Follower of Giovan Pietro Rizzoli, Madonna and Child

Follower of Giovan Pietro Rizzoli, called the "Giampietrino" (news from 1508 to 1549)
Madonna and Child with San Giovannino
Oil on panel, 74 x 50 cm - with frame 84 x 67 cm

The table, the work of an artist active in the middle of 16th century in the Lombard area, it can be traced back to the model of the well-known Leonardo painter Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli called Giampietrino, active between 1508 and 1549 in Milan, pupil of Leonardo Da Vinci and exponent of the Lombard school. Scholars agree in attributing to Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli the corpus of works long since collected under the generic name of Giampietrino thanks to a documented profile from 1508 to 1549, a period during which the beginning of its production in the preparation of some is attested "tapestry cartoons for the Milan Cathedral" now lost; this made it possible to definitively exclude the attribution of Giampietrino's works to Giovanni Belmonte or Giovanni Pedrini, to whom they had alternatively previously been assigned. Influenced by the painting of Leonardo da Vinci present in Milan during the last two decades of the fifteenth century and returned between 1507 and 1513, it gently reverberates the nuanced atmosphere by combining ideas referable to the first-rate Mantuan style. If a "Gioanpietro" is in fact remembered by Leonardo himself in a sheet of the Atlantic Codex, together with other students, and traced back to the last decade of the century, it is certain that Rizzoli still enjoyed the teachings of the Tuscan master. In recent decades, Giovanni's horizon will become increasingly close to emerging mannerist instances and in mythological subjects with a languid and sensual trait. The chronological seriation of Giampietrino's 'easel' production appears to be arduous, without dates and signatures, and characterized by a limited lexicon whose combination the artist constantly changes over a wide period of time. Behind a voluminous corpus there are two new phenomena: the artist's specialization in paintings for private use, on which he built his fortunate career - as a sacred and profane subject and the use of a shop to increase production, thus satisfying the growing market demand. Much of these works, signed by an unmistakable Leonardo character, following the routes of international collecting seduced by Leonardo and the Leonardesques especially in the nineteenth century, have joined Lombardy in public and private collections throughout Europe and the United States. The work in question recalls the original model reproduced in the Zeri photo library and now in an unknown location or the one in a private American collection, of similar size. The painting in question shows clear Vincentian suggestions, perhaps derived from Giampietrino's direct knowledge of Leonardo's drawings, especially in relation to the position and gestures of the hands that recognize the adherence to Leonardo's Milanese works. Looking at the work, we can identify different ideas taken from Leonardo's graphics, appreciable in some details such as the golden curls of San Giovannino, highlighted with thin brush strokes, as well as in the shaded areas of the body of little Jesus. The unmistakable style of Giampietrino it can also be seen from the elegant sweetness of the female figures with a clear Vincentian matrix, from the coherent pyramidal shape and from the palette dominated by the bold hues of Mary's clothes. Similar analogies can be found in the table preserved in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (John G. Johnson Collection), in the table preserved in the Amedeo Lia museum - La Spezia - or in the table struck by Christie's, all of the same subject. Much more could be said about the John the Baptist in question, whose thin modeling makes possible very delicate passages of shadows and lights. Leonardo called the eyes "the window of the soul" and if we have to think of the Master, as a work of its derivation, certainly here they reach that depth: the eyes, thoughtful and full of pathos, are turned towards a hypothetical observer placed outside outside the canvas space. The enigmatic expression induces immediate evocation of the Leonardeschi. The mouth is rendered through imperceptible nuances, using the same colors of the brightest tones of the complexion, this expedient, adopted by Leonardo and his environment.