The Artist: Born in San Lorenzo a Vigliano, near Florence, around 1470, Raffaello di Bartolomeo dei Carli—later known as Raffaello Capponi, after his adoptive family, but better known today as Raffaellino del Garbo, after the Via del Garbo in Florence where his workshop was situated—began his career as a pupil and assistant of Filippino Lippi. He probably entered Filippino’s workshop in the late 1480s, perhaps after an earlier apprenticeship with Sandro Botticelli.[1] In the early 1490s he traveled to Rome to assist Filippino in decorating a chapel for Cardinal Oliviero Carafa in the basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva—one of the landmarks of Renaissance painting in Rome. Raffaellino painted the vault of the chapel’s antechamber. He returned to Florence by 1494 and established his own workshop by 1498. It was about that time that he completed his two indisputable masterpieces: a
Pietà with Saints John the Baptist and James for the Nasi chapel in Santo Spirito (Alte Pinakothek, Munich) and a
Resurrection for the Capponi chapel, called the Cappella del Paradiso, at San Bartolomeo a Monteoliveto in the Florentine outskirts (Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence). Soon thereafter he became one of the most sought-after painters in Florence, completing three more altarpieces for Santo Spirito—of which all are dated (1501; 1502; 1505) and two are signed—as well as the high altarpiece for Santa Maria degli Angeli in Valli, in Siena (in situ), signed and dated 1502. He was also frequently at work for Florence’s Cistercian and Vallombrosan communities; for the latter in 1511 he completed the high altarpiece of San Salvi, of which only the large central compartment, depicting the
Coronation of the Virgin, survives (Musée du Petit Palais, Avignon). Raffaellino’s last known major work, a monumental altarpiece for the Augustinian church of San Giovanni Battista in Fivizzano, was completed in 1516 and is now lost.[2] The artist is last recorded in 1527 and must have died soon thereafter.[3]
A talented draughtsman, Raffaellino also provided cartoons for embroideries and church vestments, including several now at The Met (
12.56.5a;
1972.118.253). He was also a reputable teacher, with Andrea del Sarto, Jacopo da Pontormo, and Agnolo Bronzino numbering among his talented apprentices. Despite his contemporary esteem, he was the subject of an extremely negative biography in Giorgio Vasari’s
Lives of the Artists. According to Vasari, Raffaellino began his career “with such promise. . . .that he was already numbered among the most excellent masters, a thing which happens to few.” Yet, Vasari continued, “still fewer meet the fate which afterwards came upon him, in that from a splendid beginning and almost certain hopes, he arrived at a very feeble end.” Vasari’s account has gone largely unquestioned, with modern scholars passing a rather negative assessment on Raffaellino’s works; they have been especially critical of those that temper the lessons of Filippino with a strong response to the Umbrians Pietro Perugino and Pinturicchio. However, Raffaellino’s late works, such as the Frescobaldi altarpiece for Santo Spirito (Legion of Honor, San Francisco) or the
Coronation of the Virgin from San Salvi are high in technical quality, sensitive in their coloring, and grandiose in design. Rather than attesting to the artist’s depleting abilities, these qualities should instead be read as evidence of his aptitude at adjusting his style and accommodating it to the changing tastes of his time. In short, his career deserves a new evaluation free of the Vasarian bias.
The Picture: The Virgin is shown seated on a parapet, holding the infant Christ on her knee as he reaches for her exposed breast. To the left is an angel, looking toward the heavens with his arms folded over his chest. The elderly Saint Joseph stands at the right, resting his chin on his staff. Above are two cloudlike cherubs holding a blue cloth of honor behind the Virgin. The cloth separates the Virgin from a ruined arcade, beyond which can be seen a fantastical landscape complete with a view of Rome, with the Column of Trajan, and Pantheon clearly visible through the aperture in the rocky cliffs. Though generally well-preserved, the Virgin’s face has suffered from some abrasion, revealing the green underpainting beneath, and the shell gold in the hems of her robes have for the most part flaked away.
