Provenance
Monti Borromeo collection, Milan

Literature
G. Frizzoni, Il Museo Borromeo in Milano, in “Archivio Storico dell’Arte”, III, 1890, pp. 351
B. Berenson, The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance, New York - London 1896, p. 124
F. Knapp, Piero di Cosimo, ein Ubergans-meister von Florentiner Quattrocento zum Cinquecento, Halle 1899, p. 96
B. Berenson, The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance, New York - London 1900, p. 131
B. Berenson, The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance, London - New York 1909, p. 165
A. Venturi, Storia dell’Arte Italiana, 1901-1940, vol. VII-1, 1911, p. 713
R. Van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, The Hague 1923-1946, vol. XIII, 1931, p. 380
P. Morselli, Piero di Cosimo: saggio di un catalogo delle opere, in “L’Arte”, n.s. XXIII, 1958, p. 90
F. Zeri, Rivedendo Piero di Cosimo, in “Paragone”, n. 115, 1959, p. 44
M. Bacci, Piero di Cosimo, Milano 1966, p. 108 n. 57
F. Abbate, ‘Piero di Cosimo’ di Mina Bacci, in “Paragone”, n. 215, 1968, p. 77
M. Bacci, L’opera completa di Piero di Cosimo, Milan, 1976, p. 99 n. 67
E. Capretti, in A. Forlani Tempesti - E. Capretti, Piero di Cosimo. Catalogo completo, Florence 1996, p. 144 n. A7
D. Geronimus, Piero di Cosimo. Visions Beautiful and Strage, New Haven 2006, p. 285 n. 7
A. Di Lorenzo, M. Natale, La Pinacoteca Borromeo-Monti, in Capolavori da scoprire. La collezione Borromeo, exhibition catalogue, Milan 2006, p. 50
E. Capretti, in Dagli eredi di Giotto al primo Cinquecento, Florence 2007, pp. 148-157
G. A. Hirschauer, Piero di Cosimo: The Poetry of Painting in Renaissance Florence, exhibition catalogue, Washington 2015, pp. 156-159
D. Geronimus, in Piero di Cosimo (1462-1522). Pittore “fiorentino” eccentrico fra Rinascimento e Maniera, exhibition catalogue, Florence 2015, pp. 300-301
D. Geronimus, Piero di Cosimo Painter of Faith and Fable, Leiden - Boston, 2019, p. 108

The painting formerly in the Borromeo collection has so far only been known to critics through a very poor late 19th-century photograph, which reproduced it altered and transformed into a quadrangular format[1]. A direct reading of the painting - which, thanks to careful cleaning, has been restored to its original circular format and freed from repainting - allows us to appreciate its quality and, at the same time, to highlight the composition's peculiar characteristics typical of Piero di Cosimo, who repeatedly ventured into the pictorial genre of the chamber "tondo", with subjects intended for domestic devotion[2]. In the composition in the centre, seated on a rock, Mary holds Jesus lying in her lap and wraps him with her sash; the Child looks at her and hands her the goldfinch, which prefigures the Passion. The Virgin sits crossing her legs and revealing on the ground in the foreground a bare foot highlighted by light, a sign of her submission to God's will[3]. On the left, two angels stand facing each other silently observing a book (guardian of the prophecies), while on the right a third angel musician turns towards the observer as if to involve him in the representation. The angel on the back, who turns towards the book, is inspired by the so-called Bed of Polyclitus, an antique relief of an erotic subject known today from copies from the Renaissance period, much appreciated since the 15th century[4]. The scene takes place in a landscape with soft, suffused tones: on the left, behind the Virgin, a ridge rises up with overhanging rocks and shrubs at the top; on the right, a view opens up in the distance that fades into a blue mist on the horizon. A series of flowering plants are almost lined up in the foreground. The intimate relationship between the Mother and the Son, made up of glances, tender everyday gestures, delicate contacts, the tender and melancholic sharing of 'affections' by the two angels on the left, the conscious and allusive invitation of the musician angel to the observer, are some of the most fascinating features of Piero di Cosimo's compositions. In the same way, the affectionate description - at times even amazed, at others almost moved - of the 'little things' is a peculiar trait: one notices, for example, the knot of the mantle on the Virgin's shoulder, her bare foot on the ground, the Child's sash held in the Mother's hands, the rocks above as if piled up and surmounted by bushes. Equally reminiscent of Piero are the broad and somewhat 'rustic' features of the faces, the subtle play of light and shadow on the lowered gazes, the wide hands with long fingers, the angels' slender wings, the minute description of the plants in the foreground and that of the buildings with Nordic features in the distance in the landscape, such as a country house with an enclosure and perhaps a church with towers and pinnacles. In particular, the painting already in the Borromeo collection finds precise terms of comparison with some of Piero's most famous works, datable between the late 15th and early 16th century. The Virgin's face recalls the same figure in the altarpiece of the Spedale degli Innocenti, in the Strasbourg tondo (Musée des Beaux Arts) and in the study of a young woman in the Metropolitan Museum, which William Giswold has closely related to the French painting, dating both to the last years of the 15th century[5]. Moreover, the bust of Mary with the mantle tied on her shoulder is similar to that in the tondo in the Gemäldegalerie in Dresden with the Holy Family, St. John and two angels. The long-winged angels in alternating poses and the aligned plants in the foreground also refer to the latter. The motif of the two angels' heads close together in the sharing of the book returns in the tondo from a private collection with the Madonna and Child, St. John, two angels and a saint, a work that was probably made in two, albeit close, stages[6]. In particular, the angel on the left in frontal pose resembles the angel-reader in the Cini Madonna in Venice. The landscape recalls the panels with the Stories of Silenus from Worcester and Cambridge.

