Pierre de Cortone (Cortone 1596-1669 Rome)
La Vierge présentant l'Enfant Jesus à Saint François d'Assise
huile sur toile

oil on canvas
97.1 x 74.6cm (38 1/4 x 29 3/8in).
Footnotes:
Provenance
Private Collection, France

Exhibited
Florence, Casa Buonarroti, Pietro da Cortona a Firenze (1637 - 1647): una gloria europea, 22 June - 11 October 2010

Literature
R. Contini, Pietro da Cortona a Firenze (1637 - 1647): una gloria europea, Milan, 2010, pp. 126- 127, n. 23


The present painting is to be considered a sketch or preparatory model for the altarpiece of the same subject executed by Pietro da Cortona and commissioned by Count Torquato Barbolani di Montauto for the chapel of his family in the church of Santissima Annunziata in Arezzo, around 1641.
Preserved in England since the late nineteenth century until the early 2000s, when it was purchased by the current owner, the painting was brought to light after restoration in 2010 by Roberto Contini, who exhibited it for the first time in Florence at the exhibition dedicated to the artist in Casa Buonarroti Pietro da Cortona in Florence (1637 - 1647): a European glory.
Compared to the final work, few variations are evident in this model, especially in the composition and execution of the upper part of the work with the heads of the angels. However, as Contini pointed out, the chromaticism of this work foreshadows that of the final altarpiece, despite the fact that less somber tones have been used.
Numerous workshop or posthumous copies of the Arezzo altarpiece are known: Giuliano Briganti in his book published in 1962 (Briganti, Pietro da Cortona o della pittura barocca., Florence, 1962) mentioned a large copy preserved at the Vatican Pinacoteca (inv. 405) and two smaller sketches, probably autographs kept in Russia, at the Hermitage, St. Petersburg (inv. 283) and at the Pushkin Museum, Moscow (Markova, Gosudarstvennyj muzej izobrazitelʹnych iskusstv imeni A.S. Puškina, Moscow, 1992, p. 252, n. 217).

We are grateful to Francesco Petrucci for confirming the attribution of the present painting to Pietro da Cortona on the basis of a colour photograph.