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Catalogue raisonné: Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 110:

FORMER INV. NOS.: 32 (B. 1830s); KM 1053.

TECHNICAL NOTES: The painting support is a thin, plain-weave
linen fabric (24 x 22 threads/cm2), lined onto fairly coarse canvas.
It is mounted on a strainer. The painting is probably cropped. It was
probably lined in Italy before being shipped to Sweden. Impasto
parts of the paint layers (brushstrokes) were flattened in the lining
process. The ground is red. UV fluorescence reveals some old retouches;
some details are reinforced, such as locks of hair, eyes and
laces. The varnish is slightly yellowed

PROVENANCE: Byström 1852.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: NM Cat. 1867, p. 12 (as Scarsella); Sander 1872–
76, IV, p. 110, no. 2 (as Scarsella); NM Cat. 1990, 422 (as anonymous,
16th century).

In the catalogue of the Byström Collection from
the 1830s, the present painting is attributed to
Scarsellino. This attribution was changed to
“Unknown Italian artist, 17th century” some time
during the last century, an attribution which it
retained in the 1990 Nationalmuseum catalogue
of European paintings.¹ The work is not included
in Maria Angela Novelli’s recent catalogue
raisonné on Scarsellino. However, in 1995 Carel
van Teyl attributed it to Scarsellino and in 2011
Franco Moro confirmed this attribution.² There
is a marked Ferrarese presence in the Byström
Collection as, apart from an established painting
by Scarsellino, it also contains a singular work by
Benvenuto Tisi, called il Garofalo (1481–1559).³

Despite the fact that half-length figures of
saints are quite rare in Scarsellino’s oeuvre, there
seems to be no question as to the accuracy of
van Teyl’s and Moro’s attribution. Hallmarks
of Scarsellino’s style and technique are present,
such as a certain wispiness to the brushstrokes
even in the quite thickly applied pastose areas of
paint. There is also the marked contrast between
the pronounced, warm, rose-tinted red of the
saint’s robes, her pale countenance and the murky
background, a contrast typically achieved by Scarsella
despite his tendency to let the bright colours
of the figure and its contours dissipate into the
background.

Details of the face, such as the somewhat pursed
lips and the longish nose, are similar to other depictions
of female saints by Scarsellino, like the St
Cecilia in the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Ferrara, and
Mary in the two versions of the Adoration of the
Magi in the Pinacoteca Capitolina, Rome, and in
the Sacred Family in the Galleria Borghese, Rome.⁴
The sensitive manner in which the delicate hands
are realized, especially their distinctive gesture and
positioning, is also commonly found in Scarsellino’s
other paintings of female saints, as indeed it
is in the Nationalmuseum’s own St Catherine and
the Philosophers (NM 176, cat. no. 85) and in for
example The Madonna and Child with St Catherine
and in the Sacred family with an Angel, both in the
Galleria Nazionale, Parma.⁵

Compared to Scarsella’s oeuvre as a whole,
the present work must be considered one of his
more typical Ferrarese-style paintings, betraying
a strong influence from Dosso Dossi, especially
in the distinctly chromatic and sfumato-like
delineation of the saint. But because these traits
are handled with a self-assurance which Scarsellino
could only have attained by familiarizing
himself with Dossi’s own Venetian influences,
the present painting should be dated to the 1590s;
Scarsellino had by this time matured as an artist
and established himself anew in Ferrara after his
sojourn in Venice, letting the Ferrarese influences
take centre stage in a more refined way than
before.⁶
dp

1 NM Archives, Kongl. Museum, F:1, Catalogue du Cabinet de
Martelli (à Rome).
2 NM Archives, Dokumentationsarkivet, Ippolito Scarsella,
NM 177. E-mail correspondence with Franco Moro, May
2011.
3 See cat. nos. 102, 111.
4 Novelli 2008, pp. 63, 161, 177, 297, 311–312, 314, cat. nos. 44,
135, 152–153.
5 Ibid., pp. 148, 309,[End]

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