Baccio della Porta,calledFra Bartolomeo

Prato, 1472 - Florence, 1517

Fra’ Bartolomeo presents in this precious panel Saint Antoninus lying on a draped funerary bier in the centre foreground, his head propped on a dark, tasselled cushion. His mitre, sharply silhouetted against a radiant gold halo, together with the pallium, signals his authority as head of the Florentine archbishopric, while his habit marks him unmistakably as a Dominican friar.

The Lying in State and Ascension of Saint Antoninus

Oil on panel, 53.9 x 57.5 cm

PROVENANCE

Florence, George Nassau Clavering-Cowper (1738-1789), 3rd Earl Cowper, Prince of Nassau d’Auverquerque, about 1779,

Panshanger, Hertfordshire, Peter Leopold Louis Francis Nassau Clavering-Cowper (1789-1837), 5th Earl Cowper

George Augustus Frederick Cowper (1837 - 1856), 6th Earl Cowpe

Panshanger, Hertfordshire, Francis Thomas de Grey Cowper (1834-1905), 7th Earl Cowper, 1789

Panshanger, Hertfordshire, Lady Ethel Anne Priscilla Fane Grenfell Desborough (1867-1952)

Panshanger, Hertfordshire, The Hon. Monica Margaret Salmond (1893-1973)

London, Christie’s, 7 July 1972, lot 56 (£ 13,650 to Nicholson)

London, Christie’s, 2 July 1976, lot 43

London, Sotheby’s, 8 December 2011, lot 110

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J.A. Crowe and G.B. Cavalcaselle, A New History of Painting in Italy, London 1866, III, pp. 466-68

G. Milanesi, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori scritte da Giorgio Vasari. Con nuove annotazioni e commenti, Florence 1879, IV, p. 199

E. Frantz, Fra Bartolommeo della Porta. Studie über die Renaissance, Regensburg, 1879, p. 189

H. Lücke, Fra’ Bartolomeo, in “Allgemeines Künstler-Lexicon. Leben und Werke der berühmtesten bildenden Künstler”, III, Leipzig 1885, p. 71

G. Gruyer, Fra Bartolommeo della Porta et Mariotto Albertinelli, Paris, 1886, pp. 83-84

B. Berenson, The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance, London 1896, p. 103

F. Knapp, Fra Bartolommeo della Porta und die Schule von San Marco, Halle 1903, p. 263

F. Knapp, in Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, II, Leipzig 1908, p. 565

J.A. Crowe and G.B. Cavalcaselle, A History of Painting in Italy, 1914, VI, pp. 86-87

L. Ferretti, Fra’ Bartolomeo della Porta nel quarto centenario della sua morte, 1517-1917. Discorso commemorativo letto nel convento di San Marco di Firenze, in “Il Rosario. Memorie Domenicane”, 1917, p. 40

H. von der Gabelentz, Fra Bartolommeo, I, Leipzig 1922, p. 193

A. Venturi, Storia dell’arte italiana, IX, 1, Milan 1925, p. 348

M. Wackernagel, Der Lebensraum des Künstlers in der florentinischen Renaissance, Leipzig 1938, p. 135

D. Sutton, Paintings at Firle Place: Home of Viscount and Viscountess Gage, in “The Connoisseur”, 137, June 1956

F. Borroni Salvadori, Le esposizioni d’arte a Firenze dal 1674 al 1767, in “Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz”, 1974, 18, p. 56

H.G. Belsey, The Life and Collecting of George, 3rd Earl Cowper, The Life and Collecting of George, 3rd Earl Cowper (1738-89), unpublished diss. Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham 1981, pp. 154-155

S. Padovani, L’Età di Savonarola. Fra’ Bartolomeo e la Scuola di San Marco, exhibition catalogue, Florence 1996, pp. 131,134

