After Tiziano Vecellio, called Titian

Miss Young, Grange-over-Sands, England;

Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 3 July 1953, lot 26;

Where acquired by Hallsborough for 100 guinneas;

With Galerie Fischer, Lucerne;

Probably from whom acquired by John and Johanna Bass, New York;

By whom donated to the Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach, 1963 (inv. no. 63.13).

H. Wethey, The Paintings of Titian: The Religious Paintings, London 1971, p. 107, under cat. no. 62 (as a copy);

The John and Johanna Bass Collection at Miami Beach, Florida, Miami 1973, p. 10, cat. no. 13 (as Anthony van Dyck);

P.L. Roberts, in Paintings and Textiles of the Bass Museum of Art: Selections from the Collection, M. Russell (ed.), Miami 1990, pp. 90-91, reproduced (as After Titian).

This composition derives from Titian’s celebrated autograph version painted circa 1560 for the Dondi dell’Orologio family of Padua, formerly in the Heinz Kisters collection, and sold at Sotheby’s New York in 2011, where it achieved a record price for the artist.¹

Technical examination of the Kisters painting prior to that sale revealed extensive pentimenti, particularly in the kneeling figure, originally conceived as a male donor but ultimately changed to depict Saint Catherine, as well as the presence—later painted out—of the bull traditionally associated with Saint Luke. These findings are of particular relevance to the present work, which includes both the bull’s head at lower left and the kneeling male donor in place of Saint Catherine. These compositional variants also appear in a sixteenth-century near-contemporary version, possibly painted in Titian’s studio, and now preserved in the Royal Collection at Hampton Court (inv. 1271, 121.5). As noted by Wethey (see Literature), the present painting is one of two known copies after this Hampton Court type.   

The donor, traditionally identified as a member of the Cornaro family, kneels in humble devotion before the Virgin and Child, his clasped hands and upward gaze mediating between the sacred figures and the viewer. The tender interaction between the Christ Child and the donor, set within a carefully balanced arrangement dominated by the seated Virgin and the standing figure of Saint Luke, reflects Titian’s late-mature idiom, characterized by softened contours, warm tonal harmonies, and a heightened emotional immediacy. The existence of multiple versions and variants of this composition underscores both its original prestige and its enduring appeal, while the present work offers a compelling testament to the diffusion of Titian’s inventions through his studio and his followers into the seventeenth century.

¹ Sotheby's New York, 27 January 2011, lot 156.