Zeri lingers on the small differences in composition and detail, which he describes as “acute and free”, ruling out the idea that it may have been a preparatory work or that the painting could be associated with Gentileschi’s practice of producing smaller versions, inspired by some of his larger paintings. 

The changes of ownership of this small unpublished copy of Orazio Gentileschi’s I, now in the Galleria Sabauda, can be reconstructed, albeit with some margins for error, thanks to the inscriptions on the back of the photograph in the Zeri Foundation archive (entry 45194). The notes document the transfers of the painting from Mario Tazzoli’s Galleria Galatea and then from Finarte, before it entered the Milanese collection of Geo Poletti at the end of the 1950s. 

The acquisition was already known in the world of studies if in July 1960 Estella Brunetti, on the recommendation of Carlo Volpe, wrote to the collector asking for news of the small canvas. In a letter dated 23 January 1961, the scholar, thanking for sending the photo, announced to Poletti that the canvas would find “adequate treatment for its extraordinary beauty” in an article in the magazine Arte Antica e Moderna.¹ The article never saw the light, but the canvas remained at the centre of Poletti’s attention. The reconstruction of the comments exchanged with the Milanese collector is due to the memory of Paolo Biscottini,² around the small canvas of which Poletti himself highlighted in the execution also the elements of weakness, without ever dissolving the uncertainty between an autograph replica or a copy. The letter from Federico Zeri, sent to Cerruti on 3 June, dates to 1976. In his detailed message, the scholar describes the canvas as an “autograph version of the great masterpiece by Orazio Gentileschi”, regarding which the version “in a smaller format has nothing to envy in terms of lyrical intensity and quality, which is very high in this case too.” Zeri lingers on the small differences in composition and detail, which he describes as “acute and free”, ruling out the idea that it may have been a preparatory work or that the painting could be associated with Gentileschi’s practice of producing smaller versions, inspired by some of his larger paintings. Despite confirming the quality of the execution, this canvas should be catalogued as a historic copy and numbered among the numerous 17th-century variants intended for decorating altars and chapels in the Piedmont area (in Turin, Collegno, Bussoleno, Borgofranco d’Ivrea).³ This demonstrates the immediate success enjoyed by Gentileschi’s Annunciation, sent from Genoa in 1623 as a gift from the painter to Duke Charles Emmanuel I and displayed in the chapel of Turin castle (today Palazzo Madama), where it was recorded in the inventory of 1631.⁴ With a loaded brush used to mark out the drapery with great decision, the anonymous painter reworks Gentileschi’s creation in a highly intelligent manner, slightly expanding the space of the composition to adapt it to the square format of the picture that we may assume was intended for private devotion due to its dimensions. 

Gelsomina Spione

In these pages, the letter that Federico Zeri addressed to Francesco Federico Cerruti on 3 June 1976 is published. It is now preserved in the Cerruti Collection Archives (fig. 1). [Ed.]

¹ Arch. Poletti, 13.07.1960, 27.08.1960, 23.01.1961.

² P. Biscottini, “Orazio Gentileschi ed oltre”, in Milan 2019, p. 104.

³ Ward Bissel 1981, pp. 42-43, 178-180; C. Goria in Brussels 2009, p. 142 no. 4.8; Ludovici 2011, p. 249.

⁴ A. M. Bava, in Turin 2016-17, p. 285, no. 178 with reference bibliography.