Was the de Brécy Tondo Painted by Raphael?
|
| Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio or Santi) (Italian, 1483-1520). Head of a Youth, Possibly a Self-Portrait (ca. 1500-2). Inscribed in ink at the bottom of the sheet: Ritratto di se medessimo quando Giovane ("Portrait of himself when young"). Grey-black chalk heightened with white on faded paper. 38.1 x 26.1 cm (15 x 10.3 in.). © The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. |
|
| de Brécy Tondo (15th-16th Centuries). Oil on canvas. Diam. 95 cm. © The de Brécy Trust. |
|
Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio or Santi) (Italian, 1483-1520). Sistine Madonna (1513-14). Oil on canvas. 265 x 196 cm (104.3 x 77.2 in.). © Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden. |
By STAN PARCHIN
October 1, 2009
Art collector George Lester Winward (1934-1997) purchased a tondo (round painting) of the Madonna and Child at a country house sale in North Wales on December 3, 1981. Part of the estate of the late Violet Hope Fairbairn Wynne-Eyton (1892-1981), the work has a fairly solid provenance or history of ownership. Winward soon discovered that the painting remarkably resembled the Virgin Mary and infant Jesus in Raphael's Sistine Madonna (1513-14) in Dresden, Germany's Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister.
After Winward's death, the de Brécy Trust was established to take charge of his Old Master and modern drawings, etchings, prints and paintings, making the benefactor's collection available for future generations to study. Vigorous research to authenticate the de Brécy Tondo as a work by Raphael (1483-1520) continued for some 24 years despite the Gemäldegalerie's dismissal of the entrepreneur's purchase as a later partial copy of their masterpiece. The recent scientific findings related to the painting and its condition appear in February 2007's issue of Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry (Volume 387, No. 3).
Investigating the de Brécy Tondo
In Murdoch Lothian's doctoral dissertation titled The Methods Employed to Provenance and to Attribute Putative Works by Raphael (Liverpool University, 1992), the former art correspondent for London's Guardian concluded that the de Brécy Tondo predates the Sistine Madonna. But he could not determine the painting's exact authorship.
From January to May 2000, the work underwent conservation and cleaning. Scholars subsequently met on November 1, 2002 at the Society of Antiquaries of London, Burlington House and recommended that further technical studies be conducted. Skeptics at the time noted that the de Brécy Tondo falls within the dimensional range of six round compositions produced by Raphael between 1504 and 1514.
Howell G.M. Edwards and Timothy J. Binoy, secretary and trustee of Winward's foundation, published The de Brécy Madonna and Child Tondo Painting: a Raman Spectroscopic Analysis in June 2006. The 10-page study describes scholars' exhaustive scientific study of the late art collector's acquisition. The work was subjected to numerous tests, including x-radiography and Raman spectroscopic analysis, a laser-based technology. Edwards and Binoy reported the presence of two historically significant pigments in the tondo. Turnsole (Folium) is a glowing dye used by late-medieval manuscript illuminators who valued its vibrant blue color. Traces of massicot, a lead-based yellow pigment last detected in Young Woman Seated at a Virginal (ca. 1670-72) by Dutch Baroque artist Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), also appears in the painting. The existence of these two colors in the de Brécy Tondo established crucial chronological parameters for dating the work.
The figures in the de Brécy Tondo and Sistine Madonna are undeniably similar in appearance. But the huge disparity in both compositions' dimensions begs one to question the intention(s) of the artist(s) who painted them. The lofty beatific majesty of the Virgin Mary and Child evident in the Dresden painting glaringly contrasts with the visual immediacy of the smaller work, an image perhaps created for private household devotion. Modern science has yielded previously unknown details about the de Brécy Tondo. Yet the absence of firm documentary evidence regarding its origins continues to confound scholars seeking the identity of the painting's author, be it Raphael, one of his followers or a contemporary.