Paolo Farinati

Farinati was the leading painter in Verona in the later sixteenth century, especially once his compatriot Paolo Veronese moved to Venice in the 1550s. He and Veronese were trained in the same circle of artists, and their drawings are similar in style, particularly their chiaroscuro drawings of ink, wash, and white highlights on colored paper. Farinati was a notably prolific artist, a painter as well as a draftsman and a designer, with a role in Verona akin to that of Giulio Romano in Mantua (Farinati was much influenced by Giulio, having worked in Mantua early in his career). He produced works not only for Verona but also for Venice and for smaller towns across northern Italy.

As was first noted by Terence Mullaly in 1966, the Virgin and Child with Saints is a preparatory study for the Pala Fogazza, an altarpiece commissioned by Girolamo Fogazza on 3 July 1590 for the Observant Franciscan church of Santa Maria Maddalena in Isola della Sacra, about twenty kilometers south of Verona.¹ The church, depicted in the upper part of the composition beneath the infant Christ, was built in the first decades of the sixteenth century, but Farinati’s painting was installed over the high altar only in 1592, when the artist signed and dated the picture. It is not known whether it was the original high altar or whether it replaced an earlier painting, but it seems likely that the commission was at least somewhat prompted by the canonization in 1588 of St. Didacus (better known as San Diego) of Alcalá, who appears at the center of the composition. The altarpiece was removed from the church after the Napoleonic suppression of the monasteries in 1806 and is now in the Museo di Castelvecchio in Verona.

Inscriptions in Farinati’s hand on the present drawing identify the other saints except for St. Jerome, at lower left, but he is readily recognizable and was in any case the namesake of the donor. Portraits of Fogazza and his wife were added at the bottom edge of the final painting while Jerome’s lion was omitted from the painting in order to leave space for them. Another significant change between the drawing and painting is that the church depicted in the drawing resembles the actual structure, whereas the more elaborate church in the painting evokes instead, as noted by Luca Fabbri, the facade designed in 1586–89 by Farinati for the church of Padenghe sul Garda.²

Many of Farinati’s finished drawings exist in multiple versions, including the present sheet, which is echoed by a drawing of the same size in the Louvre on a yellow ground rather than blue paper (Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. 4836). It is often debated whether these multiples are by the master himself or his workshop and whether they are preparatory drawings or ricordi. In this case, the matter seems reasonably clear, for the Louvre drawing is dated 6 July 1596— four years after the painting itself—and it has long been recognized as lower in quality, with the stiffness of a copy. It follows the Morgan drawing rather than the painting. The reasons for Farinati to have made this and other copies are unclear, but it might be suggested that they were to represent a “clean” archive of his inventions while other drawings continued to be part of the working stock of the studio.

—JJM

Footnotes:

1. Puppi 1968, 150. For the most recent and complete account of the painting, see Verona 2005–6, no. 179.
2. Verona 2005–6, 194. It should be noted that the church probably does not, therefore, refer to the Holy House of Loreto, as has occasionally been suggested.