Lot 23C
Genoese School (1680s). "Madonna and Child with Franciscan Friar" pen and ink with brown and gray wash on laid paper, n.d. Unsigned.. A vision opens in the upper air: the Virgin enthroned upon banked cloud, the Christ Child standing nude against her, while angels draw the vapor aside like the curtain of a stage and a scatter of putti tumbles through the opening. The sheet is worked in pen and brown ink over a fluid scaffolding of brown and grey wash on laid paper, a compositional modello set down at speed for a larger work. Its forms are summarized rather than resolved, and the surface stays alive with the draughtsman's searching, looping line.
The design rises in three registers, the grammar of the Baroque votive apparition. Heaven occupies the summit, where the Madonna and Child appear in glory amid their attendant angels and cherubs. At the right, on the threshold between cloud and ground, a Franciscan friar kneels in adoration, hands open and empty, face lifted into the descending light. He is the holy hinge between the celestial company above and the human throng below. Along the lower edge the earthly register gathers: a kneeling figure shoulders a furled processional standard on its long staff, a companion turns to present the assembly with an outflung arm, and behind them a dense press of upturned faces crowds the margin, the body of the faithful pressed close to witness.
That furled banner is the object that declares the picture's purpose. A gonfalone carried at the head of a procession was the emblem of a confraternity, and the lay sodalities of Genoa, the casacce, were celebrated for the magnificence of these standards and the great crucifixes they bore through the streets on feast days. A composition that stacks the titular vision above and the kneeling brethren with their own standard below served either as an altarpiece for such a company or as the design for the painted standard itself. The scene is therefore one of intercession rather than private rapture. The friar adores on the multitude's behalf, his sanctity lending the petition its standing in heaven, while the presenting figure aims the crowd's eyes upward and the Virgin's regard down. Petition rises as grace prepares to descend.
The friar's order is plain in the belted brown habit, the hood, and the knotted cord, yet the drawing withholds any identifying attribute, as a working modello often does. He is best read as a Franciscan saint, perhaps the company's own titular or patron, a figure to be particularized once the design reached the panel. The handling belongs to the late Seicento in Genoa, the decades when the studios of the Piola and De Ferrari families set the city's tone. The dissolving clouds and the boneless, animated putti speak to that milieu. Size of drawing: 10.75" W x 15" H (27.3 cm W x 38.1 cm H); of mounting paper: 14" W x 19" H (35.6 cm W x 48.3 cm H).
Provenance: ex-Royal Athena Galleries, New York City, New York, USA; ex-Christie's ex-Maria Bernasconi, acquired via descent; ex-collection of Juan (d. 1920) and Felix Bernasconi (d. 1914), Milan and Geneva, Italy (not in Lugt); ex-collection of Captain Carlo Prayer (L.2044), Milan, Italy (1826-1900)
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Item #
203150
- Condition: Good. Two small tears to upper and lower left edge. Some areas of foxing, staining, and discoloring to paper, all commensurate with age. Inscribed on verso in blue ballpoint (vertically), by a descendant of Juan and Felix Bernasconi: "Maria [illeg.] de Bernasconi/1977." Blue ink has bled through to front in areas. Otherwise clear imagery with good remaining detail.
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