The Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John

(Francesco d'Ubertini Verdi, called Il Bachiacca)

The Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist demonstrates all of the characteristics of Bachiacca’s personal style and artistic practice during his tenure as court artist to Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici. In addition, it is the best preserved of Bachiacca’s late devotional panels. Bachiacca’s painting combines the finest qualities gleaned from the artist’s close personal study of his revered former master, Andrea del Sarto, his younger colleagues Bronzino and Francesco Salviati, Netherlandish prints and the illustration of botanical specimens.

Evidence of Francesco Bachiacca’s distinctive late style reveals itself in every aspect of the painting. Its emphasis on the display of brightly lit, large figures in the foreground while reducing any background landscape, plants and animals to a secondary role, is an important characteristic of Bachiacca’s work of the second half of the 1540s and early 1550s. The prime example of Bachiacca’s adoption of this typically mannerist style is the late altarpiece (c. 1550-55) of The Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand in Santa Firenze in Florence (fig. 1). A similar, strong white lighting from the left appears in Bachiacca’s paintings from the 1540s as well. For example, The Virgin and Child with Saints Elizabeth and John the Baptist in Pittsburgh (c. 1540), has similar lighting and even more saturated colours, with an equivalent rustic scene of shepherds in the background. The same style and configuration can be seen in Bachiacca’s Portrait of a Woman with a Music Book in Los Angeles (c. 1540-2) (fig. 2). In fact, the face of the Christ Child in this painting has similar rosy cheeks, large, soulful eyes, plump lips and round, dimpled chin as the woman in the portrait. Two of the background shepherds, the striding figure with the wide-brimmed hat and the bearded man holding a sheep under his arm, also appear in Bachiacca’s Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist in Dresden (fig. 3).

Bachiacca’s hand is visible in the painting’s every detail and its idiosyncrasies of style. The Virgin’s jewelled shoulder ornament, tiny prayer book, Saint John’s staff, spotted fur toga, and, most of all, the landscape with shepherds and flock are textbook demonstrations of Bachiacca’s skill at rendering minute surface details. In addition, the background houses, hills, water, and distant mountains are staples of Bachiacca’s repertoire. For example, similar scenes appear as early as 1515-18 in the background of the Borgherini panel depicting the Finding of the Silver Cup in Rome, or as late as the 1540s in the Gathering of Manna in Washington. The stalk of violet and white acanthus flowers on the far left of the painting and the red and white roses at the Christ child’s feet are finely illustrated botanical specimens that recall Bachiacca’s pioneering work in the duke’s private study (c. 1542). These same roses appear again in Bachiacca’s grotesque tapestries, particularly in the centre of the Two Putti under a Baldachin (1545-9), now displayed in the Italian Embassy in London. Both species of flowers function as dual symbols. The acanthus (Acanthus spinosus) is associated with the Virgin in a fourth-century poem, and its stalk was believed to resemble the spear that pierced Christ’s side. The white and red roses are attributes of the Virgin as well as Christ’s Incarnation and Passion. One telltale idiosyncrasy of Bachiacca’s style concerns the Virgin’s drapery. Bachiacca often employs tight, angular folds and flourishes in his painted garments—a characteristic he adopted from the crazed drapery folds seen in prints by Dürer. The row of tiny s-shaped folds along the seam of the Virgin’s blouse just below her jewelled shoulder band is one of Bachiacca’s many stylistic hallmarks.

Like the Helen of Troy painted by Zeuxis, Bachiacca’s Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist cleverly fuses elements from multiple sources and styles. The primary models for Bachiacca’s composition are the so-called Bracci Holy Family by Andrea del Sarto (fig. 4 and the Panciatichi Holy Family by Bronzino (fig. 5). Bachiacca’s figures were inspired by the poses of Andrea’s kneeling Virgin and reclining Christ Child leaning on a sack. He has also appropriated some of Andrea’s details, such as the errant strand of the Virgin’s hair that hangs across her shoulder, and the tilt of the Christ Child’s head as he stares longingly at the Virgin with his mouth slightly ajar and his dimpled chin jutting forward. Bachiacca then blends these Sartesque ingredients with Bronzino’s Virgin and Child. He adopted the noble head of Bronzino’s long-necked, wavy-haired Virgin, imitating her fine eyebrows, heavy eyelids and barely parted lips. He also made use of the more horizontal position and crossed legs of Bronzino’s Christ Child. Bachiacca set his figures before a rocky backdrop, much as Bronzino had done, and he modelled the entire scene in a strong, Bronzinesque white light.

