Carpaccio Gleanings: discoveries in the Photo Archive of the Getty Research Institute, in the “The...

Carpaccio Gleanings: Discoveries in the Photo Archive of the Getty Research InstituteAuthor(s): Sara MenatoSource: Getty Research Journal, No. 7 (2015), pp. 143-150Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the J. Paul Getty TrustStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/680741 .

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Getty Research Journal, no. 7 (2015): 143 – 50 © 2015 Sara Menato.

English Translation © The J. Paul Getty Trust

143

In the history of art, there are various reasons for which paintings are sometimes forgot-

ten. A case in point is the Pietà, to which we want to draw attention with this article (fig. 1).

The painting is little known probably because it has always been in the hands of private

collectors from the beginning of the 1930s, when it belonged to Agnew in London,1 after

having been in the collection of the Florentine antiquarian Volterra.2 In 1958 Giuseppe

Fiocco declared the painting homeless,3 while Pallucchini in 1959 stated it was in a private

collection in Bergamo.4 There was no further mention of the painting by art historians

until 2006, when Brigit Blass-Simmen claimed not to know the whereabouts of the work.5

The collecting history reconstructed here makes it clear how difficult it is to follow the

history of the painting from the end of the 1950s. Furthermore, the information regarding

the painting’s restoration is not precise, since it is based only on Pallucchini’s reference

in his 1959 Bellini monograph that the painting had recently been cleaned, even though

he published a prerestoration photograph.6

In cases such as this, where firsthand study was impossible for many years, the

research tools offered by a photo archive become invaluable.7 Photo archives are deposi-

tories of the memory of those who owned the photographs, and often they are able to

add information that never appeared in published studies and that helps greatly to inte-

grate known facts. Photographs documenting a work’s unknown condition, notes about

opinions or regarding the work’s passage from one collection to another, and collectors’

stamps are all extremely useful to art historians. In the most fortunate of cases, photo

archives are also the point of departure for tracing paintings that are unknown or that

have disappeared from view. Every photo archive is unique, offering different possibilities

for study. The more one knows about the nature of the photo collections and their forma-

tion, the more profitable will be the research. The Photo Archive of the Getty Research

Institute mirrors the heterogeneity of its collections, making it possible to carry out

research at various levels.8 This note testifies only minimally to its potential.

Using the information gathered in the Photo Archive, we can start filling in the gaps

in the history of the Pietà. A photo in the Giovanni Bellini box documents the condition of

the painting before restoration (fig. 2). Inscribed on the back of the photograph in pencil is:

“G. Bellini” and farther down: “in Germania.” The photograph is part of the Jean Marchig

Carpaccio Gleanings: Discoveries in the Photo Archive of the Getty Research InstituteSara Menato



144 gett y research journal, no. 7 (2015)

collection, and the inscriptions may be in Marchig’s hand, as Tracey Schuster has kindly sug-

gested.9 The same box contains a photograph from the David Koetser Gallery — Photograph

collections documenting the painting’s condition after cleaning (see fig. 1).10 The back of the

photograph is inscribed “formerly Agnew,” which is important information since the fact

that the painting had passed through Koetser’s collection was unknown.11 It is also possible

to deduce that restoration must have occurred shortly before January 1956, since the paint-

ing appears restored in the sales catalog of that year.12 This evidence is consistent with Pal-

lucchini’s affirmation in 1959 that it had been restored not long before.

Fig. 1. Vittore Carpaccio (Venetian, ca. 1455–60–ca. 1525/26). Pietà (after restoration), ca. 1485,

oil on panel, 26 × 21 cm (10.2 × 8.3 in.). Private collection. Los Angeles, Getty Research Institute (76.p.57),

nd614, box 444 (Giovanni Bellini)



Menato Carpaccio Gleanings 145

Thanks to the riches of the GRI collections, we can add the name of the restorer to

the facts known about the painting, as well as a photograph of the work during cleaning,

which was found among the papers of the restorer William Suhr, conserved in Special

Collections (fig. 3).13 Although this photograph is undated, it is reasonable to connect the

information about the restoration with the painting’s presence in the Koetser collection,

since both Suhr and Koetser were in New York during those years.

