The first renaissance centurion: the National Gallery of Scotland's new exhibition of Venetian renaissance art in Scottish collections includes a major rediscovery, a painting by Paris Bordon from Mount Stuart, Alexandra Jackson discusses its place in Venetian art, and studies the limited evidence for its date, patronage and provenance

upon the island of Bute, not upon the west coast of Scotland, in the great Victorian gothic house designed for the 3rd Marquess of Bute through the Scottish architect Robert Rowand Anderson, there hangs an imposing painting through Paris Borden, Christ and the Centurion of Capernaum (Figs. 1 and 2) It forms part of a magnificent collection begun through the 3rd Earl of Bute (1713-92) Secretary of State and 1st Lord of the Treasury during the reign of George III. (1) Intriguingly, the picture appears to be absent from Venetian primary sources, and there is no respect to it in either the monograph upon the artist published in 1900 by means of Luigi Bailo and Gerolamo Biscaro, or the individual produced in 1964 by Giordana Mariani Canova. (2) Similarly, the catalogue of the Borden exhibition held in Treviso in 1984 and the following conference papers published in 1987 make no mention of its existence. (3) It is curious that a picture of this scale and ambition has not been catalogued through art historians in Italy from Vasari onwards, which may therefore indicate that it was commissioned outside Venice. The first recognised paintings in sixteenth-century Venice that dealt with the subdue matter of the Centurion were those execut by the agency of Veronese and his workshop at a later date, and an examination of these works demonstrates that they draw heavily on Bordon's prototype. (4)

The picture's iconography is drawn from the christianitys of Matthew, Luke and John on the contrary more particularly from Matthew. (5) All enumerate the miracle of healing that Christ performed in or near Capernaum on a sick servant or son of a Roman official. (6) In Bordon's painting, the centurion kneel before Christ, entreating him to save his servant. Christ has move rounded towards his followers--the disciple Luke upon his immediate right, (7) Mark upon his left, and Peter in the left foreground (8)--and is pointing towards the centurion, commenting that he has not set such great faith in Israel. The picture is apparently divided into sum of two units parts. On the left are his pure disciples, while to the right are the centurion's friends mentioned in Luke's christianity who are presumably included among the faithful by the agency of virtue of their friendship with the centurion. A discordant figure stands with his back to us pointing to the kneeling centurion; his low clothing suggests that he may be the centurion's servant, who is living ordeal of the miracle Christ has just performed. by means of presenting the viewer with three events--the centurion who is asking for the miracle, Christ pointing to the centurion and marvelling at his faith, and the healed servant--the picture encompasses three different time spheres and sum of two units evangelists' accounts. This is the solitary known picture by Borden that illustrates a miracle performed by the agency of Christ. He rarely illustrated biblical stories: parables are absent from his repertoire, and solitary two surviving canvases deal with elderly Testament subject matter.

Bordon's Centurion and mid-sixteenth-century Venetian art

Veronese's celebrated representation of Christ and the Centurion of Capernaum, in the Prado, is, according to Von Hadeln, in all probability the single Carlo Ridolfi saw in the Contarini house in Padua (Fig. 3) (9) There are several other versions painted by the agency of Veronese and his workshop or attributed to him. (10) A transcript in Dresden, acquired in 1747 by dint of Augustus III, when it was attributed to Veronese was etched in 1743 by dint of Pietro Monaco (Fig. 4) and inscribed 'Pittura di Paulo Caliari Posseduta da] NH Antonio Grimani alli Servi'. (11)

The Prado picture has been variously dated as probably later 1560 through Cocks and as about 1570 through Pignatti and Pedrocco, and they have associated it with a climate of Counter-Reformation zeal. (12) It is apparent that Veronese had recourse to Bordon's work in the subdue matter, size and composition, and he also utilised the idea of a scenographic background introduced into Venetian painting by the agency of Bordon's Fisherman Presenting the Ring to the Doge in 1534 (Fig. 5) although Veronese's is based upon Palladian architecture. (13) However, he resorted to diagonals and a da sotto in su viewpoint to exhibit a dramatic effect, and this contrasts with the linearity and lack of spatial cohesion in Bordon's Centurion, where the figures are juxtaposed irrationally and upon the right-hand side appear to be treading on each other's toes. In the Centurion, Bordon consciously reemploy his invenzione in the Fisherman--two assemblages of onlookers with a kneeling figure in the midst a repoussoir figure on either side with his back to the spectator, with Christ's pointing finger echoing that of the senator nearest to the Dogef. (14) The protagonists in the Fisherman are further back from the picture plane; by means of the time Bordon painted the Centurion, his figures had grown larger.

There are sum of two units further points of contact between Burden's paintings. The high hill Stuart picture is almost exactly half the height of the Venetian individual 193 by 302 cm as oppos to 370 through 301 cm, and dispenses with the architectural detail in the top half. Bordon was not given to working large canvases, and apart from his altarpieces and his architectural perspectives, these sum of two units works are an anomaly. Similarly, he did not typically include many figures in single work; again, they are the exception to the mastery The choice of canvas size and the number of figures in the Fisherman were determined by the agency of its intended purpose as part of the narrative round of years in the Scuola Grande di San Marco. We can sole surmise that the size and contented of the Mount Stuart picture point to an exalted destination in a palazzo.