New information on the 19^th century provenance of Albertinelli's Old Testament cycle

Ljerka Dulibić, Iva Pasini Tržec

Editing and peer review managed by

Andrej Žmegač, Institut za povijest umjetnosti / Institute of Art History, Zagreb

Reviewers

Jim Harris, Miroslav Gašparović

Abstract

Analysis of the correspondence of Bishop J. J. Strossmayer and his agents, and of W. Buchanan and his agents, has provided new evidence of the 19^th century provenance of Mariotto Albertinelli's paintings The Expulsion from Paradise in the Strossmayer Gallery in Zagreb, and The Creation and Fall of Man in the Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery in London. The material analysed provides an insight into the then common practice of fragmenting artworks, sometimes very violently, and enables a revision of some assumptions and claims concerning the fate of the two paintings by Albertinelli, ultimately suggesting some guidelines for conclusions as to the original appearance of his Old Testament cycle.

* * * * *

1. The painting The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise by Mariotto Albertinelli (fig. 1) was one of the last acquisitions of Bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer (Osijek, 1815–Đakovo, 1905)¹ whose many years of vigorous collecting activity were crowned in 1884 by the achievement of his ultimate aim – the opening of his collection to the public.² In that same year, 1884, just before the grand opening of today's Strossmayer Gallery of Old Masters in the building newly constructed for this purpose in Zagreb, Albertinelli's painting arrived from Rome, bought for Strossmayer by Imbro Ignjatiević Tkalac (Karlovac, 1824–Rome, 1912), one of the bishop's most important agents and advisers in the procurement of artworks in Rome.³ This highly-educated politician, writer and journalist lived in Italy from 1863. During the last decades of the nineteenth century, he was a member of the Italian cultural elite, particularly closely connected with the Italian art historian Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle (Legnano, 1819–Rome, 1897).

1 Mariotto Albertinelli, The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise, ca. 1514, oil on panel, 56.8 x 55 cm. Strossmayer Gallery of Old Masters, HAZU, Zagreb, Bequest Josip Juraj Strossmayer 1884, SG-95 (photograph Strossmayer Gallery of Old Masters, Zagreb)

2. Among the Strossmayer Papers in the archives of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (HAZU) there are forty-two letters from Tkalac addressed to Strossmayer, revealing Tkalac's role as a mediator in the acquisition of artworks for the Bishop's collection.⁴ Particularly detailed is the correspondence in which Tkalac reports on the process of purchasing the Albertinelli painting.⁵

3. Tkalac first encountered the picture in 1881.⁶ It was offered for sale by "the son of the Roman art dealer Baseggio", who had come into possession of the painting after the division of the estate of his father "who thirty-forty years ago had the biggest and finest private gallery in Rome".⁷ Johann David Passavant, who published the painting in 1860 in his work about Raphael (suggesting the Albertinelli attribution), described it as "un petit panneau provenant d'un tableau a trois sujets", with the note that the dealer Baseggio had acquired it from Buchanan in 1835.⁸ Passavant's note about the painting is quoted by Tkalac in his letter to the bishop.⁹

4. Although the purchase was relatively rapidly agreed, Strossmayer then withdrew his consent to the deal.¹⁰ Tkalac accordingly felt obliged to give additional explanation of the reasons he had decided to buy the painting.¹¹ Among other things, he referred Strossmayer to Cavalcaselle's writing about Albertinelli and said that a pendant of the painting that he had determined to purchase was in the collection of the Duke of Carlisle in Castle Howard.¹² To this he added: "This pendant, the consequence of the first sin, is also 'ein kleinod' and the paessaggio is so lovely that it can be ascribed to no painter but Fra Bartolommeo himself [who is] one of the greatest artists in the world."¹³ Quite offended, for he had found himself in a disagreeable situation because of the cancellation of the agreement to acquire the Albertinelli, Tkalac wrote to Strossmayer that after this "it would never again even remotely occur to him to buy anything in the world on [his] account".¹⁴

5. Nonetheless, some years later, during May 1884, Strossmayer was in Rome and a direct meeting with Tkalac appears to have led to the smoothing over of relations between the bishop and his agent. Tkalac not only went on buying pictures for Strossmayer, but in the end purchased Albertinelli's Expulsion from Paradise as well.

