Catalogue Roberti Fine Art, TEFAF Maastricht 2026 (1) compressed - Flipbook - Page 54
This is one of the very few known examples of Palma’s work on stone. Some notable examples are
his Self-portrait as a friar, on slate and from circa 1606, currently in a private collection; a Crucifixion
on black marble from 1600-1605, in the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo; a Pietà on slate in the
Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna; another is the slate in a private collection in Milan which is
comparable both in subject and size (the Milanese work is very slightly larger at 38 x 29 cm) to the
present work.¹ A very tender related drawing by Palma, which compositionally sits somewhere
between the Milan stone and the present work, is in the Musee du Louvre in Paris (fig. 1).²
Fig. 1. Jacopo Negretti, called Palma il Giovane, Christ
supported by angels. brown ink in pen; brown wash;
beige paper; black chalk; white highlights, 15 x 11.6 cm.
Musée du Louvre, Paris. © Musée du Louvre
The scholars Giorgio Fossaluzza and Stefania Mason Rinaldi have both tentatively identified the
Milanese picture with the Pietà on slate mentioned in the early seventeenth-century inventory of
Bartolomeo della Nave’s collection, who was a friend of Palma Giovane and a collector of his
pictures. In the inventory we find several mentions of paintings by Palma including an Ecce homo
on porphyry, and a Pietà on pietra di paragone, which could well refer to the present work, the
Vienna slate, or the Milanese example; the description in the inventory is just too vague to be able
to identify with certainty which is the one listed. However, given the rarity of works on slate by the
artist, it is very likely to be one of them.
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