Bernardo Strozzi Genoa 1581 - 1644 Venice

Sale: Lepke, Berlin, 30 April, 1929, lot 16;
There purchased by Federico Gentili di Giuseppe, 22 Avenue Foch, Paris;
His deceased sale, Paris, Hotel Drouot, April 23-24, 1941, lot 69, sold for Ff 125,000 to
Karl Haberstock, Berlin;
On deposit in the Musée du Louvre, 1950-1999 (MNR 290), then returned to the heirs of Gentili di Giuseppe;
By whom sold, New York, Christie's, January 27, 2000, lot 81 (unsold at the auction, but subsequently sold privately to the present collector).

Paris, Musée du Louvre, 1950-1999 ;
Paris, Musée du Louvre, Chapelle Henri II, Présentation des Œuvres Récuperés àpres la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, 9 April- 5 May 1997.

A. M. Brizio, Le Vie d’Italia, vol. I, 1934, p. 36;
L. Mortari, “Bernardo Strozzi,” Bolletino d’Arte, XL, 1955, p. 332;
L. Mortari, Bernardo Strozzi, Rome 1966, p. 159, reproduced fig. 343;
A. Brejon de Lavergnée and D. Thiebaut, Catalogue sommaire
illustré des peintures du musée du Louvre, II Italie, Espagne, Allemagne, Grande-Bretagne et divers, Paris 1981, p. 241, reproduced;
L. Gowing, Les peintures du Louvre, 1988, p. 370, reproduced;
L. Mortari, Bernardo Strozzi, Rome 1995, p. 184, no. 469, reproduced.

Lushly painted with the scintillating brushwork that was Strozzi’s signature style, the Holy Family with the Infant Baptist has been generally dated to 1620-32, the period of Strozzi’s maturity.¹  It was during these years that Strozzi had established himself as the leading artist in the city, with the visiting van Dyck as his only real artistic rival, and had begun to develop a more naturalistic and "baroque" manner, casting aside his early Mannerist training.  His paintings became more vigorously handled, and his palette much richer in tone.  Many of his best paintings date to this fecund moment; he produced a wide variety of portraits, genre scenes, history subjects, and even frescoes.²  However, it was religious painting that constituted the majority of his work and which brought him the greatest fame and success.   

The Holy Family demonstrates all of Strozzi’s compositional and technical skill.  The figures are depicted in a truncated, almost half-length manner, and disposed against a draped column and landscape background, all recalling Venetian prototypes.³  The paint is applied in varying degrees of looseness: in the head of St. Joseph, the manner of application is much more tightly controlled thus lending him a more profound sense of gravitas, while the drapery of the Madonna and the cloth on which the Infant Christ sits are much more liberal and liquid in their handling.  Strozzi skillfully adds charming narrative touches, such as the Madonna staying the hand of the Infant Baptist, who reaches out to touch his cousin, perhaps somewhat roughly.  The figure of St. Joseph, serious and directly gazing out at the viewer, appears in a number of other paintings, as well as in drawings, most likely life studies of a particular model.  A Head of Saint Peter, apparently taken from the same model (private collection, New York) has been dated to the end of the Genoese period or to the early years of the artist’s Venetian residency.⁴   A finished oil study on paper, laid down on panel, for the head of St. Joseph was sold at Christie’s, New York, January 26, 2005, lot 293, apparently a sketch for or a ricordo of the present work.

This picture was one of a group of paintings once owned by the Italian collector Federico Gentili de Giuseppe and hanging in his apartment at 22 Avenue Foch, Paris at the time of his death in 1940.  Gentili de Giuseppe had amassed a fine collection of Old Masters, particularly of the Italian school, including works by Tiepolo, Giaquinto, Canaletto and Gentile da Fabriano.  A posthumous sale of the collection was organized after the occupation of the city, and the picture was eventually returned to France, and placed on deposit in the Louvre, where it was hung until returned to the heirs of Gentili di Giuseppe in 1999 (see Provenance).

1  Mortari broadly dates the picture to 1620-32.
2  Most of Strozzi’s frescoes have been destroyed.
3  This suggests that the painting may in fact date to the last years of the 1620s or the very early years of the 30s, after the artist’s move to Venice itself in 1630/31.   Venetian elements begin to appear in his late Genoese period, and these were confirmed and intensified during his early years there.
4   See L. Mortari, op.cit., p. 195, no. 465.  The similarity of the
Head of Saint Peter to the figure of Saint Joseph suggest a
similar dating for both.