Giuseppe Fiocco and Roberto Longhi had underlined the painting’s damaged con-

dition.14 Longhi hoped that a restoration would facilitate identifying the author of the

Fig. 2. Vittore Carpaccio (Venetian, ca. 1455-1460–ca. 1525/26). Pietà (before restoration), ca. 1485,

oil on panel, 26 × 21 cm (10.2 × 8.3 in.). Private collection. Los Angeles, Getty Research Institute (76.p.57),

nd614, box 444 (Giovanni Bellini)




work. The photograph plays a fundamental role in documenting the state of conservation

of a painting unseen by art historians for many years and allows us to blame the painting’s

poor condition for the conflicting attributions that characterize its critical fortune — attri-

butions to either Carpaccio or Giovanni Bellini. The photograph reveals the beginning

of a vertical crack in the wooden support. It is also evident that the painting had been

touched up in various parts, especially in the head of Christ and the landscape at left.

The repainting was removed during restoration, as can be seen in the photograph taken

by Mr. Gray, William Suhr’s preferred photographer (see fig. 3). The cleaning carried out

by Suhr appears have been rather thorough, to judge by the way in which the beautiful

Fig. 3. Vittore Carpaccio, (Venetian, ca. 1455–60–ca. 1525/26). Pietà (during restoration), ca. 1485,

oil on panel, 26 × 21 cm (10.2 × 8.3 in.). Private collection. Los Angeles, Getty Research Institute

(870697), box 61 c. 1




underdrawing emerges after his intervention, especially in the central part of the panel,

corresponding to the Virgin’s face and the torso of Christ (see fig. 1). The restoration

allowed some details to emerge more clearly, for instance the deer grazing in the landscape

at left, the very same detail that can be seen in the Meditation on the Passion of Christ in the

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (11.118, John Stewart Kennedy Fund).

The painting is not entirely consistent with Bellini’s production, and in our opinion

it is more convincingly included in the corpus of Vittore Carpaccio, as Fiocco claimed.15

Fundamental for evaluating the authorship is the strong relation of the body of Christ to

the Carpaccio drawing in the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett (Staatliche Museen, KdZ 5034).16

The sheet was once attributed to Ercole de’ Roberti,17 but there is now a general consensus

that it is by Carpaccio. It is cataloged under Carpaccio by Schulze Altcappenberg,18 who

publishes Alessandro Ballarin’s note written on the mat of the drawing in 1984, identifying

it as a preparatory study for the Berlin painting Preparation of Christ’s Tomb (Gemäldegal-

erie, inv. no. 239). Brigit Blass-Simmen accepts the attribution of the drawing to Carpac-

cio.19 Further support for Carpaccio’s authorship of the Pietà can be found in the Sacra

Fig. 4. Attributed to Francesco Bissolo (Veneto, active 1492; d. 1554) after Vittore Carpaccio (?)

(Venetian, ca. 1455–60–ca. 1525/26). Head of Christ in a Landscape (before restoration), ca. 1518, oil on

canvas, 49.53 × 40.01 cm (19 1⁄2 × 15 3⁄4 in.). Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Gift of Herbert DuPuy,

27.9.1. © Los Angeles, Getty Research Institute(76.p.57), nd614, box 709 (Vittore Carpaccio)

Fig. 5. Attributed to Francesco Bissolo (Veneto, active 1492; d. 1554) after Vittore Carpaccio (?)

(Venetian, ca. 1455–60–ca. 1525/26). Head of Christ in a Landscape (after restoration), ca. 1518, oil on

canvas, 49.53 × 40.01 cm (19 1⁄2 × 15 3⁄4 in.). Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Gift of Herbert DuPuy,

27.9.1. © Carnegie Museum of Art




Conversazione, formerly in Berlin (Kaiser-Friedrich Museum, inv. no. 14; destroyed May

1945). The landscapes in the paintings are morphologically close, and in the Sacra Conver-

sazione we find the same detail of people meeting along a winding white path.

