AIC's 52nd Annual Meeting

The northern Italian city of Brescia had a thriving artistic output in the early Cinquecento despite being the target of multiple attacks during the War of the League of Cambrai (1508-1516). Brescian art was under-appreciated by art historians of the twentieth century who considered Brescian artists inferior, provincial members of the Venetian school since Brescia was part of Venice’s terra ferma. Recently, the Brescian school has been recognized in its own right as an innovative group of artists influenced by not only Venice but also Milan and by their own unique sensibilities. Still, there have been very few technical studies of works by Moretto or Romanino, and none published in America. Therefore, the arrival of an early Cinquecento Brescian altarpiece at the NYU Conservation Center in 2022 provided an opportunity to enhance understanding of Brescian artistic practice.

The Samuel H. Kress Collection’s “Madonna and Child with Saint James Major and Saint Jerome” (oil on panel, 58 5/8 × 54 1/2 inches) at the High Museum in Atlanta has a long-disputed authorship between the two of the greatest painters of this period, Moretto da Brescia (1498-1554), known as Moretto, and Girolamo Romanino (1484/87–1560), called Romanino. My proposed paper expands on my preliminary findings presented at ANAGPIC this year as I have worked to integrate technical findings with art historical research to make a case for the painting as a collaboration between the two artists. For my technical study, I utilized X-radiography, infrared reflectography, X-ray fluorescence, cross-section microscopy, scanning electron microscopy with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, and close examination of the painting in its cleaned state to understand the artist’s technique. Significant findings include infrared evidence that the artist worked up the Madonna’s head several times and that Saint Jerome’s pose, which many art historians used in their attribution arguments, was altered between the underdrawing and the final painting. I will further evaluate how our visual appreciation of the painting has changed as a result of changes made over time, both naturally and through human intervention. For example, we calculated a loss of six centimeters from the top of the panel based on the position of the dowel holes, and this seemingly insignificant portion made a significant visual difference in the digital reconstruction I created.

Ultimately, this study intends to deepen our knowledge of the understudied artistic practices of Romanino and Moretto and to encourage further study of Cinquecento Brescia.