Antonio Tempesta

Possibly commissioned by Cardinal Francesco Barberini (1597-1679), Rome, 1624;

Anonymous sale, Sotheby's, Amsterdam, 12 November 1996, lot 55 (as Circle of Tempesta);

Where acquired.

Possibly M.A. Lavin, Seventeenth-Century Barberini Documents and Inventories of Art, New York 1975, p. 41;

A. Vannugli, "Antonio Tempesta: un retablo portátil en la catedral de Segovia y otras pinturas sobre piedra," in In sapientia libertas: escritos en homenaje al profesor Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez, L. Verela (ed.), Madrid 2007, p. 233, reproduced fig. 2.

This signed work by Antonio Tempesta exemplifies his sustained experimentation with stone supports and affirms his status as one of the period’s most accomplished painters on alabaster, lapis lazuli, and dendritic stone.¹ Expensive and laborious to prepare, alabaster is here integral to the pictorial conception. Tempesta utilizes the stone’s natural striations to animate the cloudburst that opens the heavens above the Adoration. Subtle glazes modulate the alabaster’s translucency, transforming its whorls and veining into billowing clouds and suffusing the sky with a heightened sense of divine presence.

In a refined conceptual conceit, the alabaster itself serves as a material counterpart to the lavish gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh offered by the Magi. The choice of stone carries additional theological resonance, alluding to Christ as the cornerstone of the Church. Tempesta returned to this subject on stone on at least one other occasion: in a painting today in the Galleria Borghese, Rome (inv. no. 500), underscoring his sustained engagement with this material and theme.

¹ See A.M. Miller, in Paintings on Stone: Science and the Sacred 1530-1800, exhibition catalogue, J. Mann (ed.), Munich and Saint Louis 2020, pp. 266-277, cat. nos. 85-92.