Christ as the Man of Sorrows

This refined Imago Pietatis has recently been attributed by Professore Andrea De Marchi to Giovanni da Milano, who was born at Caversaccio, west of Como (private communication, 23 May 2023). He is documented between 1346 and 1369 in Florence, where his work stands out from that of his Tuscan contemporaries for its consistent delicacy, its lyrical flow of line and, above all, for the coherence of its expression of emotion.

The first art historian to study the panel was Max J. Friedländer, who in an expertise of 1941 assumed it was Sienese. Federico Zeri placed it in his file for the Milanese Michelino di Besozzo (Fonazione Federico Zeri, Bologna, no. 20000), while Luciano Bellosi told De Marchi that he thought of Giacomo Jaquerio, the great Torinese master of the early Quattrocento. The reverse, which is painted in imitation of stone, implies that the picture was not part of a predella, but as De Marchi argues, served as an Osculatorium, offered to be kissed by the faithful at mass. He pointed to Tuscan iconographical parallels in the early pentatych by Taddeo Gaddi, formerly in the Bromley Davenport collection (sold in these Rooms, 24 May 1991, lot 33), and a panel by Lorenzo Monaco at Bergamo (Galleria dell'Accademia Carrara, inv. no. 58MR00011), in which Christ’s arms are folded across his chest in the same way. He fairly emphasises the exceptional quality of the panel and the subtlety with which the image is shown in the fictive frame which, like the painting itself, is lit from above.

De Marchi has advanced the attribution to Giovanni da Milano (‘Mi chiedo se questa tavola non possa rientrare in una ricostruzione dei primi anni lombardi di Giovanni da Milano’). He considers the key work in this connection as the frescoed lunette of the Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist and a female Saint, above the portal of the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie at Mendresio near his birthplace, Caversaccio. He points out that the fictive marble framing, in this case of breccia rossa, is of a specifically Lombard type, comparing it with the trompe l’oeil compartments in which twelve half-length Apostles are placed in the frescoed decoration of about 1320 in the apse of Sant’Abbondio at Como, which he fairly regards as the masterpiece of proto-gothic painting in the territory of Como. As this was the most substantial fresco scheme in his native territory, one might assume that the young Giovanni da Milano studied this with close attention. That Giovanni da Milano could execute a panel of such refinement before he left Lombardy would go far to explain why he won commissions of significant importance in Florence and Prato, and remained an artist of such individuality in a city where painting was so dominated by successive generations of followers of Giotto.