Saint Elena

The attribution to Scarsellino was previously confirmed by Giuliano Briganti (private communication, 2 September 1984) and Federico Zeri (private communication, 28 January 1985). The present representation of Saint Elena was likely painted around the same time as Scarsellino’s altarpiece depicting the Virgin and Child with Saints Mary Magdalene, Peter, Clare, Francis, and an Abbess in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (inv. no. 97.118).

Born in Ferrara in the mid-sixteenth century, Scarsellino became one of the most important representatives of the school of Ferrara. According to Baruffaldi, he had an early apprenticeship with his father, Sigismondo Scarsella (1530–1614), an architect and painter. Scarsellino’s earliest works combine Mannerist elements from both the Ferrara and Parma Schools, probably influenced by the manner of Girolamo da Carpi. He then went to Venice, where from c. 1570 he reputedly trained in Paolo Veronese’s workshop for four years. Upon his return to Ferrara, Scarsellino was commissioned to provide a considerable number of church altarpieces, as well as cabinet pictures and small, elegant scenes of courtly life. In the works that the artist made after 1600, Emilian influences are more clearly evident. As Carlo Volpe has written, 'Scarsellino’s contribution to the Emilian pictorial tradition is due firstly to his complete assimilation of his Venetian experience, and secondly to the influence of those neo-Dossi elements which the early seventeenth-century painters found to be of such vital importance to their art.'