and often including a lamb to accompany Saint John in the wilderness (fig 1). The present painting depicts the saint in full profile, his head turned to face the viewer and his right arm raised towards heaven, the elegant contrapposto lending a graceful sense of movement to the tranquil scene. The painting once formed part of the personal collection of celebrated connoisseur Sir John Pope-Hennessy, whose illustrious career included positions as Director of the Victoria and Albert and British Museums in London, and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Though himself a scholar of Italian Renaissance art, Pope-Hennessy’s personal collection was broad in scope and genre, including Chinese ceramics and jades, sculpture and furniture.
Elisabetta Sirani displayed extraordinary talent at a young age, and was lauded in her own lifetime; at her death she was interred next to Bologna’s most celebrated painter, Guido Reni, in the Basilica of San Domenico. Seicento Bologna was a city teeming with artistic innovation and freedom. Against the intellectual backdrop of the University of Bologna, the oldest university in Europe, a vibrant artistic community emerged. Relaxed inheritance laws enabled women to inherit property, which allowed the vibrant community of women painters, musicians, and writers to thrive. The artist’s father, Giovanni Andrea Sirani, worked as an assistant in Guido Reni’s workshop and likely taught Elisabetta and her two sisters his craft at home. Elisabetta is recognized as the first Bolognese woman to have been principally active as a history painter, specializing in religious works, during a period in which women were restricted to painting still life scenes or portraiture (B. Bohn, Women Artists, Their Patrons, and Their Publics, in Early Modern Bologna, University Park, PA, 2021, p. 61). Many of her religious pictures were private devotional paintings – in her inventories she recorded fifty paintings of the Infant Christ, either depicted with his mother, the young Saint John the Baptist or Saint Joseph (ibid.). Sirani’s smaller scale religious paintings were much sought after by her patrons. Intended to focus the viewer during private devotion, this work displays Sirani’s characteristic charm and tenderness in her treatment of these subjects.
We are grateful to Babette Bohn for endorsing the attribution and for suggesting the dating of this painting on the basis of photographs.
Elisabetta Sirani displayed extraordinary talent at a young age, and was lauded in her own lifetime; at her death she was interred next to Bologna’s most celebrated painter, Guido Reni, in the Basilica of San Domenico. Seicento Bologna was a city teeming with artistic innovation and freedom. Against the intellectual backdrop of the University of Bologna, the oldest university in Europe, a vibrant artistic community emerged. Relaxed inheritance laws enabled women to inherit property, which allowed the vibrant community of women painters, musicians, and writers to thrive. The artist’s father, Giovanni Andrea Sirani, worked as an assistant in Guido Reni’s workshop and likely taught Elisabetta and her two sisters his craft at home. Elisabetta is recognized as the first Bolognese woman to have been principally active as a history painter, specializing in religious works, during a period in which women were restricted to painting still life scenes or portraiture (B. Bohn, Women Artists, Their Patrons, and Their Publics, in Early Modern Bologna, University Park, PA, 2021, p. 61). Many of her religious pictures were private devotional paintings – in her inventories she recorded fifty paintings of the Infant Christ, either depicted with his mother, the young Saint John the Baptist or Saint Joseph (ibid.). Sirani’s smaller scale religious paintings were much sought after by her patrons. Intended to focus the viewer during private devotion, this work displays Sirani’s characteristic charm and tenderness in her treatment of these subjects.
We are grateful to Babette Bohn for endorsing the attribution and for suggesting the dating of this painting on the basis of photographs.