The other work to be presented in this article is a Head of Christ in the Carnegie

Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (27.9.1, Gift of Herbert DuPuy).20 Adolfo Venturi found a

photograph of it in the collection of Robert Witt and published it in 1927 as a homeless

painting by Giovanni Bellini (fig. 4).21 The following year the painting was acquired by the

Carnegie Museum of Art.22 Bernard Berenson attributed it to Carpaccio with a question

mark.23 Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri followed Berenson’s attribution in their

census.24 Carlo Volpe also believed it to be by Carpaccio, assuming that the handwritten

note found in his photo archive refers to this painting.25 Lauts preferred to attribute the

work to Francesco Bissolo,26 which is the name published in the museum’s 1973 catalog,

where the painting is not, however, illustrated.27 Thus, after initially linking the painting

to Bellini or Carpaccio, scholars have lately veered toward an attribution to Bissolo. No

study has ever dealt with the painting specifically, and this is the first time a recent pho-

tograph of it has been published (fig. 5). The GRI has a copy of the old photograph first

published by Venturi (see fig. 4), which, significantly, is stored in the box of Vittore Car-

paccio.28 A comparison between the two photographs is revealing. Evidently the Head of

Christ underwent a restoration, which involved removing the repainting that had lent the

work its aura of Carpaccio and Bellini, perceived by earlier critics. The authorship of the

work remains problematic not only because of its precarious condition but also because

there are references to various paintings by Carpaccio, leading to the hypothesis that

the painting is a copy.29 All the same, we believe that an attribution to Bissolo is the most

appropriate, also in the light of Boccaccinesque aspects that are now discernible, which

are to be found in Bissolo’s work.30

Sara Menato received her doctorate from the Scuola di dottorato in Storia e Critica dei Beni

Artistici Musicali e dello Spettacolo, Università degli Studi di Padova.

Notes Translation from Italian by Sabine Eiche.

The present article is the result of research carried out at the Getty Research Institute while I

was a PhD candidate at Padua. I would like to thank Alessandro Ballarin, Daniele Benati, Luisa Ciammitti,

Anne-Lise Desmas, and Gail Feigenbaum for their encouragement and help with this article. I am grateful

to May Akemi, Laurel Mitchell, and Tracey Schuster for having facilitated my research.

1. Giuseppe Fiocco, “Tre disegni dell’esposizione ferrarese del Rinascimento,” L’Arte 37 (1934):

244. Guido Perocco is the only one to mention an earlier provenance from the Aquero collection (Tutta la

pittura del Carpaccio [Milan: Rizzoli, 1960], 85).

2. Georg Gronau, “Una ‘Pietà’ di Giovanni Bellini,” Cronache d’arte 3, no. 5 (1926): 274–77.

3. Giuseppe Fiocco, Carpaccio (Novara: Istituto Geografico De Agostini, 1958), 33, note 18.

4. Rodolfo Pallucchini, Giovanni Bellini (Milan: Martello, 1959), 130.

5. Brigit Blass-Simmen, “Studi dal vivo e dal non più vivo: Carpaccio’s Passion Paintings with Saint

Job,” Metropolitan Museum Journal 41 (2006): 89, note 28.

6. Pallucchini, Giovanni Bellini, 130.




7. Since writing this article, I had the unexpected good fortune to track down the painting in a

private collection. Firsthand examination revealed its quality, confirming what I had written previously

in the text.

8. The Photo Archive at the Getty Research Institute (GRI), formerly known as the Photo Study

Collection, combines several collections of study photographs covering a wide range of periods in the his-

tory of art. Many but not all of these images are now available online in the Photo Archive Database, http://

www.getty.edu/research/tools/photo/. Physically, the photographs are primarily organized by region and

period. The photographs under discussion in this essay all come from the subcollection Study photo-

graphs of Italian paintings and drawings (76.p.57), which alone comprises some 2,880 boxes.

9. GRI, Study photographs of Italian paintings and drawings (76.p.57), nd614, box 444 (Giovanni

Bellini).

10. GRI, Study photographs of Italian paintings and drawings (76.p.57), nd614, box 444 (Giovanni

Bellini).

11. The information regarding the painting’s presence in Koetser’s gallery was known to Fede-

rico Zeri, who recorded it on the back of his photograph of the painting (Federico Zeri Photo Library,

Bologna: “Giovanni Bellini,” pi 292/4/13).

