Literature:
A. Lamo, Discorso intorno alla scoltura, e pittura, dove si ragiona della vita, ed opere in molti luoghi, ed a diversi principi, e personaggi fatte dall'eccelentissimo, e nobile pittore cremonese M. Bernardino Campi, Cremona 1584, p. 82
Pietro Maria Passerini da Sestola, Della fabbrica del convento libro 2°, ms del sec. XVII, in Archivio di Stato Milano, Religione, 4284, c. 5v, par. 29 (1641)
A.M. Panni, Distinto rapporto delle dipinture che trovansi nelle Chiese della Città e Sobborghi di Cremona, Cremona 1776, pp. 66-67
G. Aglio, Le pitture e le sculture della città di Cremona, Cremona, p. 55
L. Lanzi, Storia pittorica della Italia dal Risorgimento delle Arti fin presso al fine del XVIII secolo, Bassano 1809, ed. a cura di M. Cappucci, Firenze 1970 p. 271
G. Picinardi, Nuova guida di Cremona per gli amatori dell’arti del disegno, Cremona 1810 ca., pp. 105 – 106
L. Corsi, Dettaglio delle chiese di Cremona, Cremona 1819 p. 69
G. Grassetti, Abecedario Biografico dei pittori, scultori ed architetti cremonesi, Milano 1827, pp. 88-89
R. Miller, Bernardino Campi in: I Campi e la cultura artistica cremonese del cinquecento, Exh. catalogue Cremona 1985 p. 156 (‘Tra i migliori dipinti di Bernardinio Campi degli anni settanta…’)
Giulio Bora in: Pittura a Cremona dal Romanico al Settecento, ed. Mina Gregori, Cremona 1990, cat. p. 274, illustrated p. 91.
|
Remarks:
Signed and dated lower left:
'BERNARDINUS CAMPUS CREMONENSIS FA/ M.D.LXXIIII'
The painting was commissioned by the Cremonese Captain Giovanni Battista Picenardi for a chapel in the Church of St. Domenic, Cremona. Bernardino Campi received, in three instalments, 50 scudi for this painting which was displayed on the altar in 1574, the year it was made.
In 1794 the painting is still listed the inventory of the convent church San Domenico, this shortly before the French started confiscating artworks in 1796 and the convent was closed in 1804. Around 1810 a copy after the present painting is mentioned, which was made to replace the original one put in safety by the Picenardi family ‘onde sottrarla alle rapine de’ Galli’ (Nuova Guida di Cremona per gli amatori dell’arti del disegno by G. Picenardi, circa 1810). This seems to have worked well enough, because the French did not find the painting. Only at the end of the nineteenth century the painting surfaced again, then sold by a Ritter Reichmann.
It is one of Bernardino Campi's most celebrated paintings and also the sources tell us it was widely acclaimed from the early beginning. Lanzi, in 1809 called it again Bernardino Campi’s most perfect painting and a landmark where he wants to show all the perfections of the art of painting.
But already in 1584 the scholar A. Lama acclaimed the obvious technical and artistic qualities of this painting and praised the combined effects of daylight in the foreground and a night-scene in the background.
This manipulation of light, or put in other words, the light which enters and shapes the narrative, is a device which a few decades later will be developed to its extreme consequences by Caravaggio. His indebtness to the Lombard school, and in particular to such works produced in the Campi circle has been well noted by the Caravaggio scholars (see for instance W. Friedlaender, Caravaggio Studies, Princeton ed. 1974 pp. 37 ff.).
In any case it is, as every masterpiece, a painting which assembles from the past and is seminal for the future.
Giulio Bora (op. cit. 1990 p. 274 ) comments further: 'Si colloca ai vertici di quella serie particolarmente felice realizzata dall’artista negli stessi anni …' and notes the very good conservation of this large painting.
|