During the commemorations of the 500^th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci's passing, the auction house Aguttes is offering at auction a major work by the Italian genius's foremost pupil, Bernardino LUINI (c. 1480-1532). This oil on panel of the Madonna and Child with St George and an angel will be presented at Drouot on 14 November.

The painting is not unknown to the art market. It was bought in London two years ago by its current owner, a collector living in Germany. Before he acquired it, the panel was part of Sir Francis Cook's collection, one of the most important assembled in England during the 19^th century.

What the public don't know however is the extent of the discoveries made since this acquisition. These reveal that the painting was a major piece by the artist, whose works were eagerly sought after by Lombard dignitaries in the late 15^th and early 16^th century.
 

BERNARDINO LUINI (~1481 - 1532)
Madonna and Child with St George and an angel
Oil on panel
103.5 x 79.5 cm (40 7/8 x 31 ¼ in.)
Estimate: €1,800,000-2,000,000

 

WHEN SALVATOR MUNDI WAS ATTRIBUTED TO LUINI

The first known provenance of the Madonna and Child with St George and an angel is the collection of Sir Francis Cook (1817-1901), 1^st Baronet, Visconde de Monserrate, one of the most important English collectors of the late 19^th and early 20^th century. Cook was the head of one of Britain's main trading firms, and as a keen art lover began to collect paintings in the 1840s. However, he acquired the core of his collection – the Italian schools – between 1860 and 1890, and started taking advice from Sir Charles Robinson (1824 -1913) in 1869. Robinson was the curator of Queen Victoria's painting galleries, and the former director of the painting department at the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria & Albert Museum).

This was the context in which the Madonna and Child with St George and an angel arrived at Doughty House in Richmond, and was hung alongside paintings by Fra Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Sandro Botticelli and Andrea del Sarto, and the Salvator Mundi attributed to Bernardino Luini when acquired by Sir Charles Robinson; an attribution that has recently been mentioned again.

In 1913, Herbert Cook (3^rd baronet, grandson of Francis, art historian and patron of the  London National Portrait Gallery) published a limited edition catalogue of the collection with Tancred Borenius. They devoted a double page to Luini's painting, illustrating it with a large reproduction and a long descriptive commentary. The catalogue tells us that Luini's Madonna and Child was hung in the Long Gallery, where the collection's masterpieces could be seen.

THE MOST FAMOUS MILANESE PAINTER OF HIS TIME

In the 16^th century, Luini was the most famous Milanese painter of his time. Born circa 1480 in Dumenza, he arrived in Milan in 1500 as an apprentice. He left the city in 1504, returning three years later to paint the high altar piece of the Madonna and Child with St Augustine and St Margaret, now kept at the Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris.

At the beginning of his career, Luini was well-known in Lombardy as an excellent fresco painter, and was commissioned to paint monumental works in Milan, Saronno (a public commission from the city for the Santuario della Beata Vergine dei Miracoli), Lugano (Santa Maria degli Angioli) and many other venues in the region.

When Leonardo da Vinci was working in Milan from 1482 to 1499, and above all from 1504 until he left for France, Luini and his contemporary Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio (1467-1516) were his most talented pupils and assistants. The master's influence on Luini's work is often obvious, particularly in his use of sfumato and the composition of his easel paintings, like the Madonna and Child with St John the Baptist (c. 1510; National Gallery of London). Drawing on his apprenticeship with Leonardo and working as a fresco painter, Luini developed his own style, which found its most accomplished expression in his easel paintings. In works like The Infant Jesus Sleeping (Louvre Museum), we find Leonardo-like features characterising a Virgin full of dignity and maternal tenderness. On the other hand, the glowing shades are typical of the colourist's frescoes.

Luini was highly popular, as can be seen from the number of commissions he received. His masterpieces were produced at the behest of prominent Italian families of the time, like the Calvi of Menaggio, who certainly commissioned the Madonna and Child with an angel, also known as the Menaggio Madonna. This panel was probably painted around 1520-1530 for the Sant’Andrea altar in the Church of Menaggio, near Como. The work joined the Louvre collections in 1914, when the Marquise Arconati-Visconti donated it to the museum. Luini's prestige is also illustrated by the provenance of his Infant Jesus Sleeping, now in the Grande Galerie at the Louvre. This painting was offered as a diplomatic gift to Louis XIV in 1664 by Pope Alexander VII via his legate, Cardinal Fabio Chigi.

THE REBIRTH OF A MASTERPIECE

The Madonna and Child with St George and an angel we are presenting today has undergone various stages of restoration over the years, as is common with paintings half a millennium old.

The restoration undertaken by Signor Cavenaghi in Milan in 1898 is mentioned in the Cook catalogue. Further work was certainly carried out in the 20^th century, and very recent restoration dates from around a decade ago, when clumsy overpainting rigidified the faces, and a coat of yellow varnish altered the original colours.

