The Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist, after Andrea del Sarto.

Come and discover a high-quality copy of the famous Madonna of Porta a Pinti, which has since been lost.

Presentation of the work

16th-century Florentine school, after Andrea del Sarto (1486–1530), Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist or Madonna of Porta a Pinti. oil on panel, 133.5 x 96 cm. Château de Bussy-Rabutin
© Philippe Berthé / Centre des Monuments Nationaux

The Count of Sarcus acquired this work for the chapel at Bussy-Rabutin Castle, where the painting was hung to the right of the altar. The Virgin, seated in the centre, holds the infant Jesus, who is standing with his left foot resting on his mother’s right knee. Saint John stands to the right of the composition, a young boy in a scarlet loincloth, pointing his left hand towards the Virgin’s left shoulder.

This painting is a copy of a now-lost work by the painter Andrea del Sarto, the Madonna of Porta a Pinti, a fresco painted in 1521 in an alleyway in the city of Florence known as Porta Pinti or Porta Fiesolana. The art historian and painter Giorgio Vasari describes this work, and particularly the figure of John the Baptist, as being ‘of such perfect execution that it is highly prized for its beauty and liveliness’. Vasari also notes that ‘the head of the Virgin is a lifelike portrait of Andrea’s wife’. Its fame was such, according to Vasari, that when Florence was besieged in 1530, the sanctuary was spared, whilst much of the surrounding area was razed to the ground. In 1880, the fresco of the Madonna of Porta Pinti was finally destroyed, but its popularity endures through numerous drawings (Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria; and Paris, Musée du Louvre) and painted copies, the fidelity of which to the original is difficult to ascertain.

A Florentine painter of the High Renaissance, Andrea del Sarto is renowned for his stylistic mastery, to the extent that Vasari described him as a painter ‘without error’. He offers a skilful synthesis of Raphael’s rhythmic compositions, Leonardo’ssfumatoand the luminous colours of the Venetian painters. The painter was an important point of reference for the younger generation, including Pontormo, Rosso Fiorentino and Giorgio Vasari. He worked in particular on the cloister of the Scalzo, in Florence, where he left behind monochrome frescoes admired by Francis^I, whom he joined in France (1518–1519) but whom he left when his wife summoned him back to Italy, to work on the refectory of the San Salvi convent, near Florence.

The Madonna of Porta a Pinti is now known through numerous copies of varying quality. The version held at the Château de Bussy faithfully emulates the delicacy of Andrea del Sarto’s style, with its refined poses and bold colour scheme, in which greens, yellows, pinks, mauves, greys and reds harmonise beautifully. This copy after del Sarto is very similar to the one that recently came up for public auction, considered to be a^16th-century copy (Bonhams auction, 8 December 2021). Both versions are faithful to the known preparatory drawings, in the drapery of the Virgin, whose veil does not fall over her knee, as well as in the detail of the Child’s left hand, resting on his mother’s arm, unlike another version that appeared at public auction in 2015 (Artcurial auction, 13. 11 November 2015). However, in the painting held at Bussy, Saint John the Baptist is not wearing an animal skin, as in the Artcurial version or that of the Cenacolo Museum of San Salvi in Florence.

The copy may have been painted by Jacopo Chimenti, known as Jacopo da Empoli, like the one now in the Museo Cenacolo di San Salvi in Florence, which has recently been attributed to Empoli (inv. 1890/612). From the art historian and collector Filippo Baldinucci (1625–1697), we know that Empoli copied this Madonna on several occasions, so that the finest versions are generally considered to be by the artist’s own hand. However, as Alessandro Marabottini points out, there are no specific stylistic grounds to support the attribution to Empoli.