6. In 1884, the painting was in the Sterbini Collection, where the bishop himself had seen it during his Roman sojourn.¹⁵ At the outset, Strossmayer and Tkalac were sure that the painting was Sterbini's property; however it turned out that at that time it was still owned by Baseggio, who had given it as collateral to a bank, whence it had been taken by Sterbini, who probably wanted to keep it for himself if the debt to the bank should not be redeemed in time.¹⁶ Tkalac was informed of this by an unnamed mediator, who organised a meeting with the owner, at which they finally agreed on the sale.¹⁷

7. Later in 1884, Tkalac again explained the importance and value of the Albertinelli to the bishop, this time referring to its similarity to another painting, today ascribed to Pietro Perugino.¹⁸ This painting, an Apollo and Marsyas, had been sold to the Louvre a year earlier by the English writer and collector Morris Moore, with an attribution to Raphael, after the London National Gallery had turned it down over doubts regarding its authenticity.¹⁹ "Apart from Morris Moore's Apollo and Marsyas, which this painting of Albertinelli's very closely resembles, I have not in my lifetime ever found a painting capable of being attributed as this can be with some likelihood to the young Raphael."²⁰

8. Not long after that, Strossmayer himself referred to his misgivings relating to the purchase of the Albertinelli, in the speech he gave at the opening of the Gallery in 1884:

"At the beginning I resisted buying this painting, for Albertinelli was better known to me as a conspirator and trader than a real and ideal artist; but when the last time being in Rome I observed the painting more closely, it seemed to me that the Adam and Eve in our painting are so excellently done that it was not from Albertinelli's hand but from that of Fra Bartolommeo the Dominican, one of the greatest artists of the fifteenth century, from whom Raphael himself learned much. Fra Bartolommeo, after the burning of his teacher Savanarola, fell into a melancholic decline and his spirits flagged. The plotter Albertinelli made use of this chance and clung for selfish reasons to Fra Bartolommeo with whom he allegedly at the same time painted pictures, later on to sell them expensively. There are then paintings that are ascribed to Albertinelli but are for the most part the work of Bartolommeo. It seems to me that our painting is within this class and that in particular the Adam and Eve are the work of his hand and not of Albertinelli's."²¹

9. However, in spite of Strossmayer's wish for the work to be that of Fra Bartolommeo (with whose oeuvre the painting does indeed show certain similarities)²² the attribution to Mariotto Albertinelli is generally accepted²³ and a hypothesis has been put forward as to its real origin. In relevant literature, the painting is correlated with a paragraph in Vasari's biography of Albertinelli, which mentions "tre storiette" done for the Florentine banker Giovanmaria di Lorenzo Benintendi, after the election of the Medici pope Leo X (1513).²⁴ David Franklin expresses doubt that it was actually Giovanmaria Benintendi who commissioned this work, since he thinks that at twenty-two years old he was too young, but does not dispute the commission coming from another member of the family.²⁵ Among other things, Vasari's ambiguous reference to these "three stories" encourages the identification of other possible components of the same whole. Thus, the Zagreb Expulsion from Paradise has been connected with a number of works from a group of Albertinelli paintings sharing a similar or related iconography: The Creation and Fall of Man, Courtauld Art Gallery, London (fig. 2); Cain Slaying Abel, Accademia Carrara, Bergamo (fig. 3); The Sacrifice of Cain and Abel, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge (fig. 4); The Fall of Man and The Sacrifice of Isaac, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven;²⁶ and Incident from Genesis (?), National Gallery and Alexandros Soutyos Museum, Athens.²⁷

