![The Crucifixion with the Virgin, Saint John, Saint Jerome, and Saint Mary Magdalene [left panel] by Pietro Perugino](https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Redirect/file/Pietro_Perugino_-_The_Crucifixion_with_the_Virgin%2C_Saint_John%2C_Saint_Jerome%2C_and_Saint_Mary_Magdalene_(left_panel)_-_1937.1.27.a_-_National_Gallery_of_Art.jpg&width=1200)
The Crucifixion with the Virgin, Saint John, Saint Jerome, and Saint Mary Magdalene [left panel]
Pietro Perugino·c. 1482/1485
Historical Context
Correggio's Agony in the Garden (c. 1525) at the Wellington Museum depicts Christ's prayer in Gethsemane before his arrest, an angel descending to comfort him with the cup of suffering. Correggio's treatment of nocturnal scenes was innovative: the angel's supernatural light source illuminates the sleeping disciples and the olive grove with an atmospheric tenderness that anticipates both Baroque chiaroscuro and Romantic landscape. The painting's night setting allowed Correggio to explore the luminous effects he had developed in his ceiling frescoes — particularly the famous illusionistic cupola in Parma Cathedral — transferred to the more intimate scale of a devotional panel painting.
Technical Analysis
Perugino's oil on panel transferred to canvas retains the luminous quality of the original technique. The figures are rendered with smooth, idealized modeling and clear, harmonious colors, while the landscape background shows the characteristic Umbrian blue-green atmospheric recession that was Perugino's signature.
Provenance
Probably commissioned by Bartolommeo Bartoli (or di Bartolo), Bishop of Cagli [d. 1497];[1] by gift from him to the church of San Domenico, San Gimignano; seized 1796/1797 by Napoleonic troops; acquired 1796/1797 by Dr. Buzzi, and sold soon thereafter to Prince Alexander Mikhailovich Galitzin [1772-1821], Russian ambassador to Rome; by inheritance to his son, Theodore Alexandrovich Galitzin [d. 1848], Palazzo Galitzin, Rome; by inheritance to his nephew, Sergei Mikhailovich Galitzin [1843-1915], Moscow; displayed from 1865 at the Museum of Western European Painting of Prince S.M. Galitzin, Moscow;[2] purchased 1886 with the Galitzin collection by the Imperial Hermitage Gallery, Saint Petersburg; purchased April 1931 through (Matthiesen Gallery, Berlin; P. & D. Colnaghi & Co., London and New York; and M. Knoedler & Co., New York and London) by Andrew W. Mellon, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C.; deeded 5 June 1931 to The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh;[3] gift 1937 to NGA. [1] The frame on the painting is modern and thus the coats-of-arms decorating it have no bearing on the provenance. [2] A.A. Vasilchikoff, "The Artworks of Raphael in Russsia," _Viestnik iziashnych iskusstv [Fine Arts Herald]_ I, no. 3 (1883): 390-393, provides this history of ownership. He also notes that Buzzi had the French artist Baron François Xavier Fabre treat the picture, and that after Theodore Galitzin's death, the painting languished in a storage closet of his palace until 1862. According to Brüiningk and Somov (E. Brüiningk and Andrei Ivanovich Somov, _Ermitage Impérial. Catalogue de la Galerie des Tableaux. Les Écoles d'Italie et d'Espagne_, Saint Petersburg, 1891: 134), a Livornese painter named Gazzarini offered a somewhat different account of the pre-Galitzin ownership of the picture, which cannot today be substantiated. See also R.P. Gray, "The Golitsyn and Kushelev-Bezborodko Collections and their Role in the Evolution of Public Art Collections in Russia," _Oxford Slavonic Papers_ n.s. 31 (1998): 54-57 [51-67]. [3] Mellon purchase date and date deeded to Mellon Trust are according to Mellon collection files in NGA curatorial records and David Finley's notebook (donated to the National Gallery of Art in 1977, now in the Gallery Archives).
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