Florentine School, circa 1560

In the present family's collection since at least the nineteenth century and possibly earlier.

The following condition report is provided by Sarah Walden who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's: Florentine School, circa 1560. The Descent into Limbo. This painting is on a vast poplar panel. It appears to have just two joints and to have remained extraordinarily stable and uncracked, apart from the area near the centre at the top where there are several knots. These have moved to some extent producing various curving cracks but no serious losses at all. The original cross bars remain in place. It seems likely that the painting has remained calmly in a cool chapel, conceivably scarcely having moved. The fine surface seems to have fairly recently been cleaned, with a very few small losses having been retouched in tratteggio, for instance in a narrow line of several tiny flaked lacunae vertically spaced out near the left joint down through Christ's drapery, but these are minimal imperfections in an extraordinarily immaculate, virtually pure undamaged painting. Minor scuffing has been retouched along the base edge. There might be slight wear in one or two of the faces on the right, where one side of a face is rather lighter than the other half, although this might reflect perhaps a primary underlayer in a water based medium. The astonishingly beautiful condition of this painting is extremely rare. This report was not done under laboratory conditions.
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This beautiful paletta d'altare, remarkable for its condition and quality, was painted in Florence, probably circa 1560. Deeply aware of the mannerist innovations of his day which were to reach their zenith in the decorations of Francesco de Medici's studiolo in the 1570s, the artist elegantly synthesises the influences of Giorgio Vasari, Francesco Salviati and Agnolo Bronzino but nonetheless works in a distinct and impressive style, making it all the more unusual that the painting should have eluded a precise attribution thus far. Characteristically for a Florentine work of the mid-sixteenth century, when disegno was considered key to the conceptualization of a composition and in the process of of producing the painting itself, IRR scans show the presence of very fine underdrawing (see fig. 3).

The dimensions of the painting suggest it was likely to have been painted for a domestic chapel but the work's inspiration is surely Bronzino's large full-scale altarpiece of the same subject painted in 1552 for the Zacchini chapel in the church of Santa Croce in Florence (see fig. 1).¹ The design, in all its complexity, the interest in sculptural movement and the physiognomies of the handful of female figures in the present work all point unmistakably to Bronzino’s idiom. The handling, however, strays away from Bronzino and shows little interest for his smooth porcelain-like finish, nor for his interest in the male nude. An understanding of Giorgio Vasari’s later work is evident but even more so that of Francesco Salviati in the studied poses of the figures and in the delicate palette, with its wavy interchange and fluidity of bright colours, which derives to some degree from Salviati’s Deposition from 1548, painted for the Dini Chapel in Santa Croce (see fig. 2).² The overall effect, however, points to a syncretic personality from the second wave of artists of the High Maniera, rather than to the Bronzino-Salviati generation.

Within a cavernous setting, devils eagerly waiting through the archway in the distance and crawling up from below the floor, Christ is seen descending into Limbo to save the souls of the chosen few. The design revolves around some clear pivots which anchor the scene. The immediate fulcrum is the ethereal figure of Christ who, resplendent in his pale tunics and pearly flesh, bursts into the scene and contrasts with the variegated figures around him. The flag mast He carries creates a strong diagonal and the left half of a V-shape which is completed to the right by the line which runs from the top of the small cross of reeds seen centre right, through the face of the female figure, continuing via the outstretched upper arm of the kneeling figure with a wreath on his head to finally pass through the left leg of the figure in the immediate foreground. To the right of Christ’s head the raised arm of the figure provides a short parallel to His flag mast, in a similar way to the figure, seen lower left in Bronzino’s aforementioned altarpiece, whose raised arm parallels Christ’s. At the bottom of the V shape, at the lower tip of the flag mast, we find an intriguing interplay of hands and crossed arms, again bringing to mind Bronzino’s altarpiece, particularly the play of hands at Christ’s feet.

The Descent into Limbo, also known as the Harrowing of Hell, is a relatively unusual subject in western art. Though not mentioned in the canonical gospels, it is alluded to in the Nicene Creed and recounted in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus and other works of popular devotion. By the fifteenth century it had become an established part of Christian belief that the time between Christ's Death and Resurrection was spent descending into Limbo, the waiting rooms at the gates of Hell. Limbo was populated by the Old Testament prophets and patriarchs - righteous people who through no fault of their own were not baptized - who had escaped damnation but could only be admitted to Paradise after the Coming of Christ. The artist thus presents us with Moses reclining in the very foreground, depicted with his customary horns which he is said to have gained after receiving the tablets of the law, one of which he holds in his left hand. Wrapped in delightful colourful robes bathed in pure late-mannerist cangiantismo, Moses is arguably the most attractive and successfully modelled figure of all the dramatis personae. The figure is most likely based in reverse on the statue of the River Tiber, today in the Louvre, which was discovered in 1512 in the Iseum Campense, an ancient temple dedicated to Isis and Sarapis in Rome. The celebrated statue was certainly known to mid-century Florentine artists since a similar figure is depicted in a drawing attributed to Salviati in the Royal Collection in Windsor.³ Both Baldassare Peruzzi and Amico Aspertini are known to have drawn the statue and Nicholas Beatrizet, who was active in Rome between 1540–65, engraved it.⁴

Immediately above Moses and to his right is a turbaned man wearing a crown who should be identified as the original King of Israel, David, the son of Jesse; it is from Jesse's genealogical tree, of course, from which the Messiah would come, according to Isaiah. John the Baptist is included, centre right with his Cross, as he is by Bronzino in his altarpiece. It may be because he is the patron saint of Florence but also because according to the Golden Legend John also announced the coming of Christ to the souls of Limbo, just as he had to their terrestrial counterparts. To the left of John and further from the pictorial plane we find Aaron, Moses' brother, identifiable by his high priest's hat. Arguably the most intriguing figure, however, is that of the man above Moses wearing a laurel wreath. Though he is endowed with a halo like the biblical figures who surround him, despite never having come into contact with them nor being a saint, he most likely represents the Roman poet Virgil, in keeping with the tradition established by Dante in the Divine Comedy where Virgil is his guide. By the High Renaissance some of Virgil's writings had been reinterpreted by Christians as a foretelling of the coming of Christ: in his fourth Eclogue Virgil presents a golden age ushered by the birth of a boy who became a saviour. The conceit can be extended to take Virgil's traditional attribute, the laurel wreath, as symbolic of Christ's crown of thorns.

After seeing the picture in the original, Dottoressa Alessandra Baroni has proposed that the work is by Giorgio Vasari.

We are grateful to Dott. Carlo Falciani and Prof. David Ekserdjian for their invaluable help in the cataloguing of this painting.

 

1. See C. Falciani and A. Natali (eds), Bronzino, exhibition catalogue, Florence 2010, pp. 304–05, cat. no. VI.5, reproduced in colour.
2. See L. Mortari, Salviati, Rome 1992, p. 115, cat. no 24, reproduced.
3. Ibid., p. 282, cat. no. 579, reproduced p. 281, fig. 579.
4. The British Museum, inv. no. 1869,0410.2151. The companion statute depicting the Nile faces to the left as does the Moses shown here but the modelling of the figure suggests it is more likely to be based on a print in reverse after the engraving of the Tiber, which probably circulated in Florence.