The painting has been in the Borromeo-Monti collection since 1830, located on the piano nobile of the family palace in Milan in Piazza Borromeo, which was later destroyed. Its belonging to the prestigious Milanese collection at that date is attested by the label still present on the back of the painting, bearing the Borromeo coat of arms, the inscription 'Pinacoteca Borromeo-Monti' and the year 1830. This label printed by the Litografia Bertotti was affixed to the paintings that were part of the bequest of Giovan Battista Monti, secretary and administrator of Giberto V Borromeo, as well as a refined collector of antique art, who died in that year. Previously, therefore, the painting was part of the collection gathered by Monti in his house in Contrada di Santa Maddalena al Cerchio and bequeathed to Giberto VI Borromeo (1815-1885), nephew of Giberto V[7]. As can be seen from the pen inscription on the label, when it entered the Pinacoteca Borromeo in 1830, the painting was given the inventory number "300" and the attribution to "Bernardino Luino", which reiterated that already proposed by an older inscription on the same panel. It was with this attribution that Monti, a passionate collector of the Lombard artist, must have bought the painting, of which he owned no less than 24 examples or presumed examples. The inscription 'Bernardino Luino' on the Borromeo label was later erased in pen and corrected with a reference to “Giuliano Bugiardini” In 1890, after the Borromeos decided to open their collection to the public for two days a week, Carlo Marcozzi, the owner of the Milan branch of the Montatone company, was commissioned to photograph the most important works, including the painting then attributed to Bugiardini and - as the reproduction itself documents - reduced to a square format. This is the only image with which the work has been known to critics for over a century. The original glass plates taken in that photographic campaign are still preserved in the Civic Photographic Archive of the City of Milan. The opportunity to visit the Pinacoteca Borromeo prompted Gustavo Frizzoni to dedicate two articles published in 'Archivio di Storia dell'Arte' to the Pinacoteca Monti (as it was now called). It was Frizzoni himself who was the first to bring the work closer to the circle of Piero di Cosimo, inviting it to be placed "in honour "[8]. This attribution was rejected by Knapp in his monograph on the artist, but shared by Berenson, Venturi and Van Marle[9]. Another label on the back of the panel shows that the painting was owned by Vittorio Emanuele and Mina Borromeo during the Second World War. In 1945, the Monti picture gallery was moved to the Isola Bella residence to save it from destruction by bombing[10]. In contributions from the 1950s onwards, the painting's location is unknown. On the basis of the only available reproduction, Federico Zeri still referred the painting to Piero di Cosimo, proposing to date it in the painter's late phase, beyond 1510[11]. However, Bacci - in her fundamental monographic studies on the painter[12] - expressed great caution as she was unable to observe the painting directly and only had at her disposal "a very old photo that was almost illegible": in general, for the scholar, it is "impossible to give a judgement on the pictorial quality; one can only state that the landscape was completely reworked when the tondo was transformed into a rectangle". In general, recent critics have shared Bacci's cautious observations, preferring to include the work in lists of works of uncertain attribution[13]. After so many uncertainties, the presentation to the public of the painting, restored in its original format and pictorial surface, offers - all the more reason - an important contribution to our knowledge of Piero di Cosimo and to the delineation of his corpus, to which one more entry can now be added with full rights.

