GAROFALO

In this finely executed and richly coloured panel, the artist exemplifies his early inspirations from contemporary Ferrarese and Bolognese painters as well as his response to the work of Giorgione.

This panel, which comes from a nave chapel (fifth to the left) in the church of Santa Maria in Vado in Ferrara, was removed to Rome after the devolution of the Duchy of Ferrara to the domains of the papacy in 1598. In the same group of paintings transported from Ferrara to Rome were the Deposition by Ortolano, now in the Galleria Borghese, and the altarpiece with the Madonna, St Anthony the Abbot and St Cecilia, now in the National Gallery at Palazzo Barberini. By 1612, the work had already been replaced by a copy commissioned to fill its place in the chapel. The original later entered into the celebrated collection of Cardinal Flavio Chigi.

Vasari, who describes Garofolo’s Ascension in his writings, considered it to be a fundamental work of this Ferrarese painter, who was closely connected to the church for which the painting was intended. Raphaelesque influences are evident here, especially when one compares Garofolo’s work to Raphael’s Transfiguration. Strong similarities exist between this work and other paintings by Garofalo dating to 1519-20, such as the 1520 Resurrection in the Archpretal church of Bondeno, and the 1519 Massacre of the Innocents.

In this painting Garofalo used some of the leading motifs of Raphael’s School of Athens.

There is a variant of the painting attributed to the Master of the Twelve Apostles in the Pinacoteca Capitolina in Rome.

This painting is one of three known versions of Garofalo’s Sacra Conversazione composition.

In its use of strong colours and miniaturist detail, the work is typical of the Ferrarese High Renaissance. The panel is thought to have formed the central section of the predella for Garofalo’s altarpiece of the Massacre of the Innocents painted in August 1519 for the church of San Francesco in Ferrara and now in the city’s Pinacoteca Nazionale. As early as 1632 the Louvre picture is known to have been removed from the Ferrara altarpiece and substituted by a copy.

This Circumcision is an autograph version of Garofalo’s picture in the Mus�e du Louvre, Paris.

In this panel, the painter retains the frontal pose of the Raphaelesque Madonna favoured in his early works, however, the position of the Christ Child, who leans in to embrace his mother while inclining his head and gazing to the right, brings an advanced sense of interaction and immediacy to the composition. Noteworthy is the precision of the mountainous landscape beyond, with its intricate representation of grass and foliage.

At the sides of the Virgin are the Archangel Michael and St Joseph, while behind her Anne and Joachim can be seen. In the painting the formal models derived from Raphael are fused with the characteristics of intense drama typical of the art of Dosso Dossi with whom Garofalo worked together in the church of Sant’Andrea in Ferrara around 1527.

The detail shows the figure of Archangel Michael.