The panel shows Mary holding Jesus in her arms. Their faces touch in a very sweet and intimate gesture. 

We do not know the original buyer or location for this painting by the Milanese artist Marco d’Oggiono, one of the leading painters of his time, when artists drew inspiration from Leonardo da Vinci (in Milan from 1483-99 and from 1506-13). 

The work is mentioned in an anonymous inventory (1818) of the Imperiale-Lercari painting collection, housed in the family home in Genoa.1 We do not know exactly when it entered the collection built up by Franco Lercari in the late 16th century and subsequently added to by his heirs, particularly Francesco Maria and Luigi Antonio.2 The death of the latter (1822) marked the end of the Imperiale-Lercari line and their assets were inherited by the Coccapani family from Modena (Maria Luigia Imperiale- Lercari was the last descendant of the family, who married into the house from Emilia). Luigi Maria was the last of the Coccapani to live in Liguria. Most of the family’s assets returned to Modena with his heirs.3 Otto Mündler saw the work there in 1858. He attributed it to Gaudenzio, but acknowledged that it was “Leonardesque in style”.4 When the Coccapani line also died out, the assets passed into the possession of the Pignatti di Morano family (Maria Bradamante- Coccapani-Imperiali was the family’s last heir and married Girolamo Pignatti di Morano, also from Modena). Many paintings remained in their possession until 1966, when various works formerly belonging to the Imperiale-Lercari Collection found their way onto the market. Our Madonna was sold at auction by Finarte in Milan in 2000.5 In 2001 it was documented at the Giovanni Sarti gallery in Paris,6 before subsequently being purchased by Cerruti in 2006.
The panel shows Mary holding Jesus in her arms. Their faces touch in a very sweet and intimate gesture. The figures emerge from a uniform dark background and the Child’s pale flesh is countered by the warm hues of Mary’s robes. The red of her tunic and the orange of her cloak are interrupted by the blue-green of the clothes worn beneath. Mary wears a transparent veil, embellished with subtle golden glimmers that hint at embroidery. The general composition of the painting - with a preparatory drawing beneath that shows some changes with respect to the end result7 - owes much to the Madonna Litta at the Hermitage (inv. no. ГЭ-249, c. 1490), probably painted by Boltraffio on the basis of a design by Leonardo, with certain details of our painting echoing its quality. 

This invention enjoyed great success in d’Oggiono’s workshop - suggesting a high-ranking buyer - but this is the only certified autograph version known to us today because of its overall quality. Indeed, the Cerruti Madonna (and not, despite often being cited, the very similar Vonwiller Madonna in Brera, Reg. Con. 5552)8 provided the source of inspiration for the versions at the Ambrosiana (inv. no. 980) and the Castello Sforzesco (inv. no. 278) in Milan, to which we can add those at the Museo di Castelvecchio in Verona (inv. no. 5200-1B823), one in an unknown location (formerly in London, O’Hagan sale, 1922)9 and another two reported to be in a private collection in Emilia (formerly in the Galeazzi Collection, Rome) and on the antiques market in Lombardy (in January 1981). The photos are conserved in the Zeri archive in Bologna (inv. nos. 32763, 33819). 

The work, as recently indicated by Alessandro Ballarin,10 should be dated to c. 1516, around the time of the Three Archangels (Brera, Reg. Cron. 447) formerly in Santa Marta in Milan. This was a moment of renewed reflection by the painter on the work of Leonardo, during the Tuscan master’s second stay in Milan.  

[Jacopo Tanzi]

Jacopo Tanzi

1 The anonymous writer of the Descrizione della Città di Genovamakes the following remark about the reception room in Palazzo Imperiale-Lercari: “The Madonna and Child by Gaudenzio De Ferrari, a fellow follower of the School of Perugino alongside the divine Raphael, [is] a beautiful painting, as if it were by this great master, and comparable to his more celebrated works found in Genoa, amongst which, in the opinion of Cav. Benvenuto, a very famous painter living in Arezzo in his homeland of Tuscany, the most dynamic painting and the only one worthy of sincere praise from the leading artifice of Italian painting, is that of the Madonna and Child in an octagon in the palace of Marquess Francesco Cassano-Serra on the Salita del Castelletto” (Descrizione [1818] 1969, pp. 307-308). The “Benvenuto” of Arezzo is evidently Pietro Benvenuti, a Neoclassical painter, while it is not currently possible to say more about the octagonal Madonna and Child (attributed to Raphael) mentioned in the collection of Francesco Cassano-Serra in Palazzo Grimaldi (also known as “Meridiane”) on the Salita del Castelletto in Genoa. 

2 See R. Santamaria, “Il tempo ha fatto gran distruzioni nei tesori del Lercaro”, in Luca Cambiaso 2009, p. 129; Gardner1998, p. 238; G. Zanelli, “La giornata di studi dedicata alle opere genovesi di Joos van Cleve: risultati e nuovi spunti di ricerca”, in Simonetti 2003, p. 87, note 27. 

3 See F. Asoli, “Sull’Esposizione d’Arte Antica apertasi...”, in Atto 1875, pp. 20-21, 33, note 14; F. Asioli, in Guida per le feste 1872, p. 58, no. 83; Montecchi 2017, pp. 44, 52. 

4 The Travel Diaries [1855-58] 1985, p. 253.

5 Finarte, Milan, Dipinti Antichi, 22 November 2000, lot 221, pp. 32-33.

6 Fonds d’or 2002, pp. 206-213. See also 40 Years of Discoveries 2018, pp. 76-79.

⁷ See A. Di Lorenzo, in Milan2019-20a, p. 138. 

8 See Moro 1994, pp. 20-21, fig. 7.

9 See Brown 2003, p. 27; C. Geddo, in Pinacoteca Ambrosiana 2005, p. 200; Rama 2010, p. 438; Sedini1989, p. 152.

10 Ballarin 2010, vol. I, p. 644; vol. III, p. 1038; vol. IV. fig. 515. See also C. Brouard, “Marco d’Oggio- no”, in Allgemeines 2015, pp. 161-162.