The Madonna and Child with Saint Catherine of Alexandria, in a landscape

Andrea Bianchi, il Vespino was a favoured painter of Cardinal Federico Borromeo, frequently undertaking commissions to copy famed masterpieces of the Renaissance, in particular of the work of Leonardo da Vinci. The figures here derive from a composition by Bernardo Luini, one of the most important and influential followers of Leonardo during the early sixteenth century. The group, with the Virgin seated, holding the Christ Child as he hands a martyr’s palm to Saint Catherine, is preserved in two pictures associated with Luini and his workshop, now in the Norton Simon Museum, Los Angeles and the Cincinnati Museum of Art. Strikingly, while the figural groups are very similar between the three pictures, the background in the present work is distinctly different. Rather than following the Italianate landscape of the Norton Simon and Cincinnati pictures, here it is markedly more Flemish in tone and treatment. While retaining the unicorn and the angel forcing away a satyr, the landscape is strongly reminiscent of the works of painters working in northern Europe during the late sixteenth century, notably of Paul Brill and Jan Brueghel the Elder. Pictures by these artists enjoyed a significant popularity in Italy amongst discerning patrons, forming a significant part of the collection of Cardinal Borromeo in Milan. However, Luuk Pijl, to whom we are grateful, believes the landscape to not to be the work of a northern artist, but rather an Italian working in the style of Bril and Brueghel (private communication, 30 April 2021).

We are grateful to Mauro Natale for proposing the attribution of the figures to il Vespino, on the basis of photographs.