The painting is one of Annibale's most celebrated and reproduced paintings, and was until recently presumed lost until it appeared at a Sotheby's sale on 11 July 2003. This will provide a last chance to raise the money to keep the painting in the United Kingdom.

 

The Minister's ruling follows a recommendation by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art that the export decision be deferred. This reflects the outstanding aesthetic importance of the painting as a realization of characteristics that pointed the way toward the future of Baroque painting in Italy and throughout Europe.  As such it is of outstanding significance to our understanding and further knowledge of the artist's development of the Classical Baroque style.

 

The deferral will enable purchase offers to be made at the following agreed fair market price:

 

 

Anyone interested in making an offer to purchase the painting should contact the owner's agent through:

 

The Secretary
The Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art
Department for Culture, Media and Sport
2-4 Cockspur Street
London SW1Y 5DH

 

NOTES TO EDITORS
 
Pictures of these items can be downloaded free of charge from our site on PA Picselect.
Please go to the DCMS folder situated within the Arts section of Picselect either at http://www.papicselect.com/ or through the PA bulletin board.

 

 

Annibale Carracci (1560 – 1609) moved definitively to Rome in 1595 and, though he was preoccupied with the frescoes for the Camerino and Galleria Farnese until 1601, he created a number of easel paintings for exalted patrons.  This copper was made for Cardinal Alessandro Peretti Montalto, the great-nephew of Pope Sixtus V, although we know nothing of the circumstances of the commission.  Montalto was a major patron of contemporary painters and sculptors, including Bernini, who created the Neptune and Triton (Victoria & Albert Museum) for a garden fountain at the cardinal's villa, where Annibale's painting was displayed. 

 

The easel paintings Annibale produced in the years before 1600 provide a fascinating counterpart to his mural work, showing his probing mind and eye on the verge of a breakthrough in the creation of a modern style in the Grand Manner.  The Montalto Madonna asserts its relationship to the classical tradition by specifically referring to a series of well-known, late Holy Family compositions by Raphael and his school.  Annibale seems to have been particularly inspired by the structural system of The Holy Family with St John the Baptist under the Oak Tree (Madrid, Museo del Prado), in which virtually the same compositional elements appear.  However, while Annibale retains the basic diagonal disposition of figures, he transforms his model's compositional grace and expressive detachment into a more focused, animated, and emotionally charged image that heralds a new era.

Annibale laid the foundations of the Baroque style by fusing Central Italian design with North Italian naturalism and colour.  The Montalto Madonna is one of three small works on copper, including the Madonna and Child with St John the Baptist (Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi) and the Vision of St Francis (Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada), in which Annibale explores combining the sensuous luminosity of Correggio with the principles of the Roman High Renaissance. 

In the Montalto Madonna, Annibale endows the simple gesture of a mother balancing her squirming baby with gravity and grace that demonstrates his growing classicism, here seemingly updating Michelangelo's Sibyls by close study from nature.  Yet, the Madonna's wide-eyed sincerity and softly painted flesh reflect Correggio's example, as do the Child's round forms, curly locks, and rippling drapery, even if he has gained heroic stature.  These forms are infused with a kind of Correggesque sweetness that greatly appealed to Baroque sensibilities.  The Madonna is posed with truly Baroque contrapposto as she leans out, boldly engaging the viewer with her knowing gaze.  The composition is firmly organized and set before classical columns, while the movement implied in the zig-zagging forms of the Madonna and Child animates the scene.  Joseph and John respond with focused attentiveness, their attitudes too revealing figures in motion.  This lends the scene a vibrant emotional tenor that is focused in the eyes of the Madonna drawing us into the image.  The Montalto Madonna is probably the last of the three Correggiesque coppers because while Correggio's presence is felt, it is more thoroughly assumed into a full Baroque Classicism that approaches the grandeur of the Galleria Farnese. 

 

 

The painting was described by early literary sources, including Bellori (1672), who noted that its beauty had attracted many copyists.  Indeed, the composition had long been known through engravings and more than ten copies, although none with a claim to autograph status. 

 

The identification of this copper with the Montalto Madonna is principally sustained by its high quality and refined, unlabored execution.  This is confirmed by the inventory number 591 written on the original backing board, which was fortunately reused when the painting was put into a 19th-century English frame.  This number was assigned to the painting when it was catalogued in the collection of Filippo III Colonna at the Palazzo Colonna, Rome, in 1783, and this discovery made it possible to trace the painting back to the Montalto collection.  Filippo III was forced to sell part of his collection in 1798 and the Montalto Madonna probably left at this time, perhaps coming to Britain before the dawn of the 19th century.  The painting is next recorded in the collection of Sir Archibald Campbell of Succoth at Garscube House, where it was seen by Waagen before 1854, and where it remained until the house and contents were sold around 1947. 

 

Annibale's popularity with British collectors is evident particularly in the holdings of the National Gallery, the Royal Collection, and Christ's Church, Oxford.  However, no British collection possesses a work from the key moment of the Montalto Madonna.  Though other works by the artist can be found in private collections, none of these comes up to the level of this painting, with the exception of the Royal Collection's Madonna and Child with St John the Baptist, which is dated several years later. 

 

The painting is in excellent condition for a work on copper.  Annibale's brushstrokes are palpable and fresh.  The flake losses that plague 17th-century paintings on copper are remarkably few and small, and these are confined to secondary areas.  There has been a sinking of the dark tones in the figure of the Baptist and in parts of the landscape, but this results from natural aging of the paint.

 

The recommended price at which the application to export the painting is deferred, is £ 806,780  (inclusive of VAT).