The painting presents a slightly crowded sacra conversazione in the presence of the enthroned Virgin and Child, who are proportionately larger than the other figures. The first of these from the left is St Jerome, who interrupts his reading to present a kneeling ecclesiastical donor. The latter, aged about fifty, is in choir dress consisting of a black cassock, visible at the neck, beneath a large surplice (superpellicium), an ecclesiastical hood of white fur and a cappa magna (a flowing ceremonial vestment worn by cardinals), which is scarlet like the biretta (cap) he is holding and gathered up on his right side. The sainted cardinal is followed by St Peter, holding the keys, and a sainted deacon. While the latter is no longer clearly identifiable due to the absence of attributes, examination in raking light reveals still legible traces of part of the gridiron once depicted in depth. This was still visible in the photograph published in 1945 by Aprà,¹ where the work is certainly not devoid of overpainting and enlarged on either side by strips subsequently removed. In the same photo, the sainted monk in a black habit, probably St Benedict, on the Virgin’s right holds an object which is probably a crosier (a hooked staff carried by a bishop). Here too, it was decided during restoration to eliminate the original element identifying the saint, which shows through, however, beneath the present painted surface. On Benedict’s right is St Paul, the significant counterpart of St Peter, with sword and book. The group ends with John the Baptist, shown pointing at the Christ Child in order to recall his role as a forerunner. His garment of fur is elegantly belted at the waist with a wreath of vine leaves or ivy, the painted surface being too thin to permit more precise identification. Seated on a simple throne against the backdrop of a cloth of honour, once perhaps with a watered finish, Mary looks up from her book at the kneeling donor, blessed by the Saviour. The inscription “AVE M’ARIA VIRGIN’ REGIN’ ET GLORIOSA” is written in the gold of the decorations on the hem of her mantle, on the other side of which the word “AVE” can also be read. The rosary hanging from her left hand is grasped by the Infant Jesus. The barren, mountainous landscape seen in the background, on either side of the cloth of honour, includes a number of saints. References to figures already present in the foreground include the readily recognisable image of St Jerome in the wilderness on the left as well as St Benedict, with a cross and another less identifiable object, and John the Baptist, with the customary scroll, on the right. The twin figures presented symmetrically in military attire with swords in the sky beyond the two openings could instead represent any of a number of pairs of sainted soldiers and martyrs. In Lombardy alone, where the artist worked, the possibilities include Nabor and Felix, Nazarius and Celsus, and Gervasius and Protasius in the area of Milan and Pavia as well as Firmus and Rusticus, Faustinus and Jovita, and Vitus and Modestus further to the East. Other widely venerated pairs of martyred soldiers include Nereus and Achilleus, Sergius and Bacchus, Julianus and Caesarius, Felix and Fortunatus, and Vitalis and Agricola.

As regards the ecclesiastic, it should be noted that the garments worn can distinguish both a cardinal and a canon of certain specific categories. The cassock, surplice and ecclesiastical hood are in fact typical of canonical dress² but also worn by cardinals, while the red cloak and biretta are more characteristic of cardinal’s attire but were also granted, as Moroni points out,³ to several other categories of ecclesiastics, including not only the canons of the cathedral of Pisa but also the ordinaries of the cathedral of Milan,⁴ which is unquestionably a point of the utmost interest here in view of the painting’s stylistic characteristics. It is therefore possible to suggest that the work was commissioned either by a Lombard cardinal particularly loath to display his power and position⁵ or, more probably, by one of the powerful ordinaries of Milan Cathedral. Examination of the lists of the latter for the second half decades of the 16^th,⁶ bearing in mind the donor’s patron saint is Jerome, yields the names of Girolamo Riccio and Girolamo Talenti of Florence in 1510 and in 1511 the primicerius Girolamo Clivio (d. 1514), who also served in the Fabbrica del Duomo, all of whom would repay investigation in the future. Apart from the modifications mentioned above, which impede our reading of the iconography, the panel presents a fairly good state of preservation. The painted surface displays abrasion and retouching in a number of places (including the marble throne, the landscape in the background, the drapery of Peter and Paul, and the Child). Attached to the back of the work are two labels each bearing a number, “399” in the upper left corner and “106” in the upper right, and two pieces of paper glued to the centre. These bear a description of the work in English and the address of the firm Colnaghi & Co. as well as additions in pen regarding some further elements of provenance (Needham and Von Seidlitz) as well as information about the photograph published in Aprà 1945.⁷ As mentioned above, the latter shows the work widened by a few centimetres through the addition of painted strips of wood, later removed during undocumented restoration work, probably at the same time as the attributes of St Lawrence and St Benedict.

