Pietro degli Ingannati

Possibly Louis-Philippe, Duc d'Orléans (1747-1793), Paris, until 1793 (see below);
The Earls of Lauderdale, Thirlestane (according to a label on the reverse);
With Galleria Arte Antica, Milan;
Acquired from the above by the present owner in the early 1980s.

M.M. Palmegiano, "Pietro degli Ingannati", in Le Muse, vol. IX, 1967, p. 176;
P. Caccialupi, "Pietro degli Ingannati", in Saggi e Memorie, vol. 11, 1978, pp. 31-2, reproduced fig. 17.

The following condition report is provided by Rebecca Gregg, who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's. The panel appears in stable condition, there are three vertical batons attached to the reverse with a series of drilled buttons. The original panel has been planed down to accommodate these. There is an additional baton attached to the top edge. The panel has a slight concave dip between the two horizontal members. The paint layers are in relatively good condition, there is a network of horizontal craqulure present some of which appears raised however there are no recent damages or loss and the adhesion between the paint and ground layers and the support appears stable. The painting has been extensively over-painted during previous restoration campaigns; some of these layers appear excessive. There is a lot of over-paint that is very 'brushy' in appearance and do not conform to the shape of an underlying damage. Some of this over-paint appears to cover original paint layers. The face of Our Lady and Christ's right side appear extensively re-worked; with a possible repair to the panel in the lower right corner. These layers of over-paint are slightly darker than the original paint layers. The panel has been selectively cleaned; the discoloured varnish layer has been removed only from the lighter areas of the composition.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Pietro degli Ingannati is an artistic personality active in the Veneto in the first half of the sixteenth century who has only relatively recently been fully recognised. His work has often been confused with that of Francesco Bissolo, his probable master and another Venetian whose work, like Ingannati's, is most obviously influenced and inspired by the late Madonne of Giovanni Bellini. Ingannati inherited from Bellini a love for nature and 'the natural' as well as a lyrical harmony that extends through the protagonists that populate the frontal plane of all his works into the imaginative landscapes behind. Ingannati's landscapes, in fact, evoke the moving and expressive effects achieved by Giorgione; here the brooding sky, pools of sunlight, and dramatic, silhouetted townscape recall the background of Giorgione's most famous work, La Tempesta, more than the serene and idealistic summer landscapes that offset Bellini's later paintings such as the Madonna del Prato in the National Gallery, London.¹

Bellini's late Madonne were to inspire an entire generation of Venetian painters who would latterly become known as the Belliniani. Ingannati devoted his entire career to the emulation of Bellini and the latter's earliest followers, such as Vincenzo Catena and Palma Vecchio. His last dated work from 1548 manifests only a modest stylistic progression from those works considered by Caccialupi as his earliest, such as the Madonna and Child with John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene and S. Nicola da Tolentino formerly in the Staatliche Museum, Berlin, which Caccialupi considers to be the work that 'apre l'attivita dell'Ingannati' in 1505.²   Caccialupi dates the present painting midway through his career, to circa 1530, noting the Palma-like Saint Catherine, the 'bellinismo' of the other figures and the 'giorgionismo' of the landscape.  Berenson was probably the first to suggest the attribution to Ingannati, writing on the back of a photograph now in the Istituto di Settignano, that had been sent to him by José Pijoan in 1956, that although it reminded him styistically of Bonifazio Veronese he found it closest to Ingannati.

PROVENANCE
On the reverse of the panel is an inscription, largely destroyed by the attachment of one of the vertical batons, that suggests the painting was formerly in the collection of Louis-Philippe, Duc d'Orléans (1747-1793). All of Louis-Philippe's Italian paintings were sold in 1793 to the Belgian banker Edoaurd Walkiers and eventually, by the latter's cousin Count François-Louis-Joseph de Laborde-Méréville, they found their way to London where they were acquired en masse by a consortium of English aristocrats led by the 3rd Duke of Bridgewater. In 1798 all of these paintings were exhibited at Bryan's Gallery in Pall Mall and put on sale. Many had been reserved by the consortium, while the others were acquired by a handful of other blue-blooded English buyers. One of these was a 'Mr Maitland', family name of the Earls of Lauderdale at Thirlestane.³ A partially destroyed label on the reverse of the panel denotes that it was once at Thirlestane in the Maitland collection. Thus, though it has not been possible to identify the painting securely with any in the list of the Orléans collection compiled by William Buchanan in 1824, for reasons that descriptions are short, attributions often erroneous and sizes not given, it seems plausible that the painting was acquired for the Lauderdale collection from that of the Duc d'Orléans.

 

1. See A. Tempestini, Giovanni Bellini. Catalogo completo dei dipinti, Florence 1992, pp. 240-2, no. 86, reproduced.
2. See Caccialupi, under Literature, p. 31, reproduced fig. 25; and p. 30, reproduced fig. 1.
3. See W. Buchanan, Memoirs of Painting, with a Chronological History of the Importation of Pictures of Great Masters into England by the Great Artists since the French Revolution, London 1824, p. 21.