2 Mariotto Albertinelli, The Creation and Fall of Man, ca. 1514, oil on panel, 56.2 x 165.3 cm. Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery, London, Bequest Mark Gambier-Parry 1966, P.1966.GP.6 (photograph © The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London)

3 Mariotto Albertinelli, Cain Slaying Abel, ca. 1514, oil on panel, 56.2 x 68.2 cm. Accademia Carrara, Bergamo, Bequest Giovanni Morelli 1891, 941-1891 (photograph Accademia Carrara, Bergamo)

4 Mariotto Albertinelli, The Sacrifice of Cain and Abel, ca. 1514, oil on panel, 21.6 x 35.4 cm. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of Edward W. Forbes, 1906.5 (photograph Imaging Department © President and Fellows of Harvard College)

10. Already in 1903, Knapp describes the Expulsion as being "wohl identisch" with the Creation, and Berenson in his 1963 edition of Italian Pictures gives cross-references to the two pictures.²⁸ Shearman mentions, along with these two pictures, the paintings from Yale and the painting from the Fogg Museum. However, he only considers the paintings from Zagreb and London to be part of the same cycle.²⁹ Borgo likewise states that the paintings from Yale and the one from the Fogg Museum do not belong to the same whole as the works from Zagreb and London. However, inspired by Vasari's writing on the subject, he includes the painting from Bergamo as the third part of the proposed whole, and suggests their sequence as follows: first Zagreb's, second London's and third Bergamo's painting.³⁰ In the year 1986, Zeri and Rossi accept the paintings from Zagreb, London and Bergamo as parts of the same whole, and integrate the work The Sacrifice of Cain and Abel from the Fogg Art Museum in the same cycle, identifying it as the upper left part of the Bergamo painting (fig. 5).³¹

5 Zeri and Rossi's reconstruction of Albertinelli's Creation Cycle, detail with Fogg Art Musem and Bergamo fragments (reproduced from: Blumenthal, Cosimo Rosselli, 203)

11. Tamvaki places Albertinelli's painting from Athens into the same context as the mentioned four paintings, all the while remaining very cautious in ascertaining the claim that the painting from Athens was a part of the same cycle.³² Franklin again limits cycle to only two of the Albertinelli's paintings – the one from London, and the one from Zagreb. He claims that the Zagreb work was originally connected to the right hand side of the London work, and treats both paintings as mere fragments of one painitng, stressing that the two remaining works of the "tre storiette" still need to be identified.³³

12. Out of all the various propositions on the reconstruction of the cycle, the only mutual agreement is that the works from Zagreb and London belong to the same whole. The persuasiveness of such a hypothesis is enhanced by their almost equal vertical dimensions, the scale of their painted figures and the close relationship of their iconography.

13. In addition to their formal and stylistic similarities, it is also possible to link the Creation and Fall of Man and the Expulsion from Paradise on the basis of research into their provenance, which demonstrates that both paintings were once connected with the Scottish art dealer William Buchanan (1777–1864). The Zagreb painting is said to have been bought by the Italian dealer Baseggio from Buchanan in 1835,³⁴ while the London work is said to have been sold at a Buchanan sale at Christie's in 1804.³⁵

14. From the correspondence of Buchanan and James Irvine, his agent for the purchase of paintings in Rome, we learn that in Florence in December 1802 Irvine had agreed on the purchase of two "Raphael paintings" from a Florentine gallery, and that he sent them to England at the beginning of March the following year.³⁶ Buchanan looked forward to making a good profit and, even before the sale was finalised, he was thinking about cutting up the two paintings, which was possible since several different scenes were shown on each of the pictures.³⁷ Although Irvine referred to the paintings as a particularly important purchase, writing that "these two pictures [...] will, I hope, turn out a capital purchase, being the most precious thing of their kind I have seen",³⁸ Buchanan met with disappointment since there was no response to them: "Nobody will look at the Raffaelles – they are called hard, brown, early and Gothic pictures."³⁹ Hence, Buchanan wanted to divide the "second painting" into three parts and send "the first" back to Italy.⁴⁰

15. From one of Buchanan's subsequent letters, it is clear that the "second painting" was indeed cut, though there is no detail about into how many parts.⁴¹ Originally, before one of them was fragmented, the two paintings were the same size and were placed in heavy frames.⁴² From a later letter, we learn that Buchanan wanted the two parts "of the second painting" together with the "first" painting that had not been cut through, to be sent urgently to Italy in the hope that it might be possible to replace them with some others.⁴³ The paintings were indeed sent to Venice and then to Rome.⁴⁴ The letters do not say how many pictures eventually were sent, but we do know that two fragments remained in England.