S. J. Cornelison, Art and the Relic Cult of St. Antoninus in Renaissance Florence, Farnham 2016, p. 39

Antoninus died on the eve of the Feast of the Ascension, on the 2nd May 1459 - a fortunate coincidence that emphasized his sanctity by linking his entry into heaven with Christ’s own ascension. His vitae and canonization testimonies recount multiple eyewitness descriptions of his soul rising to heaven at the moment of death, and this panel commemorates that aspect of his hagiography. Also, his death coincided with the presence of Pope Pius II in Florence who had stopped in the city while on his way to Mantua and took charge of the future saint’s obsequies. The large entourage of cardinals, archbishops and bishops of the Pope furnished an instant and prestigious funeral cortège for the ascetic Dominican friar. Once Antoninus’ body had been prepared, six bishops carried his remains from the rural residence in which he died to the cathedral, where the pope celebrated mass. After the funeral, Antoninus was carried to San Marco, where he lay in state for eight days. The Pope and the friars of San Marco set the tone for local devotions to Antoninus by wasting no time in honouring him as if he were a saint and treating his remains as sacred and referring to Antoninus as beato. Their collective demonstration of grief and devotion delayed the former archbishop’s burial by more than one week. The absence of decomposition in a holy person’s remains was an important sign of sanctity and his Lives insist that the delay of Antoninus’ burial demonstrated his incorrupt body was free from the same constraints of time and decay that necessitated the comparatively speedy burials of the less virtuous.

According to Serena Padovani, the depiction of St. Antoninus’ soul ascending into heaven is likely inspired by the account of a Dominican tertiary who claimed to have witnessed the event. In her vision, the nun, saw Christ surrounded by saints and angels, including Thomas Aquinas among the attending saints, with an empty seat reserved for Antoninus

Giorgio Vasari praised Fra’ Bartolomeo for his technical virtuosity: “rarely does nature bear a great mind and a docile artist […] like it did with Baccio da la Porta a San Piero Gattolini di Fiorenza, called like this during his century, an excellent painter and a sophisticated and unique colourist”. The elaborate style described by Vasari is evident in this painting, which was first recognised as a work by Fra’ Bartolomeo by Crowe and Cavalcaselle (1866) when the picture hung in Lord Cowper’s collection at Panshanger, in Hertfordshire. The apparently loose handling in this painting led Crowe and Cavalcaselle to erroneously describe it as a sketch done by Fra’ Bartolomeo for a composition “which had it been so carried out, would have been the finest that he ever attempted”.

The patron or circumstances surrounding the creation of this work are not known but, as noted by Gustave Gruyer, its execution must post-date the celebration of Epiphany in 1516 when Pope Leo X revealed to the Dominican order of San Marco that he intended to canonise Saint Antoninus. Gruyer remarks upon the personal relevance of the glorification of this future saint must have held for Fra’ Bartolomeo, since it would bring honour to the painter’s own religious order: “he dreamed immediately to glorify with his brush the celebrated Dominican who had been bishop of Florence and who was soon to be announced as saint.The painting was recorded as “12/ Un bozzetto della Traslazzione di S:Antonio- Fra: 1=8/1=6 [in piedi parigino]” in the inventory of the collection George Nassau Clavering-Cowper, 3rd Earl Cowper, Prince of Nassau d’Auverquerque, Knight of St. Hubert, FRS (26 August 1738 – 22 December 1789), which was an expatriate British nobleman, distinguished art collector, and absentee politician. He first arrived in Florence during his Grand Tour and fell in love with the city at first sight. In 1760, at just twenty-two years of age, and already in possession of a vast fortune inherited from his grandfather, he chose to settle permanently on the banks of the Arno. During the reign of Peter Leopold, Cowper became one of the most visible and influential figures in Florentine cultural life. Frequently featured in local news, he was celebrated as the organizer of musical entertainments and grand balls, the owner of an exemplary scientific cabinet, a discerning patron of the arts and of books, an extraordinary collector, a lavish host, and a committed philanthropist. His prominence within the international artistic milieu was such that Johann Zoffany included him among the eminent figures portrayed in The Tribuna of the Uffizi, now preserved in the Royal Collection at Windsor.

A full fact sheet is available on request.