LEONARDO GRAZIA,

called LEONARDO DA PISTOIA

(Pistoia 1502 – 1548 Naples)

Christ Carrying the Cross

Oil on slate

28 ⅜ x 21 ⅜ inches (72.1 x 54 cm)

Provenance:

Private Collection, Italy, until 2024.

Literature:

Anna Bisceglia, “Note su Leonardo da Pistoia e la pittura su pietra: un nuovo Cristo portacroce,” in Meraviglia Senza Tempo: Gli Studi dopo la Mostra, ed. Francesca Cappelletti and Patrizia Cavazzini, Florence, 2024, pp. 67-68, fig. 3.

This vivid depiction of Christ carrying the cross is an important addition to the oeuvre of Leonardo Grazia. Leonardo was born in 1502 in the Tuscan city of Pistoia, from which he derives his moniker, Leonardo da Pistoia. The son of the minor painter Matteo di Nardo (1475–1544), Leonardo likely received his initial artistic training in his father’s workshop. Although little is known about his life, he is documented in Lucca, Rome, and, in the final stage of his career, in Naples. It was here, at the height of his success, that he almost certainly encountered Giorgio Vasari, who included a brief biography of Leonardo in his Lives of the Artists. Vasari records that Leonardo was a student and collaborator of Gianfrancesco Penni (1496?–1528), Raphael’s most faithful pupil. As a disciple of Penni in Rome, Leonardo absorbed the influence of Raphael and his followers, while also coming under the sway of the dominant artistic trend of the day: mannerism. It was through this blend of influences that Leonardo came to develop his distinctive style, perfectly exemplified by the present painting.

Leonardo da Pistoia was frequently engaged as a painter of religious subjects, completing a signed altarpiece of the Annunciation for the church of San Martino in Lucca in the early 1530s and later executing several panel paintings and larger altarpieces in Rome and Naples. He produced several paintings treating the subject of Christ carrying the cross—one in a French private collection and another at the Bob Jones University Museum & Gallery (Fig 1).[i] Our painting is unique and remarkable within this group for being painted on slate—a prized and weighty stone support. The work follows a prototype developed by Sebastiano del Piombo in the 1530s, which greatly influenced subsequent treatments of the theme both in Italy and in Spain.

Our Christ Carrying the Cross fits into the group of religious works executed by Leonardo da Pistoia in the 1530s and 1540s. In the paintings of this period, Leonardo distills the forms to their geometric essence, creating compositions that are forward-looking and strikingly modern in their sophisticated economy. He often portrayed figures close to the pictorial plane, employing dramatic cropping to heighten the visual impact of his compositions. Here the figure of Christ appears half-length in a gray-white garment against a dark blue background. The neckline of his robe and his halo are decorated with stylized gold ornament that finds close parallels throughout his works. Christ’s thin face, with arching eyebrows that frame almond-shaped eyes, is characteristic of Leonardo da Pistoia’s style. So too are the long nose, full mouth, and the sweeping hair that lands in swirling waves on Christ’s proper right shoulder. Leonardo achieves hyper-realistic details in the thorns that pierce Christ’s skin—drawing blood—as well as on the cross, where the grain of the wood is meticulously rendered.

We are grateful to Dr. Anna Bisceglia, curator of the Uffizi Galleries, for confirming Leonardo da Pistoia’s authorship of the present work. She has written of this painting: “The Christ Carrying the Cross finds its most immediate comparisons on the one hand with Leonardo da Pistoia’s Cleopatra of the Galleria Borghese, with which it shares the grayish tone of the flesh, the sharp contrast of light and shadow, and the treatment of the hair, as thick locks with individual strands clearly defined. The face of Christ also accords with the artist’s Neapolitan works, such as in the protagonists of the Baptism of Christ in the church of Santa Maria della Neve in San Giuseppe in Naples, as well as in the head of Saint Joseph in the Presentation at the Temple in Capodimonte.”[ii]

[i] Anna Bisceglia, “Note su Leonardo da Pistoia e la pittura su pietra: un nuovo Cristo portacroce,” in Meraviglia Senza Tempo: Gli Studi dopo la Mostra, ed. Francesca Cappelletti and Patrizia Cavazzini, Florence, 2024, pp. 69, 75, footnote 10.[ii] A wax seal with the Bingham coat-of-arms and the motto “Spes mea Christus” is on the verso of the panel.

[ii] Bisceglia, “Note su Leonardo da Pistoia,” p. 71.