Circle of Guido Reni

G. Antoni, in Timeless Wonder: Painting on Stone in Rome in the Cinquecento and Seicento, Milan 2022, p. 194, cat. no. IV. 9. 

Rome, Galleria Borghese, Timeless Wonder: Painting on Stone in Rome in the Cinquecento and Seicento, 10 October 2022 - 29 January 2023, no. IV. 09.

Notable for its refined quality and delicate coloring, this luminous painting on alabaster arose from an accomplished artist in the circle of Guido Reni. The Virgin seated in the foreground of the scene embraces the Christ Child and a young Saint John the Baptist, as Saint Elizabeth, Saint Joseph, and two fluttering putti with small bouquets of flowers look upon them. The composition has clear roots in an early etching by Guido Reni from about 1590-1610, Some differences between the two compositions, though, are visible, perhaps the most notable being the surface upon which the Christ child sits, which is a clothed table in the etching and a marble stand in the present, while the defined clouds in the etching are here replaced by the natural striations of the stone.  

It has been proposed that this lot could be a very early work by Reni, datable to circa 1595 while the young artist was still working in Bologna and after his early apprenticeship with Denys Calvaert. There are records of Reni working on exotic stones like marble and slate, although none have as of yet been discovered. For example, one Head of a Madonna on marble by Reni is recorded in the Palazzo Orsi in Bologna; additionally he is known to have painted on pietra di paragone for Scipione Borghese and on lapis lazuli for Ferdinando Gonzaga.¹  

1. For further discussion, see C. Cavalca, “La pittura su alabastro,” in Usos artísticos del alabastro y procedencia del material, C. Morte García (ed.), Zaragoza 2018, pp. 379-393, particularly p. 390.