Function and Iconography: The painting’s modest size suggests it was intended for a domestic interior and that it originally served a private devotional function. The motif of the
Madonna lactans, or nursing Virgin, was especially popular in domestic spaces because of its emphasis on the human relationship between mother and son. Yet it also carried a powerful devotional charge by stressing the Virgin’s role as co-redemptrix: in popular thought, the Virgin’s milk and Christ’s blood were closely related, with both being viewed as powerful salvific aids. The Virgin offering the Christ child her breast—which is here conspicuously at the direct center of the picture—was read as a parallel to the way in which Christ would later offer his blood for humanity at the Crucifixion (for clear illustration of this idea, see The Met’s canvas attributed to Lorenzo Monaco;
53.37). The allusions to the Passion are made even more apparent by Saint Joseph’s expression—gazing sorrowfully at the child, as if aware of his fate—and perhaps also by the unusually small cloth of honor held aloft by two angels. The cloth frames the Virgin’s head in a way that recalls contemporary images of the so-called Veronica Veil, a piece of cloth said to have been miraculously imprinted with Christ’s face on his way to Calvary (the word veronica is an anagram of
vera icon, or true likeness; for an image of the veil, see
1981.365.2). The miraculous nature of the veronica was in turn associated with related likenesses of the Virgin, such as that at the basilica of Santa Maria Aracoeli in Rome, which was reported to have been painted by Saint Luke and which was frequently copied in small-scale images to show just the Virgin’s face [4]. The cloth in The Met’s picture may therefore be a direct evocation of this visual tradition; combined with the
Madonna lactans iconography, it underscores the parallels between the Virgin’s sacrifice and that of Christ in a particularly inventive way, expanding on Mary’s role as an intercessor and agent of redemption. This reading would also support the idea that the painting was produced for a patron in Rome, where the Veronica of Christ was preserved at the Sancta Sanctorum and where the associated
vera icon of the Virgin was located at the basilica of the Aracoeli. For further on the painting’s Roman origins, see below under the "Date" section.
Attribution: When acquired by the museum in 1914, the picture was considered a late work by Filippino Lippi. This attribution was accepted by a number of scholars (see Refs.) though it was rejected by Bodmer (1932), who thought the painting was a product of Filippino’s workshop. In his monograph on Filippino Lippi, Scharf (1933) first suggested an attribution to the young Raffaellino del Garbo. Little was then known of Raffaellino and this may explain why scholars such as Offner (1937) maintained it was by a follower while Neilson (1938), in her monograph on Filippino, remarked that “while there is scarcely a detail of this panel that does not in some fashion suggest Filippino, the effect of the whole is such that I am forced to call this…a school piece.” Even after Zeri (1971) tentatively revived the attribution to Raffaellino, Geiger (1986) maintained that at least the Virgin’s head was by Filippino. In the more recent studies on Filippino and his workshop, Nelson (2004) and Nelson and Waldman (2004) have accepted Raffaellino’s authorship in full.
More recently Gianeselli (2020) has argued for Raffaellino’s authorship at length, comparing the panel to a much-damaged
Madonna and Child (Musée de Tessé, Le Mans). This work shows the same chaotic, nervous sense of line, pearlescent chromatic range, and a nearly identical type of Christ child, snub-nosed and gazing up at his mother with an expression of admiration and curiosity. It is worth pointing out, however, that although the Le Mans panel has been widely attributed to Raffaellino since 1909, it too has occasionally been assigned to Filippino. Yet as Gianeselli observes, both pictures feature the same theatrical flourishes that would later characterize Raffaellino’s mature production: the cloth of honor unfurled behind the Virgin and the shimmering gems and pearls decorating the fabrics can been seen—albeit in a more restrained fashion—in Raffaellino’s Pucci tondo (National Gallery, London), datable to the late 1490s; the Frescobaldi altarpiece (Legion of Honor, San Francisco), signed and dated 1500; and the Segni altarpiece (Basilica di Santo Spirito, Florence), dated 1505. The meticulous yet fluid brushwork and pastel palette of The Met’s picture are also typical of Raffaellino and are notably different from Filippino’s independent work. In Filippino’s late works, such as his altarpieces at Bologna (San Domenico) and Prato (Museo di Palazzo Pretorio), the handling is broader and the coloring more sober. The Met’s panel can thus with some confidence be attributed to Raffaellino and, together with the Le Mans panel and a handful of other works with similar critical fortunes[5], be seen to corroborate Vasari’s assertion that Raffaellino had, in his youth, “acquired Filippino’s manner so well that there were few who could distinguish the one from the other.”
