(Sansepolcro 1536–1603 Florence)
Portrait of a man with his young son from the Passerini family,
oil on panel, 115 x 82.5 cm, framed

branded on the reverse with the coat-of-arms of the Passerini family and inscribed C.o A.o P.i / D.o P.i

Provenance:
European private collection

We are grateful to Carlo Falciani for confirming the attribution. We are also grateful to Nadia Bastogi for independently confirming the attribution and for cataloguing the present lot.

This painting is a double family portrait, depicting a man with his young son. On grounds of its style and the high quality of its execution, it can be attributed to Santi di Tito. The painting is especially interesting also with regard to its iconography and because the patron can be identified with the Passerini family, as indicated by the mark with the coat of arms on the back of the panel.

The man and boy are depicted standing in three-quarter length with an close-up that stresses their imposing and lively physical presence. The man is captured from the front, his eyes turned towards the viewer, clutching a letter in one hand and holding his son with the other. The latter is depicted in a three-quarter length, his face turned towards the beholder and his mouth half open, showing the fruit in his hand. The two figures are situated in an indoor space delineated by architectural elements and furniture indicating a sober and dignified Tuscan milieu. Their clothes, too, denote an elevated social status. The man’s red silk shirt, shiny and iridescent, covered with a large, fur-lined coat and adorned with frog buttons on the sleeves, increases his majestic appearance and eloquently states his nobility. The child wears an “ungherina” of shiny, golden satin, which was a long, loose over-garment for small children. It is open in the front and fastened by means of frog buttons, and its back is enriched with two long “tails” of fabric, the purpose of which was to enable nannies to hold the children and keep them under control. This piece of clothing suggests that the child is not older than three or four years of age. Both figures wear a white ruff that frames their faces with its ruches, the latter being not yet as stiff or as large as they would become in 17th century clothing.

This work belongs to the corpus of Santi di Tito’s portraits and according to Bastogi, represents one of the most refined examples. The painter was originally from Sansepolcro but studied in Florence in connection with the School of San Marco, with Agnolo Bronzino and Baccio Bandinelli. He lived in Rome as a young man, where he was in close contact with the studio of Taddeo Zuccari and his younger brother Federico, and also Federico Barocci: both of whom he worked with in the Vatican. He returned to Florence in 1564 and from the end of the 1560s onwards was able to give a decisive anti-Mannerist impulse to Florentine painting, by recovering a representational normality and an adherence to natural reality in keeping with the new values heralded by the Counter-Reformation, namely of decorum, verisimilitude and the communication of emotions. Santi di Tito is especially famous for his religious paintings, as the initiator and leader of the ‘reform’ of Florentine sacred painting; nevertheless, the sources and documents available show that portrait painting was also central to his activity. In his biography of the artist, Baldinucci tells us that he had “gran genio a’ ritratti [a considerable skill for portraits]” (see Baldinucci, III, p. 37) and that he had made it one of the main activities of his studio, often involving his pupils for secondary parts, whilst keeping for himself the execution of the heads and hands. In this activity, too, he was able to express this modern religious ethic and enlarge the number of his clients, including, besides dignified court portraits, a gallery of characters from numerous aristocratic and middle-class Tuscan families. By interpreting in a new spirit of realistic unaffectedness the illustrious Florentine models offered by Bronzino, who had depicted the Grand Duchess Eleonora with her children, Santi breathed new life into a renewed type of family portrait that devotes great attention also to the children. Leaving behind all the cold formality and Mannerist idealisation that were still present in Alessandro Allori’s contemporary portrait paintings, the characters acquire more realistic physiognomic traits and a spontaneity of gestures and expressions that, as in this case, make the affectionate family relationship manifest and create an intimate dialogue with the viewer. Among the extant examples of this genre, useful comparisons can be made with the painting formerly at the Koelliker collection, depicting a Lady with her little Daughter, which can be dated to around the mid-1570s, the Gonfaloniere of the Minerbetti family with his Son, the Portrait of the Family of a Knight of Saint Stephen, both in the art market, or with the two portraits of the Frescobaldi couple with their children, executed towards the end of the century with the cooperation of his son Tiberio, who continued his father’s activity. In the Koelliker portrait we find a similar distribution of the figures, with the same attention devoted to the positions of their hands, the varying inclination of the heads and the children’s look slightly to the side. Overall, these elements bring the effect of an instant photograph to the painting, whilst keeping the great accuracy in the depiction of the clothes, jewels and accessories that always characterises the portraits by this artist.