Bachiacca’s figure of Saint John the Baptist and the distant background scene on the right are inspired by different sources. Saint John’s soft features, particularly his thin eyebrows, wide-set eyes, small nose and delicate mouth recall the similar physiognomies of the children in Francesco Salviati’s Charity in Florence or Salviati’s many portraits. Bachiacca’s treatment of Saint John and Christ’s curly locks of golden hair also recalls the children’s hair in Salviati’s Charity. Bachiacca acquired the background figure of the shepherd toting a bag at his side from his life-long study of engravings by the Netherlandish artist Lucas van Leyden. In this case, Bachiacca borrowed one of Lucas’s Beggars and added some companions along with a flock of sheep and goats, transforming the figure’s profession to that of shepherd (fig. 6). The receding, verdant landscape with distant lakes and mountains on the horizon is designed to resemble the contemporary German and Netherlandish landscape paintings that were immensely popular with Italian audiences.

The painting possesses a solid provenance, as indicated on the back of the intact panel by a greenish paper label on the bottom left, inscribed in faded ink, ‘Sig. Luca del Turco,’ and a white label on the upper left inscribed ‘Johansson 19.6.29 Finland.’ The first of these verifies its former ownership by the Florentine Del Turco family, descendants of the illustrious Rosselli del Turco clan. In 1750, the latter purchased the Borgherini family palace on Borgo Santi Apostoli in Florence along with its entire contents—the same Borgherini palace that had once housed the famous nuptial chamber decorated by Bachiacca, Pontormo, Granacci and Andrea del Sarto.

The painting’s importance is confirmed by the existence of at least three other lower quality paintings by Bachiacca’s pupils and followers that reproduce entire figures from it with only slight variations. A Virgin Lactans with Saint John the Baptist offered for sale at Lempertz, in Cologne in 1929 shows the Virgin in a nearly identical pose, although in this example she proffers her breast to the Christ Child. Bachiacca’s Virgin appears again, in a weakly painted Adoration in The Hermitage, and reversed in The Annunciation on the upper half of an altarpiece depicting Saints Sebastian, Nicholas and Roch in Colle Val d’Elsa.

In conclusion, Bachiacca’s Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist proves that the artist was still producing large, top-quality devotional panels at a very late point in his career. It also displays Bachiacca’s personal and artistic bonds. He was a flexible painter and, in this example, synthesized the best qualities of the popular styles and successful products of his colleagues and peers into a beautiful whole. As Vasari informs us, Bachiacca was Andrea del Sarto’s friend and worked with him from about 1515 until Sarto’s death in 1528. He had particularly strong stylistic and friendship ties with Bronzino, especially during their years together at the Medici court in the 1540s and 1550s. Their close relationship was recorded in paint when Bronzino included Bachiacca’s portrait in the Zanchini altarpiece of 1552. Bachiacca and Salviati were also at the Medici court together between 1543-1548, and laboured to complete the decoration of the same room in the ducal palace, the Sala dell’Udienza. Salviati painted a fresco cycle with stories of the Roman general Furius Cammillus (1543-45) while Bachiacca designed the grotesque spalliere tapestries to hang below them (1545-49). Bachiacca’s Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist was probably painted in the wake of this collaboration.

Giovanni Antonio Roselli del Turco before 1754?
Signor Luca del Turco, Florence.
By descent to private collection, Pisa.
Johanssen, Finland (by 1929)?
London, Christie’s, 13 December, 2000, lot 81.