12. The painting was sold for $3,000 (Frick Library, New York: “Giovanni Bellini. Christ. Calvary

Trinity, 703–23, 706”). Important Old Masters. Italian, Spanish & Other Primitive and Renaissance Works.

Dutch and Flemish XVIII Century Examples, British, French and Italian XVIII Century Paintings, from the Estate

of the Late John H. McFadden, Jr. Various New York Private Collectors, Parke-Bernet Galleries, Inc., New York,

11 January 1956, lot 8.

13. GRI, William Suhr papers, ca. 1846–2003, bulk 1928–1982 (870697), box 61 c. 1. For further

information on Suhr, see Edgar Munhall, Remembering Billy Suhr (New York: private publication, 1996).

14. Giuseppe Fiocco, “Tre disegni,” 244–45; Roberto Longhi, Officina ferrarese (Rome: Le Edizioni

d’Italia, 1934), 170–71.

15. Fiocco had maintained Carpaccio’s authorship of the painting as early as 1932: Giuseppe

Fiocco, “Nuovi documenti intorno a Vittore Carpaccio,” Bollettino d’arte del Ministero 26 (1932): 115.

16. Black chalk, pen and brown ink wash, and lead white, on blue paper, 16.5 × 26.3 cm (6 1⁄2 ×

10 3⁄8 in.).

17. Nino Barbantini ed., Catalogo della esposizione della pittura ferrarese del Rinascimento (Ferrara:

Ferrari, 1933), 197, no. 238.

18. Hein-Th. Schulze Altcappenberg, Die italienischen Zeichnungen des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts im

Berliner Kupferstichkabinett (Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin Preussischer Kulturbesitz, 1995), 193–94.

19. Brigit Blass-Simmen, “Studi dal vivo”: 84. The attribution of the drawing to Carpaccio was

recently accepted by Giorgio Fossaluzza, who also gives the Pietà presented here to the young Carpaccio.

Giorgio Fossaluzza, “Ancora una primizia di Vittore Carpaccio nella raccolta Correr: la Pietà n. 108,” Bol-

lettino dei Musei Civici Veneziani 7 (2012): 54–57.

20. Oil on canvas, 49.53 × 40.01 cm (19 1⁄2 × 15 3⁄4 in.).

21. Adolfo Venturi, “La biblioteca di Sir Robert Witt,” L’Arte 30 (1927): 249, fig. 11.

22. “Gift of Old Masters,” Bulletin of the Carnegie Institute 1, no. 10 (March 1928): 13.

23. Bernard Berenson, The Italian Pictures of the Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1932); Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. A List of the Principal Artists and Their Works

with an Index of Places. Venetian School (London: Phaidon Press, 1957), 58.

24. Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in

North American Public Collections (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972), 47. Fritz Heinemann

preferred an attribution to Rocco Marconi. Fritz Heinemann, Giovanni Bellini e i belliniani (Venice: Neri

Pozza, 1962) 1: 59, no. 194 q.




25. Carlo Volpe Photo Library, Dipartimento di Arti Visive dell’Università degli Studi di Bologna

(“Private 7,” 194). Sara Menato, “Un nuovo ‘Salvator mundi’ di Carpaccio,” Prospettiva 146 (April 2012

[2013]): 27, 31, note 12.

26. Jan Lauts, Carpaccio: Paintings and Drawings (London: Phaidon, 1962), 262.

27. Catalogue of Painting Collection: Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh: Carn-

egie Institute, 1973), 14.

28. GRI: “Photo Study Collection, Vittore Carpaccio, nd 614 709.”

29. See Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census, 47; and Heinemann, Giovanni Bellini, 1:

59. In addition to the Salvator mundi mentioned, we can now add the painting recently sold as Carpaccio

workshop: Importanti dipinti antichi e dei secc. XIX e XX. Pandolfini, 15 October 2013, Florence, 2013, lot 10.

The painting was subsequently sold as Venetian School of the sixteenth century in Important Old Master

Paintings and Sculpture, 30 January 2014, New York, Sotheby’s, lot 218.

30. For this aspect, see Lucio Coletti, “Intorno a Francesco Bissolo,” Bollettino d’arte del Ministero

della pubblica Istruzione 7, series II (January 1929): 328. My evaluation of the painting is based on a study of

the photographs.



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