A Bronzino discovery: Pentimenti and vivacious brushwork persuade Janet Cox-Rearick and Philippe Costamagna that they have identified a Madonna and Child painted by Bronzino in Pontormo's studio

A not long ago discovered Madonna and Child with St John the Baptist (Private Collection, Milan; Fig. 1) (1) is here attributed to the young Bronzino. (2) The composition has drawn out been known from two other versions identical in dimensions to the Milan painting. the couple were traditionally attributed to Bronzino's master, Pontormo, as was the novel panel, which bears an advanced in years inscription 'del Puntormo' on its turn end for end One of the other versions, of high quality and great interest in spite of its poor state of preservation, is in the National Gallery (Fig. 2) Recorded as Andrea del Sarto in 1693 in the Borghese Collection, Rome it come intoed the National Gallery in 1966 with an attribution to Pontormo, was catalogued as 'ascribed to Pontormo' in 1973 and is today classed by the agency of the museum as by a follower or imitator of Pontormo. (3) The next to the first other version, of inferior quality and in problematic condition, is in the Art Institute of Chicago, where it is still ascribed to Pontormo (Fig. 3) (4) However, it is unquestionably through a later sixteenth-century artist, who presumably painted it after Bronzino's cartoon. (5)

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It is not surprising that these three versions of the Madonna and Child with St John the Baptist, among other Bronzino paintings of the late 1520 have been attributed to Pontormo. Indeed, according to Vasari, the young Pontormo assimilated his master's mode of speech so completely that it was impossible to distinguish between the sum of two units hands. (6) The strongly Pontormesque character of the composition of the London and Chicago versions has been noted. Kurt W Forster observ that they were analogous in mode of speech to Madonna paintings by Pontormo from the late 1520 (7) particularly the Capponi Madonna (Palazzo Capponi, Florence, Fig. 4) of c 1525-26 (8) to which the head of the Virgin closely corresponds, and the later, more compounded and convoluted Madonna and Child with St John the Baptist (Uffizi, Florence, Fig. 5) of c 1528-29 (9) whose figural torsions it echoe Moreover, the inclined head and the position of the Madonna's right arm repeat the position of the women at the summit of Pontormo's Lamentation in the Capponi Chapel ( Felicita, Florence). (10) The composition also features, in the head of St John a revers quotation from the Madonna of Porta Pinti, the renowned fresco (destroy in the siege of Florence in 1530) through Pontormo's own master, Andrea del Sarto (see Jacopo da Empoli after Andrea del Sarto, Madonna and Child with St John the Baptist; Florence, San Salvi, Fig. 6) (11) This quotation could explain the aged attribution to Andrea of the London version.

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In spite of these analogies, scholars have abandoned the untenable attribution of one as well as the other the London and the Chicago versions to Pontormo himself because their execution does not display his fluid draftsmanship and sparkling brushwork. A definitive attribution of the London version is difficult because of its poor condition, on the contrary two suggestions have been place forward. The first ascribed the work to single of the late-sixteenth-century artists of the Studiolo assemblage who were attracted to Pontormo's early Mannerism and produc paintings powerfully evoking his style of the 1520 Forster, for example, proposeed Maso da San Friano as the author of one as well as the other versions; however, when these Madonnas are compared with works indisputably by the agency of Maso's hand, it is difficult to support this attribution. (12) A next to the first more tenable alternative for the London version was to retain a shut up chronological connection with Pontormo and to place the picture's origins in his be in possession of workshop in the late 1520 Among the artists of Pontormo's circle in those years single his pupil and chief assistant, Bronzino, looks plausible as the author of the London version of the Madonna. Hence, Cecil Gould Valentino Pace, and, greatest in quantity recently, Philippe Costamagna, have adviseed an attribution to Bronzino. (13)

The attribution of the London version to Bronzino has not been generally accepted and it is not discussed in novel studies on the artist, with the exception of Maurice bawson who believes it is certainly Pontormo's invention and possibly execut by dint of Bronzino. (14) The lack of discussion of the Bronzino attribution is largely because of its state of conservation, on the other hand also, we believe, because of an incomplete understanding of Bronzino's character in Pontormo's studio in the late 1520 In our opinion, in spite of its poor condition, its quality intimates that it may indeed have been painted through Bronzino. If so, it would be an autograph replica of Bronzino's original Madonna and Child with St John the Baptist, to which we now turn

The Milan Madonna and Child with St John the Baptist, like the London version, appears to be unfinished. Unlike Bronzino's finished works of this period, of the like kind as the Holy Family in the National Gallery of Art, Washington (Fig. 8) the brushwork has a painterly quality, notably in the figure of the Virgin and the head of the St John In contrast to the London version, however, the panel has experienceed no disfiguring old restorations and is in finished condition, a state that hangs in part on the fact that it was preserv for several generations in the Tuscan villa of the family who freshly sold it.