Adoration of the Shepherds

Mazzola Ludovico called Mazzolino

(Ferrara c. 1480 - 1528-30)

This panel painting was in all probability purchased directly by Cardinal Scipione Borghese. It dates to the first decade of the sixteenth century and stylistically belongs to the group of works by Mazzolino in which his early influence by Giorgione is clear.

Object details

Commentary

In a typical Veneto landscape, clearly influenced by Giorgione, we find, starting from the left, St Joseph, standing behind the kneeling Virgin, the baby Jesus, portrayed as a newborn but already sitting and able to communicate with adult gestures, and a shepherd, who is also kneeling and is accompanied by a dog, in front of which there are two bags.

The painting first appears in the Borghese Collection in the inventory drawn up in the 1630s, in which it is listed as ‘un quadro la Madonna che adora il figliolo, S. Gioseppe et un pellegrino cornice d’ebano, alto 1 2/3 largo 2. Girolamo da Carpi’ (‘a painting the Madonna adoring the child, St Joseph and a pilgrim ebony frame, 1 2/3 high 2 wide. Girolamo da Carpi’). This mistaken attribution changed in the 1693 inventory to ‘unknown artist’ and, then, in 1833, to the more generic ‘Venetian school’. On Morelli’s suggestion, Piancastelli (1891) corrected the attribution of the painting.

The strong naturalism and spatial organisation, which is very close to Giorgione’s Allendale Nativity (circa 1505, Washington, National Gallery of Art, inv. 1939.1.289), of this painting express all the developments in the work of artists like Lotto and Boccaccino (Ballarin 1991), with a special predilection for inserting highly meaningful elements. One example of the latter is the dog on the right, which seems to be a citation of the animal next to Duke Borso in the lower register of Francesco del Cossa’s April in the Hall of the Months in Palazzo Schifanoia, Ferrara.

The identifiable influences and the artist’s trip to Venice by the first decade of the century (Zamboni 1968) allow us to date the work to around the first decade of the sixteenth century.

Lara Scanu