[1] A reproduction of this image is in the photo library of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence in the folder dedicated to Piero di Cosimo (foto n. 7236, neg. 3229).
[2] R.J.M. Olson, The Florentine Tondo, New York 2000, pp. 203-206
[3] G. Heinz-Mohr, Lessico di iconografia cristiana, Milan 1984 (I ed. Düsseldorf-Köln 1971), pp. 284-285[
4] The earliest example, recorded by the sources, of the so-called "Bed of Polyclitus" - possibly a Roman relief from a Hellenistic model depicting Cupid and Psyche or Venus and Vulcan - was in Lorenzo Ghiberti's collection around 1433, later passed down to his heirs and recorded by Vasari (Le vite de' più eccellenti architetti, pittori et scultori italiani da Cimabue insino a' tempi nostri, Florence 1568, ed. edited by G. Milanesi, in Le opere di Giorgio Vasari, Florence 1878-85, II, 1878, p. 245). Two 16th century versions survive today, one in Rome in Palazzo Mattei and the other in a private collection (formerly in London, J. Hewitt Collection). The ancient invention had a great iconographic fortune especially in central-northern Italy Among the most famous derivations of the invention in Florentine art are: the seated shoulder figure in Donatello's marble relief with Herod's Feast now in Lille, Musée des Beaux-Arts (Wicar bequest 1834 (1912); the Nereid on the left of the fireplace frieze in Palazzo Gondi made by Giuliano da Sangallo between 1501 and 1503. Important derivations can be found in the 16th century: Raphael, the figure of Onphale in the Banchetto per le nozze di Psiche in the Villa della Farnesina in Rome (1518) and in the related study in Haarlem, Teylers Museum, inv. A 62; Gian Giacomo Caraglio, Amore e Psiche on a drawing by Perin del Vaga, 1527, Rome, Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica, inv. FC 5952; Giulio Romano, Education of Jupiter, London, National Gallery; Titian, Venus and Adonis, Madrid, Prado; Nereid on the floor of the Laurentian Library in Florence. See also: E.H. Gombrich, Norma e forma, Studi sull'arte del Rinascimento, Torno 1973 (I ed. London 1966), p. 184-185; P.P. Bober, R. Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists & Antique Sculpture, Oxford 1986, n. 94; L. Beschi, La scoperta dell’arte greca, in Memoria dell’antico nell’arte italiana. III: Dalla tradizione all’archeologia, Torino 1986, pp. 291-372, in part. p. 305 in part. p. 305
(5) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 1972.118.268; W. M. Griswold, in The Drawings of Filippino Lippi and His Circle, exhibition catalogue by G. R. Goldner e C. C. Bambach, New York 1997, pp. 358-359 n. 119
[6] E. Capretti, in A. Forlani Tempesti – E. Capretti, Piero di Cosimo. Catalogo completo, Florence 1996, p. 119 n. 29
[7] A. Di Lorenzo, M. Natale, La Pinacoteca Borromeo-Monti, in Capolavori da scoprire. La collezione Borromeo, exhibition ctalogue by M. Natale with the collaboration of A. Di Lorenzo, Milano 2006, pp. 44-45
[8] G. Frizzoni, Il Museo Borromeo in Milano, in “Archivio Storico dell’Arte”, III, 1890, p. 351
[9] F. Knapp, Piero di Cosimo, ein Ubergans-meister von Florentiner Quattrocento zum Cinquecento, Halle 1899, p. 96; B. Berenson, The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance, New York – London 1896, p. 124; ed. 1900, p. 131; ed. 1909, p. 165; A. Venturi, Storia dell’Arte Italiana, 1901-1940, vol. VII-1, 1911, p. 713; R. Van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, The Hague 1923-1946, vol. XIII, 1931, p. 380
[10] For information on the history of the collection, cfr.: Capolavori da scoprire. La collezione Borromeo, cit. 2006
[11] F. Zeri, Rivedendo Piero di Cosimo, in “Paragone”, n. 115, 1959, pp. 36-50, p. 44
[12] M. Bacci, Piero di Cosimo, Milano 1966, p. 108 n. 57; M. Bacci, L’opera completa di Piero di Cosimo, Milan, 1976, p. 99 n. 67
[13] E. Capretti, cit. 1996, p. 144 n. A7; D. Geronimus, Piero di Cosimo. Visions Beautiful and Strage, New Haven 2006, p. 285 n. 7