16. These fragments were then listed in the auction catalogue of a Buchanan sale at Christie's in London on 12 May 1804:⁴⁵ "Raffaelle /6/ A Cabinet Picture of this Master, from the Buonacorsi Palace of Florence /7/ A Cabinet Gem of the same great Master, from the same Palace, a most poetical and highly desirable Picture. These Two Pictures originally formed Two of the Departments of Two larger Pictures, containing a Series of Subjects from the Creation down to the Death of Abel, painted by Raffaelle for the Chevalier Buonacorsi Perini, in whose Family they remained till within the last 15 Months [...]."⁴⁶ Since the catalogue entry for the Buchanan sale makes clear that the two fragments were offered for sale, and since we know that paintings, in plural ("the Raffaelles"), were sent to Italy,⁴⁷ we can be certain that at least another one fragment had been sent along with the uncut painting. It is also clear that the dismembered painting was cut into at least three parts.

17. An examination of the correspondence between William Buchanan and his advisers and sellers has consequently brought to light new information about the sale, purchase and original appearance of the "Raphael pictures". From the letters it is clear that Buchanan possessed two paintings, the width of which would have been triple their height,⁴⁸ and that he had one of them dismembered into at least three parts. He sent the intact painting and at least one fragment back to Italy, and sold the other two sections at the auction in London. From the descriptions preserved, it can be seen that the two paintings originally represented a cycle about the first people and their children, which must have been the creation, fall, expulsion and the sacrifice and death of Abel.

18. Because of its dimensions and theme, it is likely that the first, intact painting is The Creation and Fall of Man, now in the Courtauld Gallery. This un-cut painting, which was sent to Italy in 1803,⁴⁹ was there in 1804:

"I lately learn from Stewart [David Stewart, Buchanan's exhibiting and selling agent in London] that a person has gone to, or soon will be in Rome to purchase pictures for a number of Gentlemen in America [...] you [James Irvine] may probably be able to sell the Raffaelle, which is not cut to him [...]."⁵⁰

19. Evidently, the un-cut picture was at that time in the hands of James Irvine in Italy and could not have been sold at the Christie's auction, for this took place in the same month, May 1804. It is clear, then, that the history of this painting requires revision; the claim that it was sold in London in 1804 is untenable and should be omitted from its provenance. The picture could have found a new owner in Italy, before reappearing on the English art market in 1841, when it was recorded at the Duke of Lucca's sale, as is actually stated on the list of previous owners.⁵¹

20. On the other hand, it is not entirely clear where the Zagreb picture was at the time of the Buchanan auction in 1804, that is, whether it was or was not one of the two paintings sold at the Christie's auction. Passavant's statement that the Italian dealer Baseggio had bought it from Buchanan can be interpreted as indicating either that the painting was one of the two fragments Buchanan was selling in London, or that it was the fragment that Buchanan had sent to Italy before his London sale with the intention of selling it there.⁵² On the back of the Zagreb painting is a red-wax seal containing papal insignia and the inscription "RCA (Reverenda Camera Apostolica) – Dogana di Terra". In the nineteenth century, right up until the unification of Italy, circulation of paintings were registered with precisely this kind of seal, placed on the backs of the works.⁵³ Accordingly, the Zagreb painting had certainly been in the roman region a few decades before it was purchased for Bishop Strossmayer in 1884. However, the location of the painting at the time of the Buchanan sale in 1804 remains uncertain.

