BARTOLOMEO SCHEDONI

(Formigine, 1578 - Parma, 1615) Holy Family Oil on canvas, 111.7X89.8 cm Provenance: Florence, Salocchi Collection (1958) New York, Sotheby's, January 29, 2015, lot 79 (as Bartolomeo Schedoni) Florence, Pandolfini, November 13, 2018, lot 24 (as Bartolomeo Schedoni) Munich, Hampel, December 5, 2019, lot 335 (as Bartolomeo Schedoni) Bibliography: N. Roio, Bartolomeo Schedoni and Leonello Spada: some unknown works by two Po Valley 'caravaggisti', in Tactile Values, 1, 2013, pp. 52-53, fig. 5 Made known by Nicosetta Roio in 2013, we are aware of a similar version of the painting kept at the Louvre Museum (inv. no. 661) of slightly smaller size and featuring a trompe l'oeil label in the upper left corner (oil on canvas, 106.5X89.2 cm, cf. N. Roio, E. Negro 2002, p. 85, no. 30.1). The Louvre canvas, which can be dated between 1610 and 1612, shows similarities in style with the 1609 Penitent Magdalene preserved at the Landesmuseum in Oldenburg and the 1611 Charity to the Blind belonging to the Capodimonte Museum in Naples, works that find clear affinities in pictorial conduct with the canvas presented here and offer a useful chronological parameter. The painter composes this version with intense naturalism, and the figures emerge from the shadows with a light that falls from above to the left of Caravaggesque evocation, light that shapes the draperies giving rise to a virtuosic chromatic direction also corroborated by the beautiful conservation. In these years Schedoni was active for the duke of Parma Ranuccio Farnese, who obliged him not to accept further commissions from other patrons without his approval, so much so that he demanded that an altarpiece already paid to the artist by the Modena nobleman Magnanino Magnanini be given to the court (Naples, Museo nazionale di Capodimonte). Reference bibliography: N. Roio, E. Negro, Bartolomeo Schedoni painter and sculptor 1578-1615, Modena 2002, ad vocem