Giuseppe Cesari, called Cavaliere d'Arpino

The canvas has an old relining which is stable. The paint surface over all is in very good condition and is stable and fresh with a few retouches very faintly visible to the naked eye. Inspection under UV reveals scattered minor retouching throughout the drapery and flesh tones, noticeably in the Madonna's nose and the Child's face. Offered in a carved gilt wood frame.
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D'Arpino was the leading painter in Rome in the final decades of the 16^th century. He belonged to a family of painters: his father, Muzio Cesari, was an artist as was his brother, Bernardino, who later became his principal assistant. From very early in his career, Cesari was patronized by an elite and important clientele. He was quickly promoted by his master Niccolò Circignani from garzone to junior painter on the team which was frescoing part of the Vatican Loggie for Pope Gregory XVIII, and this while still in his teens. Although largely employed in ambitious decorative schemes, including a series of decorative friezes at the Palazzo del Quirnale (since destroyed), as well as the still extant frescoes in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome, it is for his more intimate scenes on panel, copper, slate and semi-precious stone, that Arpino is most admired. His position as the favored painter in Rome would remain fairly secure even after the arrival in Rome of the Carracci and Caravaggio, the latter of whom was his pupil for a short time.

This Madonna with Child and St. Joseph, a hitherto unpublished addition to the artist's oeuvre, is an autograph variant of the Madonna and Child now located in the Abbey at Montecassino.¹   Herwarth Röttgen has dated it to the latter part of Cesari's career, which would logically place it at about the same moment as the Montecassino Madonna and Child, circa 1630-35. The rendering of the Madonna, with her slender oval face and almond eyes, can again be compared to another late work, Madonna and Child with Saints Joseph and Elizabeth, which was sold New York, Sotheby's, 22 May 1992, lot 189.² Similar to these published pictures, this work displays with exquisite quality all of the hallmark vibrancy, more rigid sense of line, and color indicative of Cesari's late works. The violet madder red, the pure azure, the cream-colored veil and the pale incarnation, all demonstrate the confidence and skill of a painter emboldened by years of success.

We are grateful to Herwarth Röttgen for confirming the attribution of the present painting, based on photographs.  

1. see H. Röttgen, Il cavalier Giuseppe Cesari D'Arpino, Un grande pittore nello splendore della fama e nell' incostanza della fortuna, Rome 2002, pp. 466, cat. no. 246, reproduced.
2. Röttgen 2002, cat. no. 263.