21. The intact Courtauld painting and the fragmentary Zagreb picture make up the point of departure for a reconstruction of the original appearance of the whole group. Since the catalogue entry for the fragments sold at Christie's in 1804 defines the iconography of the first and last depicted scenes of the whole cycle (Creation and Death of Abel), the last in the sequence of the parts of the dismembered painting was probably Albertinelli's Cain Slaying Abel from the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, which is habitually connected with the cycle. This conclusion is supported by the dimensions of the figures, which are in scale with those in the Creation and the Expulsion from Paradise, and the height of the panel, almost identical to that of the London and Zagreb pictures (about 56 cm), proof of which is found in the correspondence. Though the catalogue entry of the fragments sold in London describes the iconography of the whole cycle very broadly, more details are given, along with some frank qualitative assessments, in the letters:

"Indeed there is a want of drawing throughout which is horrible – particularly in the second picture which is now cut – and in the disposition of heads of angels in the first – where noses are out of place."⁵⁴

"You will find they are full of bad drawing, particularly the arm of Abel fallen – the Deity in the Clouds, in both places – and the Colouring on Adam driven out of the Garden is quite leathery."⁵⁵

22. The clumsily depicted arm of Abel in the Bergamo painting clearly matches the description from the previous quote, which can also be seen as confirmation of its belonging to the original cycle as the final fragment of the dismembered whole.

23. Technical examination of the Bergamo painting has shown that it is not a preserved whole.⁵⁶ Two parts of the painting are missing, replaced with fills: a narrow vertical strip to the bottom left, below Cain's hands, and a horizontal rectangle at the top left, that extends half way up the tree in the background landscape. The fills have been repainted in order to balance out the organisation of the composition and to give an impression of surface integrity, disguising its having been cut. Zeri and Rossi were the first to propose that the Sacrifice of Cain and Abel from the Fogg Museum was most probably the upper left part of the Bergamo painting. Apart from the almost identical dimensions of the Fogg Museum painting and the fill in the picture from Bergamo,⁵⁷ on the part of the Sacrifice of Cain and Abel depicting the altar there is a staff which "continues" into the staff in Cain's hand in the Cain Slaying Abel painting. The Fogg Museum painting was, just like the Zagreb one, the property of the art dealer Baseggio. However, we know nothing about its acquisition and purchase, and we still know nothing about the acquisition and purchase of the Bergamo painting, which ended up in the Accademia Carrara as a part of the bequest of Giovanni Morelli.⁵⁸

24. Although insufficiently precise to allow for a certain identification, a quote from the exchange of letters between Buchanan and David Stewart matches the description of the Fogg Museum picture: Buchanan had in January 1804 offered "a small department of a Raffaelle, the Sacrifice" to a private collector (a Mr Gordon), but without success, so the painting appeared as one of the two fragments at the Christie's sale later that year.⁵⁹

25. The integrally preserved London painting offers a sound source for the reconstruction of the original dimensions of the other dismembered painting, which was formed by the Zagreb and Bergamo pictures, as confirmed by the analysis of the correspondence. The width of the Zagreb painting is 55 cm, the Bergamo picture is 68 cm, which leaves an empty space 42 cm wide. Of corresponding dimensions is the painting attributed to Albertinelli from the Athens, with a depiction of an unidentified Old Testament scene: at a door stands a man with a turban on his head, arms raised in gesticulation; opposite him comes a youth carrying a lamb on his left arm.⁶⁰ A closer identification of the scene is not possible, while its peculiar architectural setting also leaves room for confusion. We have to admit that the idea that the Athens painting sat in between the Zagreb and Bergamo fragments seems, visually speaking, extremely unconvincing. Furthermore, the acceptance of the convincing proposition that the Fogg Museum picture formed the upper left part of the Bergamo painting narrows down the empty space to 33 cm wide, which does not correspond with the Athens painting's dimensions but would still easily leave room for another depiction from the life of the First People.

