XIV - Genoese Drawings - Marty de Cambiaire

Provenance
French private collection; galerie Prouté; American private
collection.
Literature
Suzanne Fold McCullagh, Capturing the Sublime. Italian
Drawings of the Renaissance and Baroque, Chicago, The
Art Institute of Chicago and New Haven and London, Yale
University Press 2012, under no. A12, entry by Jonathan
Bober.
Exhibited
L’Œil et la passion. Dessins italiens de la Renaissance dans
les collections privées françaises, Musée des Beaux-Arts de
Caen, 19 March-20 June 2011, no. 58, p. 184-185; Salon du
Dessin 2018, Paris, galerie Prouté.
Paggi, whose artistic talent developed against the wishes of
his father, first practiced on his own by painting for pleasure.
Well-read and a fine musician – Soprani even calls him the
true inventor of the theorbo, he frequented the artists of
his hometown, notably Luca Cambiaso, who helped him
cultivate his gift for drawing. Several years after his father’s
death, when he was finally able to devote himself fully to his
artistic projects, he was accused of killing a young nobleman
and banished from Genoa in 1581. Paggi hence left for Pisa,
then Florence “where he was received with kindness by
the Grand Duke Francesco I” 1 and soon obtained his first
commissions, among which the Miracle of Saint Catherine
de Siena for the great cloister of Santa Maria Novella. In
Florence, he entered the Accademia del Disegno in 1583
and continuously received numerous commissions, enjoying
the support of the Florentine court and well-known Genoese
figures with whom he remained in contact. On friendly
terms with Federico Zuccaro, in whose house he was staying
in 1588, he collaborated with Pierre Franqueville on the
ephemeral decorations for the wedding of Ferdinand I with
Christina of Lorraine 2 . In 1590, Paggi temporarily returned to
Genoa under the protection of the Doria, where he engaged
in the reform of artistic professions and liberalisation of the
profession of painter, at the time still attached to the guild.
From Florence he regularly sent his canvases to Genoa, where
he was finally able to return definitively in 1599. Importing the
practice and technique acquired in Florentine workshops, and
maintaining close ties with the Tuscan patrons, he became an
esteemed master and played an important role in the training
of many young painters.
This large drawing is to be connected by its style to Paggi’s
Florentine period. It can be compared with many works of
this time, particularly with The Pool of Bethesda in the Museo
Nazionale di Villa Guinigi in Lucca. The figure of the beggar
in the foreground of this work is highly similar to the beggar in
the present drawing. Federica Mancini put the present scene
in relation with the translation of the body of Saint Antonius
of Florence (1389-1459) 3 . This Dominican friar who became
archbishop of Florence in 1446 and whose life and help
for the poor were exemplary, was canonised in May 1523.
His relics were transferred in 1589 with great pomp from
a simple tomb to the chapel offered by the Salviati family
specially built for this occasion in the church of San Marco.
The plans for the chapel were made by Giambologna and
the decorations by Alessandro Allori, Francesco Morandini,
called il Poppi, Bernardino Poccetti and, above all, by
Domenico Cresti, called il Passignano, who painted the
scenes of the adoration of the saint’s body and its translation
on the walls of the chapel vestibule between 1589 and
1591 4 . Both events represented in the scenes took place on
8 May 1589 during the wedding festivities in honour of the
marriage of Ferdinand I and Christina of Lorraine.
Paggi, who befriended Passignano and who was in Florence
at the same period, actually could have participated in the
decorations and submitted designs for them. In the present
sheet, we can recognize the saint’s body, known for his small
size, beggars and women who enjoyed his protection, and
in the central background, a couple before a priest possibly
evoking the wedding of the Grand Duke. It can thus be
more a symbolic rather than a literal evocation. The two
men engaged in a conversation near the body remind those
who during the exhumation attested that the saint’s body was
incorrupt and discovered with dismay his simple clothing 5 .
However, the present work can also be a design for another
chapel dedicated to Saint Antonius, founded in Fiesole by
the Genovese Cipriano Brignole. Paggi painted an altarpiece
for this chapel representing a child from the Filicaia family
being brought back to life by the saint (now lost). To the
detriment of these two connections, Sally Cornelison rightly
pointed out that the interior architecture in the present
drawing does not remotely evoke that of San Marco. There
is further Paggi’s drawing of a very similar subject, but with
a different vantage point, different architectural construction
and without the couple before the priest (fig. 1). It may be
easier to connect this work to the adoration of the relics of
Saint Antonius than the present sheet.
It is also interesting to mention that this sheet is largely
inspired by Giambologna’s bas-reliefs representing Saint
Antonius’s life which he executed for the Salviati chapel:
it borrows from them such details as the tall architectural
constructions in the background, steps of the staircase to
create several levels, and strong physical presence of the
figures in the foreground, including the beggars, the children
with their mothers and dogs. Whatever its destination, this
lovely and large drawing is undeniably influenced by the
translation of the relics of Saint Antonius and by the artistic
creativity employed on this occasion.
1 Carlo Giuseppe Ratti, Vite de’ pittori, scultoti ed architetti
genovesi di Raffaele Soprani, Gênes, Stamperia Casamara,
1768, vol. 1, p. 121 : “dove fu benignamente accolto dal
granduca Francesco I”.
2 Simona Lecchini Giovannoni, “Ancora sul Paggi”, in
Antichita Viva, XXV, 1986, 5-6, p. 30-33, no. 8; Maria Clelia
Galassi, “Paggi Giovanni Battista”, in La Pittura in Liguria. Il
Cinquecento, ed. by Elena Parma, Genoa, 1999, pp. 401-
403.
3 Exhibition catalogue, L’Œil et la passion, Dessins italiens de
la Renaissance dans les collections privées françaises, op.
cit., p. 184.
4 This event in all its aspects was studied by Sally J. Cornelison
in her Art and the Relic cult of Sant’Antoninus in Renaissance
92
Genoese Drawings