Leandro Bassano (Bassano del Grappa, 10 June 1557 – Venice, 15 April 1622), The small market (Preparations for the Supper at Cana)

Leandro Bassano (Bassano del Grappa, 10 June 1557 – Venice, 15 April 1622)

The Little Market (Preparations for the Cana Dinner)

Oil on canvas, 114,5 x 185 cm

With frame, 128 x 198 cm

Fourth son of Jacopo Bassano, as Verci recalls, "he had no other masters of art than his father, and he made such progress in the early years of his youth that, like his brother Francesco, he soon reached the position of helping his father in those works that he painted on his behalf" (Verci, 1775, p. 182). While still very young, he collaborated in the production of his father's flourishing workshop together with his brothers Francesco and Giambattista. At this early stage of his career it is impossible to distinguish the part he played, but his personality soon emerges and becomes recognisable for his progressive distancing from the family colouristic tradition and for his preference for drawing. From around 1575 he participated extensively in the execution of biblical-pastoral paintings, which were much sought after and which, since the dawn of the workshop's activity, constituted the trademark of the da Ponte family's activity. Edward Arslan (1960, p. 235) assigns works such as Moses Striking the Rock (Dresden, Gemäldegalerie), the Departure for Canaan (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) and The Wedding at Cana (Vicenza, Museo civico) to Leandro's youthful period. A stay in Venice, conducted together with his father Jacopo in the early 80s, gave new life to Leandro's production: influences connected to the very famous production of the masters Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese are perceived with strengthened determination in paintings such as Christ laid down by angels in the tomb in the Civic Museum of Bassano, the S. Anna with the Virgin venerated by numerous nuns in the Stockholm Museum and the Last Supper in the Pitti Gallery in Florence. After the death of his father Jacopo and his brother Francesco, Leandro became progressively more independent from the stylistic features of the family workshop: in the works executed from the 1490s onwards, the drawing component prevails and the figures, markedly defined and metallic, appear enlivened by the lively colourism of Venetian tradition and by more vivid and iridescent tones compared to the terra cotta ones that denote the artistic production of contemporary personalities of the Bassano circle; this is evident in the Meeting of Pope Alexander III with Doge Sebastiano Ziani for the Hall of the Council of Ten in the Doge's Palace in Venice, concluded following the death of Francesco, in the Carnival of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and in the Resurrection of Lazarus in the church of Carità in Venice, a very important painting for understanding the art of Da Ponte, attentive, in addition to the suggestions deriving from the Venetian cultural background, to the late Mannerist experiences of Central Italy, especially those of Federico Zuccari, active a few years earlier in the Doge's Palace in Venice.

This painting is absolutely in keeping with the ideals underlying Leandro's production, another version of which, which became part of the Savoy collections by order of King Emmanuel II in 1682 and was attributed with certainty to Da Ponte by Gabrielli in 1971, is now kept at the Galleria Sabauda in Turin (inv. 419). The work was developed independently by Leandro after 1580, with a compositional scheme similar to a version of the subject kept at the museum in Vienna, for which one can intuit the use of the same cartoon used for certain areas and some characters in the Savoy painting (Villano, 2009). However, as its title suggests, it can more generally be considered an elaboration of the so-called Great Market by Jacopo, of which it replicates the structure on a smaller scale. The swarming that animates it is also analogous and in certain cases the figures are simply placed differently. Of the Piccolo Mercato, in addition to our painting and the one belonging to the Savoy family, at least two other copies are known, which testify to the serial nature of the pictorial process used by Leandro. The first, of a larger format (240 x 293 cm), is located in the deposits of the Verona Museum of Castelvecchio (inv. 1113) and comes from the collection of Cesare Bernasconi; the second has been reported in a private collection in Bassano and is dated around 1585.