When the painting was discovered, it hardly produced the thrilling effect one would expect with such an important work of the Renaissance. The latest operation involved entirely removing the most recent overpainting, lightening the varnish and partially cleaning the second layer of restoration. Retouching consisted of filling in missing areas resulting from occasional wear and tear without going over the edges, leaving the original layer of paint as visible as possible, while taking care not to overinterpret the artist's work. A binder was used, allowing the restoration to be reversed. This cleaning process revealed all the beauty of the painting: the modelling typical of Luini can be seen in the flesh tints, while the lively colours of the clothing, like the pink, blue and orange of the Virgin's mantle, have regained their brilliance. The most important discovery beneath the layers of restoration is the face of Jesus, where the transparent texture of his skin, life-like flesh and tender gaze have now been brought to light.

A MATURE WORK: THE INFLUENCES AND FREE APPROACH OF A KEY RENAISSANCE ARTIST

The Madonna and Child with St George and an angel is a subject found in Jacques de Voragine's The Golden Legend. This book written in Latin between 1261 and 1266 recounts the lives of some 150 saints or groups of saints. Here, Luini shows the scene in a complex and original way. The tightly-framed composition, which includes four figures and two animals, focuses the viewer's eye on the central, highly symbolic exchange between St George and the Child. The dynamic energy of the painting lies in the narrative aspect of the scene. In this it is highly original, because the "usual" image of St George shows him in action killing the dragon, as with the St George and the Dragon by Sodoma (1477-1549), which also belonged to Sir Francis Cook (National Gallery of Art, Washington). In the painting here, the dragon has already been defeated: in the background, we see its headless body lying on the ground by the white horse. In the foreground, the interlaced hands illustrate four actions: St George gives the monster's head to Jesus; Jesus points to it as a sign of acceptance; in exchange he gives the divine palm of victory to the saint, who receives it. The scene symbolises the resolution of the combat between the Saint and the dragon, and the triumph of Good over Evil fundamental to the Christian faith.

The plants, depicted with virtually scientific accuracy, have a wealth of interpretations. Often typical of vegetation in Northern Italy and Lombardy, they also symbolise different episodes in the life of Christ and various qualities of the Virgin. The same plants appear in The Madonna and Child with an angel, aka the Menaggio Madonna.
This painting, which can be dated to the latter part of Luini's career, can be seen as a synthesis of the styles he absorbed and made his own. Leonardo's influence is perceptible in the imaginary city in a mountainous landscape beneath a blue sky, the Virgin's kindly expression, her auburn hair with its elegant curls (inevitably evoking the master's female figures), the subtle play of light and shade known as sfumato – Leonardo's speciality –, the light, luminous texture of the flesh tones and the true-to-life transparency of the skin. On the other hand, the palette of fresh and lively colours is drawn from Luini's practice as a fresco painter, as is the more emphatically sentimental character of the figures, which certainly contributed to the artist's considerable popularity in his time.
Luini had such a glowing reputation that three copies of the painting were made. One, from the 16^th century, is now in the parish church of Masnago, near Varese. Another, in private hands, was sold in Monaco in 1988, and the third is now in the Bucharest National Museum of Art. While the composition is reproduced exactly, there is a considerable difference in the quality of painting between these copies and Luini's remarkable work, presented here.

WHY WAS BERNARDINO LUINI FORGOTTEN IF HE WAS SUCH A KEY ARTIST?

Although it is true that little is known about his life and career, the fact that he was forgotten was due to a mistake made by Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574), the biographer of the great artists, who called him "di Lupino" in his book Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, 1550. The author describes him as "a very delicate and pleasing painter" who "executed most perfectly in fresco. He also worked with a very high finish in oils, and he was a courteous person, and very liberal with his possessions; wherefore he deserves all the praise that is due to any craftsman who makes the works and ways of his daily life shine by the adornment of courtesy no less than do his works of art." In the 19^th century, when the misunderstanding was cleared up, Vasari's praise earned Luini the nickname of the " Lombardy Raphael".

Subsequently, several of his works were attributed to Leonardo da Vinci before authorship was restored to him through research in art history. This was the case, for example, with Christ among the Doctors, now in the National Gallery, London, which was reattributed to Luini when it was acquired by the museum.

The artist was also the subject of much attention in the 19^th century, when great writers of Romantic Europe, including Stendhal, recommended their readers to go and see Luini's frescoes in Saronno to "say farewell to the beautiful painting of Italy". In the Cook collection catalogue published by Herbert Cook and Tancred Borenius in 1913, the latter wrote, "Luini has a real sense of beauty, and he exercises a genuine fascination in some of his earliest works, through his cheerful, pleasant temperament and poetic imagination."

In 2014, the Palazzo Reale in Milan devoted a major exhibition to him, entitled "Bernardino Luini e i suoi figli". But what really brought Bernardino Luini back into the limelight was the spectacular sale in 2017 of Salvator Mundi, knocked down for €450 million – because the most expensive art work in the world was originally attributed to him.