Beskrivning: Se beskrivning i den engelska versionen.

Catalogue raisonné: Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 86:

Beskrivning i Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, kat.nr. 86:

FORMER INV. NOS.: 238 (M. 1796–97); 257 (F. 1798); 333 (M. 1804);
KM 379.

TECHNICAL NOTES: The support is a 1.5 cm thick hardwood board. The panel is not bevelled. The painting may have been
cropped. The ground is thin and red. IR reflectography reveals that Lazarus’s face has been changed. It has been turned more towards
the observer than in the preliminary drawing. UV fluorescence shows overpaintings, mainly in Christ’s cloak and the contours of
the landscape. The varnish is thick and yellowed.

PROVENANCE: Martelli 1804.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: NM Cat. 1867, p. 15 (as anonymous); Sander
1872–76, p. 124, no. 333 (as Tizian); NM Cat. 1990, p. 423 (as anonymous,
17th century).

In Fredenheim’s catalogue the present painting is
attributed to Titian.¹ On the preserved Martelli
paper label on the reverse, Corvi and Tofanelli
attribute it to the same artist. This attribution was
changed to “Unknown Italian artist, 17th century”
some time during the last century, an attribution
that was retained in the 1990 Nationalmuseum
catalogue of European paintings.² Recently, however,
the painting has been firmly attributed to
Scarsellino by both David Ekserdjian and Franco
Moro.³ Ekserdjian also recognized it as a copy by
Scarsellino of the Raising of Lazarus by Ludovico
Mazzolino (1480–c. 1528) in the Pinacoteca di
Brera, Milan.⁴ 
That Scarsellino should have copied Mazzolino, 
who also hailed from Ferrara, shows the importance 
of local artistic precedent for the development of his style.
Mazzolino was of the same generation as Dosso Dossi
and probably trained under the same master as
he did: Lorenzo Costa (1460–1535).⁵ Amongst the
artists who influenced Mazzolino were Bevenuto
Tisi, called Il Garofalo (1481–1559), and Ercole
de’ Roberti (c. 1451–1496), who both hailed from
Ferrara as well.⁶ Like Scarsellino, Mazzolino
primarily painted small devotional works and his
main employer was the ducal d’Este family.

Amongst Mazzolino’s more famous works
are frescoes for the church of Santa Maria degli
Angeli, Ferrara, and a painting of the Massacre of
the Innocents in the Uffizi.⁷ While Mazzolino has
been praised for his idiosyncratic and vivid sense
of colour, his figure drawing and composition, at
least as it developed during his mature period,
has been described as somewhat satiated, stiff
and even rough. In paintings such as for example
Christ before Pilate in the Museum of Fine Arts,
Budapest, there is great emphasis on describing
the individual pathos of the many figures, at the
expense of any real dynamic interplay between
them.⁸ “Archaic” characteristics such as these are
present in Mazzolino’s painting of the Raising of
Lazarus as well, and have also been emulated to
great effect by Scarsellino, whose copy is in fact
quite close to the original, despite the presence
of several distinctive traits of his own style and
technique, such as the characteristic wispiness of
his brushstrokes.

Ekserdjian has pointed out that the present
painting forms part of a group of about fifteen
by Scarsellino that were copied from works by
earlier local masters such as Mazzolino.⁹ It seems
that these copies were executed as part of his
studies, and it is quite likely that more of them
will surface in the future. To some extent, the
study of Mazzolino’s work could have contributed
to the somewhat antiquated touch of several of
Scarsellino’s smaller paintings, which, like those
of Mazzolino, are marked by a certain spatial
flatness within groups of figures and between interacting
figures, despite the fully realized depth
and volume of the figures themselves. A colour
scheme reminiscent of Mazzolino’s paintings
also characterizes Scarsellino’s smaller works, in
which the saturated pinkish red, the light blue
and the bright yellow are emphasized. Again, in
a manner that recalls Mazzolino, the interplay
of Scarsellino’s vivid colours seems to accentuate
the surface, lessening the sense of depth in his
compositions. In painting his copy, it even seems
as if Scarsellino sought to highlight and refine
the more archaic elements of the original.

That Martelli, and Corvi and Tofanelli, should
have attributed this painting to Titian was probably
due firstly to the correct belief that it hailed
from the northern Italian school, and secondly
to a highly optimistic assessment of its particular
style. The fact that the painting is an idiosyncratic
copy after a lesser-known artist who,
at least by his association with Dossi, can also
be connected to Titian’s style, probably threw
Corvi and Tofanelli off the right track. For that
reason perhaps, their expert reattribution of the
Veronese-attributed St Catherine and the Philosophers
(NM 176, cat. no. 85) to Scarsellino could
not be repeated in the present case.
dp

1 NM Archives, Kongl. Museum, F:1, Catalogue du Cabinet
de Martelli (à Rome).
2 NM Cat. 1990, p. 423.
3 E-mail correspondence with Franco Moro, May 2011; e-mail
from David Ekserdjian to Magnus Olausson, Director of
Collections and the Swedish National Portrait Gallery,
Nationalmuseum, 12 November 2011.
4 Fondazione Federico Zeri, Università di Bologna, Catalogo
Fototeca, Mazzolino, Ludovico, Resurrezione di Lazzaro,
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milano, numero scheda: 38371, numero
busta: 0418.
5 G. Bolaffi, ed., Dizionario Enciclopedico Bolaffi dei Pittori e
degli Incisori Italiani dal’XI al XX secolo, Turin 1975, vol.
VII (Logli–Monverde), pp. 315–317, Mazzolino, Ludovico
(Ferrara c. 1480–Ferrara 1528/1530).
6 Ibid.
7 Galleria degli Uffizi, Mazzolino, Ludovico, Strage degli
Innocenti, inv. no. 1350.
8 Szépművészeti Múzeum, Budapest.
9 E-mail from David Ekserdjian to Magnus Olausson,
Director of Collections and the Swedish National Portrait
Gallery, Nationalmuseum, 12 November 2011. [End]

Utforska konstnärer och föremål som finns i Nationalmuseums samlingar.

Explore the artists and artworks of Nationalmuseum Sweden.

Ippolito Scarsella | Lazarus uppväckelse | Nationalmuseum

Ippolito Scarsella | The Raising of Lazarus | Nationalmuseum

Foto: Erik Cornelius / Nationalmuseum 2012