Pedro Machuca

Han Coray (1880–1974), Zurich (as Bramantino);

With Giuseppe Bellesi, London;

With Frederick Mont, New York, by 1965;

Anonymous sale, Lucerne, Galerie Fischer, 26 November – 2 December 1968, lot 3173, reproduced (as Andrea Sabatini);

Anonymous sale, Lucerne, Galerie Fischer, 12–13 June 1970, lot 77, unsold (as Andrea Sabatini);

Anonymous sale, Lucerne, Galerie Fischer, 21–22 June 1974, lot 73 (as Andrea Sabatini);

Acquired at the above by a private collector;

Thence by descent to his son, Switzerland;

By whom sold (‘Property from a Private Collection’), London, Sotheby's, 7 December 2017, lot 123 (as Machuca), for £60,000.

P. Giusti and P. Leone de Castris, 'Forastieri e regnicoli'. La pittura moderna a Napoli nel primo Cinquecento, Naples 1985, p. 44 (as Machuca, circa 1518); 

N. Dacos, 'Pedro Machuca', in Andrea da Salerno nel Rinascimento meridionale, G. Previtali (ed.), exh. cat., Padua 1986, Florence 1986, p. 248 (as not by Machuca);

P. Giusti and P. Leone de Castris, Pittura del Cinquecento a Napoli, Naples 1988, pp. 37, 42 and p. 54, n. 16, reproduced in black and white p. 39, fig. 32 (as Machuca);

P. Leone de Castris in Pedro Machuca a Napoli. Due nuovi dipinti per il Museo di Capodimonte, P. Leone de Castris (ed.), exh. cat., Naples 1992, p. 30 (as Machuca, circa 1518);

R. López Guzmán and G. Espinosa Spínola, Pedro Machuca, Granada 2001, p. 71 (as not by Machuca);

P. Leone de Castris, Andrea Sabatini da Salerno. Il Raffaello di Napoli, Naples 2017, p. 126 n. 12 (as Machuca, circa 1518).

Pierluigi Leone de Castris was the first to recognise this intensely idiosyncratic painting with its beautiful lakeside landscape as the work of Pedro Machuca.¹ When, in 1985, he published the Baptism of Christ for the first time, he characterised the face of Christ and the putti as typical of Machuca, comparing them to similar figures in the artist's earliest documented work in Italy, his signed and dated Madonna of Suffrage of 1517, a painting now at the Museo del Prado, Madrid.² He also found affinities with the Virgin and Child at the Galleria Sabauda, Turin.³ The plasticity of forms and frozen gestures evident in the Baptism recall Michelangelo's frescoes on the Sistine ceiling. Raphaelesque elements also surface in his work. Machuca was an associate of Raphael, and a number of frescoes in the Vatican Logge have been attributed to him. According to Leone de Castris this painting may be among Machuca's last Roman works, datable to about 1518 or 1519. It is likely that by the following year he had returned to Spain with his father, where he settled in Granada.

At the time of the sale at Sotheby's in 2017, Dott.ssa Anna Bisceglia endorsed the attribution to Machuca on the basis of a photograph,⁴ and suggested a Neapolitan context for the commission. 

¹ It had previously been listed in the photographic archive of the Fondazione Zeri with an attribution to Andrea Sabatini, also called Andrea da Salerno (c. 1487–1530), a revision of an earlier tentative attribution to Pellegrino Munari made by Federico Zeri in October 1952.

² P02579; oil on poplar panel, 167 x 135 cm. Reproduced in colour in Norma e capriccio. Spagnoli in Italia agli esordi della 'maniera moderna', T. Mozzati and A. Natali (eds), exh. cat., Florence 2013, p. 295.

³ Reproduced in Giusti and Leone de Castris 1988, p. 38, fig. 29.

⁴ Written communication, 24 October 2017.