The Crucifixion with Saints Mary Magdalene and Roch
Pen and brown ink and wash.
270 x 235 mm.
(10 3/5 x 9 1/4 inches).
Parma 1544 ~ (?)1573 Parma or Caprarola
Jacopo Bertoia's career was short but he ranks as the most important artists active in Parma in the second half of the sixteenth century. Some confusion still exists between the work of this artist and that of Parmigianino who was the most formative influence on his style. Bertoia's short life was spent working for both Ottavio Farnese, Duke of Parma and Piacenza, and his brother, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. He decorated the Palazzo del Giardino, Parma (1566-70/72), the Oratorio del Gonfalone, Rome (1569-72) and the Palazzo Farnese, Caprarola (1569-72). Bertoia's frescoes in Parma show the influence not only of Parmigianino but also that of Michelangelo Anselmi, whose work was at hand, and the Bolognese artists, Nicolò dell'Abate and Pellegrino Tibaldi. However, when Bertoia arrived in Rome, c. 1568, his style changed under the new influences of that city and most especially through contact with the work of Raphael and Taddeo Zuccaro as well as the antique. When he took over the fresco decoration at Caprarola, from Federico Zuccaro, he adjusted his style yet again which makes it difficult to distinguish his work from that of his predecessor.1
As a draughtsman Bertoia was an independent personality. In Rome a new sculptural quality of form appeared in his drawings.2 The monumental style seen in our sheet is particularly close to another composition for an altarpiece, by Bertoia, entitled The Madonna and Child with Saints Jerome and Matthew and Angels datable to the period of the Caprarola frescoes. Diane De Grazia has based the attribution and dating of this sheet on its similarity to drawings and frescoes for the Sala d'Ercole, Caprarola, and the Oratorio del Gonfalone.3 In the latter commission Bertoia was responsible for the whole design although the execution of only one fresco.
Our drawing must also have been intended for an altarpiece. It has a curved top and at the bottom of the sheet one can just discern the tops of pilasters perhaps belonging to an altar table. Saint Roch is the patron saint of the plague. The female figure, with her heavy drapery and partially exposed body, represents Saint Mary Magdalene in her role as the 'Penitent'. No painting has as yet been connected with this sheet.
1. Diane De Grazia in AA.VV. The Age of Correggio and the Carracci: Emilian Painting of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, exh. cat., Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna, 1986, p. 74.
2. Cf. Diane De Grazia, Bertoia, Mirola and the Farnese Court, Parma, 1991, p.41.
3. De Grazia, ibid, p.119, cat. D30 and Pl.140.