Also typical of Santi is the compositional structure of this work, its frontal figures represented in three-quarter length and a few elements characterising the background: to the left, a sandstone pilaster on an elevated, moulded plinth, next to it a table shown from the corner, thus creating the illusion of “piercing” the space, covered with a pink cloth on which the figure is leaning; in the upper right corner the knotted drapery of a curtain of the same colour, with a gold border, stands out against the neutral hue of the wall. This scheme, repeated in many portraits, interprets in a more friendly spirit the models of the official portrait paintings of the court. Illustrious examples of the latter are the “court series” at the Uffizi, with members of the Medici family (in particular, the two portraits of Ferdinand I and Christina of Lorraine, executed by Scipione Pulzone in 1590). We find this same scheme again, for example, in Tito’s portrait of Caterina de’ Pazzi, of 1583, in that of a Young Lady from a private collection and, from the 1690s onwards, in portraits executed in cooperation with his son Tiberio, such as those depicting the children of the Grand Duke Ferdinand I or that of the Pregnant Florentine Lady with her son, at the Uffizi.

Baldinucci also mentions that Tito “possessed an extraordinary confidence in drawing” and made portraits “from real life, with great ease and verisimilitude” (see Baldinucci, II, p. 540). We can see this in the characterisation of the heads in the painting discussed here, which were certainly sketched or drawn before a model, in which the confidently balanced drawing fixes the traits in volumes of luminous harmony, conferring a noble demeanour to the figures portrayed without detracting from their natural, individual existence in time, their physiognomic uniqueness. The adult’s good-hearted calm and serene self-confidence not shorn of responsibility, underlined by the light which stresses his large, balding, slightly wrinkled forehead, his slightly different blue eyes, with a penetrating look emphasised by the eyebrows, his sprightly complexion and the small, fleshy mouth framed with a tawny beard and moustache - all this contrasts with the intense and more irregular face of the child, with its white skin and colour similar to those of his father, his large forehead covered by thin hair composed in a central tuft, the light, almost vanishing eyebrows and the prominent ears. The child is caught with an expression of smiling vivaciousness and shows the natural looks that Santi di Tito had rehearsed in many drawings, with studies of children’s heads, now preserved at the Uffizi: live portraits of his own children and studio apprentices from various angles, showing a similar care in the representation of light and an affectionate depiction of childhood in the context of everyday life. These same elements characterise the various children’s portraits, inter alia those of the little Lucrezia Gaddi and of her brother Sinibaldo, executed at the end of the 1570s. On the basis of its skilful characterisation of the man’s physiognomy, this painting can be compared, besides the portraits, with the realistic depiction of the commissioners’ faces inserted in several altar pieces such as the Lamentation over the dead Christ at the Academy in Florence, where the Spanish donor Ernando Sastri appears, or the painting with the Holy Family, Angels and Saints, traded in the art market.

Typical of Tito, his trademark as it were, are the figures’ hands: those of the child are fleshy and simplified, realistically chubby and almost sketched, profoundly different from the more rigid and elongated stylisations that characterise Allori or the epigonic painters of Mannerism in the tradition of Michelangelo.

Santi di Tito’s authorship appears clearly in the pictorial execution and the special attention devoted to natural light. The light comes from the left and creates vibrant variations of colour on the fabrics, for example on the man’s sleeves, producing glittering effects that emphasise the preciousness and luminosity of the materials; it underlines the starched white of the collars, glides on the faces, defining their traits and volumes, the intensity of their pupils, and permeates the scene to the extent that the left half of the character’s head contrasts against the dark background, whilst the other half is surrounded by a clearer half-light. This technical strategy, which has the effect of highlighting the head by imparting a special aura to it and thus convey a great depth to the painting, is used by Tito in all his portraits. The execution alternates more tranquil and glazed parts, with subtle colour variations and milder half-light, such as the right half of the child’s face, still reminiscent of Bronzino’s painting of ‘values’, and a rougher brushstroke consisting of softer and warmer colours with natural tones, ‘abbreviated’ in some areas such as the hair and ears, sketched on the dark ground with a technique influenced by Venetian painting and capable of suggesting with just a few touches of light the effect of the shiny fur or the preciousness of the buttons. From this point of view, compared to other portraits by Tito that can be dated between the eighth and ninth decades, such as the Koelliker portrait, or the portraits of Caterina de’ Pazzi and the Gaddi children, the execution of this painting appears much freer and softer, in keeping with the execution of the artist’s paintings from the mid-1580s onwards, when he became receptive to the novelties introduced in the Florentine milieu by such young pupils as Cigoli, Pagani and Boscoli. Therefore, the work can be dated between the mid-1580s and the early 1590s, in a period marked by numerous masterpieces with more articulate composition and pictorial richness such as the Crucifixion in Santa Croce, 1588, the Resurrection of Lazarus in the cathedral of Volterra and the The Miracle of the five loaves and two fish in San Gervasio e Protasio in Florence, 1592, the Vision of St Thomas in San Marco, of the following year.

The high quality of execution of the work under discussion suggests the master’s personal intervention, whilst many other known cases were marked by a considerable contribution of his studio.

Among Tito’s known portraits, the one considered here is one of the few extant examples of a male portrait with a child; therefore, it is extremely interesting also in iconographic terms. The clothes suggest that the portrayed belong to one of the noble families linked to the Medicean court, and the letter the man holds in his hand presents him as the recipient of an official assignment, in keeping with a widespread model in 16th-century portrait painting. More original is the presence of the apple held by the child. Whilst girls are usually portrayed with flowers, boys are at times accompanied by a little bird or a small object, at other times by a sweet or a fruit. This iconography certainly refers to everyday life and to elements that are characteristic of childhood, such as games and food, but it is probably just as well an echo of the sacred iconography of the infant Jesus, where the apple and the goldfinch acquire specific symbolic meanings. In this case the fruit, which is only half-ripe, can be also interpreted as the symbol of a maturity yet to be achieved, and as an omen of future abundance, according to a meaning that is usually associated with the depiction of fruit. In this case, too, Tito employs a symbol whilst contextualising it in the tenderness of everyday life.

With regard to the identification of the persons portrayed and the specific collection to which this work belongs, the mark on the verso of the board is especially useful in view of the fact that the painting’s original provenance is unknown. It is an ancient fire-branded mark indicating the collection to which the work belonged. The mark is composed of the coat of arms of the family, within which letters appear, in the upper and lower sections, as abbreviations indicating what are presumably the names of the owners: C.o A.o P.i / D.o P.i. The coat of arms can be identified as belonging to the Florentine branch of the Passerini family, whose emblem is “d’azzurro, allo scaglione d’argento caricato di tre rose di rosso bottonate del proprio campo [blue, with a silver shield surmounted by three red roses from their own field]”, according to the heraldic definitions contained in the Ceramelli Papiani collection in the State Archive in Florence. The abbreviations in the inscription are more difficult to interpret. The Passerini family was originally from Cortona and soon also settled in Florence, where it branched out and boasted numerous illustrious members in the religious, political and literary fields. One of its members, Luigi Passerini, is well-known as an eminent scholar of heraldry and of the history of Florentine families, including a history of the Passerini family itself, published in 1874. On the basis of this publication and of other documentary sources preserved at the State Archive in Florence and at the Archivio dell’Opera del Duomo, hypotheses regarding the identification of the portrayed figures can be suggested.

From the line of Domenico di Lorenzo, who was podestà of Dicomano (d.1598), to which Luigi himself maintained to belong, stems his son Lorenzo, born in 1591 (baptised on 28 January 1591, according to the baptism registers of Florence AODF), a man of erudition who owned a famous collection of paintings mentioned also by Bocchi Cinelli in his guide to the highlights of the city of Florence (1677), a friend of such artists as Lorenzo Lippi and Salvator Rosa. He had two sons, Captain Alessandro (1627-1681), commander of the Medicean army and man of letters, and Domenico (1631-1717), an abbot and satirical writer. Therefore, the inscription in question could be a 17th century mark of precisely this collection, to be interpreted thus: C(aptain) A(lessandr)o P(asserin)i / D(omenic)o P(asserin)i as the collection’s owners. With regard to the two persons portrayed, one could be the grandfather Domenico, whose office of podestà might be alluded to in the letter he holds in his hand and in the official pomp of his clothing, the other his son Lorenzo, father of the two owners. If this is the case, the child’s date of birth and his young age in the painting suggest a date of between 1592 and 1594.