Light was shed on the work’s provenance by Laura De Fanti’s identification of it in an inventory drawn up in Bergamo on the death of Giovanni Leonardo, the father of Gustavo Frizzoni (1849).⁸ It is described there as a “Virgin and Child with St Peter and other Saints around her and a worshipper at her feet”. The panel was soon sold by the widow, possibly on the advice of Giovanni Morelli, and later entered the Hahich Collection in Kassel, sold in Cologne in 1892,⁹ and the Von Seidlitz Collection in Dresden.¹⁰ Berenson mentioned it in 1907 in the collection of Sir Charles Turner,¹¹ from which it must have arrived at an unknown date (but in any case after 1912, when Tancred Borenius attests to it being still in Turner’s possession,¹² and before 1952, the year of the Colnaghi sale) in the Needham Collection at Four Oaks in Warwickshire, as attested by the handwritten note added to the card glued to the back of the painting. Sold in London by Colnaghi in 1952, the panel then arrived in the Candiani Collection in Busto Arsizio, where its presence is mentioned by Mazzini and Berenson.¹³ In 1989 Marani mentions its recent purchase for an unknown private collection in Lombardy.¹⁴ The precise date of its entrance into the collection of Francesco Federico Cerruti is not known.

The few references in the literature are all quite brief but unanimous in identifying it as the work of Il Bergognone. Beltrami includes it in his monograph on Ambrogio da Fossano;¹⁵ Berenson¹⁶ and Borenius¹⁷ list it as an autograph work; and Aprà presents a full-page photograph in his book but does not include it in the list of works.¹⁸ The painting was included in the 1958 exhibition Arte lombarda dai Visconti agli Sforza, on which occasion Franco Mazzini described it as a “typical private devotional work”.¹⁹ It is also mentioned among Il Bergognone’s works in Ottino Della Chiesa’s entry on the artist in the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani.²⁰ Particular importance was attached to the panel more recently by Marani,²¹ whose discussion of Il Bergognone’s apprenticeship identifies it as an early work, possibly prior to 1480, and an experimental exercise on the theme of the Madonna and Child with Saints preparatory to the great Calagrani (or rather Eustachi, as we now know²²) altarpieces. Precise similarities are also seen in the drapery of the Virgin’s robe and the prototype John the Baptist to the corresponding figures in the Cagnola Madonna polyptych, which Marani regards as the work of Zanetto Bugatto.²³

While bearing unquestionably characteristics of Il Bergognone’s work, the panel can more easily be seen as a late product of the master’s workshop (see in this connection the entry on the St Roch and St Sebastian by Ambrogio Bergognone, cat. p. 422), close to the years of the polyptych of Santo Spirito in Bergamo (1508-09; figs. 1, 2),²⁴ when the artist’s consideration of Leonardo’s work prompted him to create a more “bruised” chiaroscuro through transparent glazes (particularly evident in the case of John the Baptist) and to gradually abandon the more complex perspective of Bramante he displayed for many years, especially in private devotional images. Certain lapses in quality, such as the face of St Benedict, the more mechanical handling of some details and the incongruities in the size of the figures, all suggest the involvement of assistants alongside the master.

Stefania Buganza

¹ Aprà 1945, pl. 19.

² See the information on canonical dress in M. Loschiavo, “I Canonici regolari: un abito da chierici”, in Rome 2000, pp. 229-270.

³ Moroni 1840-61: VII, 1841, p. 244, s.v. “Canonico”; VIII, 1841, pp. 90-93, s.v. “Cappa”.

⁴ See in this connection the very useful work Bonanni 1720, p. 436.

⁵ This important subject is broached in Rossetti 2019, pp. 422-435.

⁶ Castiglioni 1954, p. 36.

⁷ Aprà 1945, pl. 19.

⁸ L. De Fanti, in Pavia 1998, p. 338, cat. 63.

⁹ Dumont Schauberg, Cologne, Katalog der ausgewählten und reichhaltigen Gemälde-Sammlung…, 1892, p. 7, no. 14.

¹⁰ Where Beltrami recalls it: Beltrami 1895, p. 112, no. 130.

¹¹ Berenson 1907, p. 173.

¹² Crowe-Cavalcaselle 1912, p. 374 note 5.

¹³ F. Mazzini, in Milan 1958a, p. 126; Berenson 1968, p. 43.

¹⁴ P. C. Marani, “Per la formazione del Bergognone: una traccia”, in Milan 1989d, p. 12 not 14.

¹⁵ Beltrami 1895, p. 112.

¹⁶ Berenson 1907, p. 173.

¹⁷ Crowe-Cavalcaselle 1912, p. 374 note 5.

¹⁸ Aprà 1945, pl. 19.

¹⁹ F. Mazzini, in Milan 1958, p. 126, pl. CL.

²⁰ Ottino Della Chiesa 1960, p. 717.

²¹ P. C. Marani, “Per la formazione del Bergognone…” cit., pp. 10, 17, fig. 10.

²² M. Albertario, “Francesco Eustachi e la pala di Sant’Epifanio. Ipotesi per un committente pavese di Bergognone”, in Mulas 2019, pp. 219-229.

²³ For the art-critical question complete with bibliography, readers are referred to Cavalieri 1989; Id. 1996, p. 754; F. Cavalieri, “Ancora su Zanetto Bugatto: alcune riflessioni e una nuova proposta”, in Elsig, Gaggetta 2014, pp. 23-54; F. Cavalieri, in Milan 2015, pp. 292-293, cat. IV.17; Delmoro 2000, pp. 166-181.

²⁴ On the work, see R. Battaglia, in Bergamo 2002- 03, pp. 34-49.