26. Buchanan possessed one more painting of a similar subject that was also attributed to Raphael; for this painting he also strived to find a buyer, or at least to agree on an exchange: "I believe Champernowne [Arthur Champernowne] wishes to possess something of Raffaelle's hand. Should he be inclined to part with the landscape and figures he has by Berchem, you may let him have the Eve and children for it [...]."⁶¹ However much we find this quote to be indicative, it still does not give enough proof to allow for a further conclusion.

27. What has been determined with certainty here by comparative analysis of 19^th century sources is that Buchanan had two paintings, one of which he had cut into fragments. Apart from its being clear that the London painting was not sold at the Buchanan auction in London, some assumptions about the earlier provenance of the paintings can also be corrected. Knowing that Buchanan had one painting sawn through, it is obvious that Passavant's reference to "un petit panneau provenant d'un tableau a trois sujets"⁶² refers to the fragments created by the act of sawing. There is no reason to identify these fragments alone with the "three stories" cited by Vasari as being painted by Albertinelli for the Benintendi family. The letters analysed record that Buchanan acquired the paintings in "a Florentine gallery" – the connection of their origin with the Buonacorsi Perini family of Florence was clearly a Buchanan fabrication aimed at increasing the attractiveness of the painting that he was selling with an attribution to Raphael. Hence, the provenance of the paintings to the Buonaocorsi Palace is shown to be just as untenable as their identification with the storiette mentioned by Vasari.

28. The sources analysed provide an insight into the then common practice of fragmenting artworks, sometimes very violently, and enable a revision of some assumptions and claims concerning the fate of the two Albertinelli paintings, ultimately suggesting some additional guidelines for conclusions as to the original appearance of his Old Testament cycle.

29. Furthermore, the analysed sources indicate the reasons for the fragmentation. Buchanan had been aware even before his purchase that the paintings "may probably be considered more in the light of Connoiseur pictures than great works of that Master", and came to the idea, on the basis of given descriptions, "to have them cut down into different pictures, each containing its own subject and given as a series", even before he saw the paintings in person.⁶³ Upon their arrival in London, he was able to ascertain his earlier conclusion: "Nobody will look at the Raffaelles – they are called hard, brown, early and Gothic pictures", to which he only added: "This will show the necessity in future of humouring the taste of purchasers here [...]."⁶⁴ His decision to have one of the paintings dismembered he clarified as follows:

"With regard to the Raffaelles which I have no hopes will do well here, being too much in the old hard or brown manner and the story told in a way which is not comprehended here where people are led so much by the general effect of a picture, I think of probably cutting the second into three pictures [...]."⁶⁵

30. In one of his following letters, he explains his decision further, reiterating the taste of English art collectors of the time:

"Always holding Subject as a leading matter, a thing you seem to place less stress upon than is absolutely necessary, for you talk of the Raffaelles fine subjects, when in fact they are of that leathery and grave cast which an Englishman will not look at, and the taste of the day whatever it be must govern our transactions. [...] Indeed the subjects and mode of treatman is the most distant from those likely to sell in this Country that can be figured. [...] The Raffaelles have turned out worth nothing."⁶⁶

31. Bishop Strossmayer's unwillingness to acquire The Expulsion from Eden is of a different nature, but nevertheless shows clearly the preferences and boundaries of taste prevailing among art collectors of his time and in his region. Reflecting the time in which it came to be, the final form of Strossmayer's collection is at the same time a mirror of Strossmayer's fundamental desires, as much as the resourcefulness of his advisors. The persistence of one of them, Imbro I. Tkalac, is perhaps the main reason for Albertinelli's Expulsion from Eden today being a part of the permanent collection of the Strossmayer Gallery of Old Masters.

Translation by Graham McMaster

How to cite this article:
Ljerka Dulibić and Iva Pasini Tržec, "New information on the 19th century provenance of Albertinelli's Old Testament cycle," in: RIHA Journal 0035 (6 February 2012), URN & URL: [please add, see Metadata]