Giovanni Battista Naldini

Acquired by the present owner in France in 2008.

Frankfurt, The Städel (Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie), Maniera. Pontormo, Bronzino und das Florenz der Medici, 24 February – 5 June 2016.

This hitherto unpublished panel is comparable to Giovanni Battista Naldini's bozzetto depicting the same subject at Christ Church, Oxford.¹ Naldini employed a similar compositional structure in both these two works, which portray Christ at the top of a rounded stack of steps and surrounded by attendants who gesture towards the crowd below, in typical Mannerist poses. The positioning of the figures towards the lower right corner of each panel is particularly close: in both paintings, a male figure faces Christ, his back turned towards the viewer and his arms outstretched, while a younger male companion stands in front of him, with his head twisted in the opposite direction.

The sketchy nature of the present work and the Christ Church picture, as well as their relatively small size, suggests that they were created as studies for larger altarpieces. Another modello depicting Christ in Glory with Saint Agnes and Saint Helena datable to 1571, likely produced for the same purpose, is today at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.²

Born in Fiesole around 1537, Naldini entered the workshop of Jacopo Pontormo (1494–1556) in 1549. He subsequently moved to Rome, forging his own highly individual style, having studied the later works of Raphael (1483–1520). He returned to Florence in 1562, where he was recruited by Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) to work on the decoration of the main rooms of the Palazzo Vecchio. He is perhaps best-known today for his participation, alongside other leading Florentine painters of the period, in the groundbreaking decorative scheme for the studiolo of Francesco I de' Medici (1541–1587), Grand Duke of Tuscany, from 1570–72, which has been hailed as the pinnacle of Florentine late Mannerist painting. 

¹ Oil on poplar panel, 51.7 x 35.5 cm.; J. Byam Shaw, Paintings by Old Masters at Christ Church, Oxford, London 1967, p. 63, no. 67, reproduced pl. 62.

² Accession no. WA1964.41.1; oil on panel, 49 x 32 cm.; https://collections.ashmolean.org/object/373251.