Circle of Scipione Pulzone (1544 – 1598) Madonna Oil on canvas

Circle of Scipione Pulzone (Gaeta, 1544 – Rome, 1598)
Madonna
Oil on canvas, 55 x 42,5 cm
Frame, 63 x 50,5 cm
Inscription on the back: Iacopo Ligozzi

The canvas examined finds a direct comparison with the works of the same Marian subject by Scipione Pulzone (1544-1598), one of the most original pictorial interpreters of the Counter-Reformation era and one of the most appreciated artists active in Rome in the second half of the XNUMXth century. Pulzone, famous for his skills as a portraitist, was a creator of devotional images of Raphaelesque ancestry, masterfully interpreting the post-Tridentine ideals.
Scipione Pulzone was accustomed to both replicating the happiest characters of his religious works to insert them into new compositions, and varying their profiles to re-propose them under the same or different iconographic guises. The proposed work depicts Mary, portrayed with her head covered while with her gaze turned downwards she most likely observes the little Jesus, but we find her similarly also in his Virgins Annunciate. This iconic representation of the Virgin was very successful, as demonstrated by the different versions by Pulzone cited in various archive sources, but also by the re-propositions made by his workshop to satisfy the numerous requests from both ecclesiastical and private clients.
A direct comparison can be made with the Madonna formerly in the collection of the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth House, reported by Federico Zeri (Zeri Photo Library, no. 29192), but also, considering it as a smaller version of larger paintings, with the Madonna della Divina Provvidenza executed by Scipione for the Barnabite Fathers (Rome, San Carlo ai Catinari, chapel of the Fathers) and with the Virgin depicted in the Holy Family of the Galleria Borghese (inv. 313). Mary's face also shows similarities with that of the Madonna called della Rosa, executed by Pulzone in 1592 (Rome, Galleria Borghese, inv. 381).
An example of illustrious derivation is the Blessed Virgin by Marcello Venusti (1515-1579) today in the Galleria Borghese (inv. 178), directly taken from an original by Scipione Pulzone attested at the end of the seventeenth century in the picture gallery of Gabriele Dal Pozzo and today in a private collection, as is the face of the Madonna present in the Adoration of the Shepherds in the Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria.