A Baptismal Ceremony

Amico Aspertini's Baptismal Ceremony at the Vanderbilt Museum of Art, painted around 1525, is the work of one of the most eccentric and inventive painters of the Bolognese early Cinquecento — an artist Vasari described as drawing with both hands simultaneously and whose frescoes in Bologna combine a remarkable range of archaeological learning with an almost willfully bizarre personal style. Aspertini worked primarily in Bologna and Lucca, producing altarpieces and narrative cycles that absorbed influences from Perugino, Costa, and the antiquarian culture of the humanist courts while developing a personal manner of considerable originality. The baptismal ceremony subject — whether depicting the Baptism of Christ or a scene from hagiographic narrative — was appropriate for baptisteries and confraternities with sacramental commitments. The Vanderbilt Museum of Art, associated with the Vanderbilt estate at Centerport, Long Island, holds a diverse collection of art objects, and Aspertini's panel represents an important document of the less well-known Bolognese school of the early sixteenth century outside its primary Italian institutional setting.

The painting demonstrates the technical conventions and artistic vocabulary of the period, with attention to composition, color, and the rendering of form appropriate to the subject.