Lot 8: Attributed to Tommaso Salini (Rome c. 1575-1625)

Attributed to Tommaso Salini (Rome c. 1575-1625)
Saint John the Baptist with the Lamb of God
oil on canvas
38 7/8 x 53 3/8 in. (98.6 x 135.5 cm.)

By descent in the family of the present owner.

THE PROPERTY OF A NOBLEMAN
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Tommaso Salini, nicknamed Mao, is an enigmatic figure in Roman painting of the early seventeenth century. He is documented as a witness in the notorious libel lawsuit brought against Caravaggio by Giovanni Baglione in 1603--Baglione's complaint was against some scurrilous verses which he had attributed to Caravaggio's pen, and Salini and Orazio Gentileschi were called as witnesses to Baglione's character. The episode serves as a vivid illustration of Salini's place in the hubbub of artistic activity in early seicento Rome, where artistic emulation and competition went hand in hand with civic and social relations. In fact Baglione, Gentileschi and Salini himself were all deeply influenced by Caravaggio's innovative new style, as the present picture illustrates: the stark illumination of the saint's body against a dark, ominous background, the gritty realism of his creased and dirty feet and the sensuous depiction of his pale skin and underlying musculature are hallmarks of the caravaggist movement.

In his Vite de' pittori, scultori, architetti (1642), a key source for biographical information on Caravaggio and his contemporaries, Baglione describes Salini as a still-life painter, crediting him with the invention of a particular genre of still-life showing vases of flowers. More recent scholarship has attributed a number of large figurative paintings to him, including an Ecstasy of Saint Francis (Rome, SS. Luca e Martino), painted in 1618 as a gift to the Accademia di San Luca, of which he was a member from 1605, and the standard of the church of SS. Quattro Coronati in Rome (Milan, private collection, cited by Baglione in his Vite).

The present picture is closely related to two other known works, a Saint John the Baptist of an identical composition (with Giovanni Sarti, Paris) and an Orpheus with the identical pose but no lamb, a laurel wreath on the model's head and a violin held in the left hand rather than a makeshift cross (Milan, Clerici collection). The latter work has been tentatively attributed to Filippo Vitale in recent literature. The present work can also be compared with a key picture picture in the Salini corpus, the Shepherd boy playing with a cat and mouse (Sevastopol, Picture Gallery), which shows a similar instinct for the disposition of the model's limbs and stark chiaroscuro effects in the shadows falling across the model's pale skin. The composition and the treatment of the Lamb of God are related to a number of secular, horizontal-format paintings of shepherds tending their flocks, for example the Shepherd with a dog, an ass, goats and sheep, and Shepherd with sheep and goats (both private collection, published by V. Markova, 'Alcune nuove proposte per Tommaso Salini', Paragone, XL, 17(475), September 1989, figs. 35 and 38) as well as Shepherd with a dog, an ass and sheep (London, Foundling Hospital).