Date: The Met’s painting can be dated to around 1490, at the same time Raffaellino was in Rome assisting Filippino with the Carafa chapel. The Virgin’s fanciful costume, with her fluttering veils, classicizing tunic, and changeant head scarf, are close to garments worn by figures throughout Filippino’s frescoes in the Carafa chapel, such as the angels in the
Assumption of the Virgin on the altar wall and the Sibyls in its vault. The layered setting, with the architecture opening onto a landscape that in turn opens onto the view of a distant city, is also close to the frescoes on the chapel’s altar wall depicting the apostles gathered around the Virgin’s empty tomb. Combined with the view of Rome and the allusions to the veronica in The Met’s picture, these features strongly suggest that the work was executed in Rome. The possibility that it was painted in Florence shortly after Raffaellino’s return should, however, probably not be excluded. Whatever the case, the painting is certainly steeped in the same antiquarian culture that so fascinated Filippino and which he exploited to its highest degree in the Carafa chapel. Though Raffaellino later diluted and eventually abandoned this Romanizing style once he established his own enterprise in Florence, his early grasp of its decorative and inventive possibilities—exemplified here—no doubt contributed to his early success.
Regarding the suggestion that Filippino supplied the design to Raffaellino (Zeri 1971; Nelson 2004), Nelson and Waldman (2004) remained skeptical while Gianeselli (2020) pointed out its similarity to Filippino’s so-called
Blue Madonna (Museo Soumaya, Mexico City). However, this comparison is restricted to the Virgin’s hands, which in Raffaellino’s image are posed in a similar fashion to those in Filippino’s, but in reverse. While it is possible that Raffaellino designed his composition with some of Filippino’s drawings in mind, it seems unlikely that the latter is responsible for devising the entire work. The morphology of the Christ Child and the discrepant scale between the figures is unlike anything in Filippino’s oeuvre, again confirming that The Met’s picture is an autonomous early creation by the precocious Raffaellino del Garbo.
Christopher Daly 2021
[1] Miklòs Boskovits observed that Raffaellino painted most of the
Madonna del Padiglione (Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan), a work traditionally attributed to Botticelli alone and dated to the early 1490s; see Miklòs Boskovits, “Una mostra su Botticelli e Filippino,”
Arte Cristiana, XVII, n. 825, 2004, pp. 419-420. Alessandro Cecchi, “Considerazione su una recente monografia su Filippino Lippi,”
Paragone, 2008, pp. 64-65, also suggested that Raffaellino was a pupil of Botticelli.
[2] See Louis A. Waldman, “Raffaellino del Garbo and His World,”
Artibus et historiae, vol. 27, no. 54, 2007, pp. 65–70.
[3] On his death date, see Alessandro Cecchi, “Filippino and his Circle, Designers for Decorative Arts,” in
The Drawings of Filippino Lippi and his Circle, ed. George R. Goldner and Carmen C. Bambach, New York, 1997, p. 40.
[4] Michele Bacci, “‘Kathreptis,’ o la Veronica della Vergine,”
Iconographica, vol. 3, 2004, pp. 11–37, on the relationship between the Veronica Veil and related veronicas of the Virgin, specifically the Madonna at the Aracoeli.
[5] See also the
Head of a Young Woman (Český Šternberk Castle, Czech Republic);
Nativity with Two Angels (National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh);
Allegory of Discord (Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence);
Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John and Two Angels (Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery, Glasgow); and
Portrait of a Young Man (National Gallery, London). The
Dead Christ at the Peralada Castle in Spain, recently rediscovered and attributed to Filippino (Carl Brandon Strehlke in
Filippino Lippi e Sandro Botticelli nella Firenze del ‘400, ed. Alessandro Cecchi, Rome, 2011, pp. 202–3), can also, in this writer’s opinion, be assigned to the young Raffaellino and dated to the same period.
