Beskrivning: Se beskrivning i den engelska versionen.

Catalogue raisonné: Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 70: 

FORMER INV. NOS.: 144 (M. 1796–97); 185 (F. 1798); 421 (M. 1804);
KM 462.

PROVENANCE: Martelli 1804.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: NM Cat. 1867, p. 1 (as Francesco 
Albani, John of God) Sander 1872–76, IV, p. 133, no. 
421 (as Francesco Albani, St Romuald), Göthe 1887, 
p. 2 (as Albani, school of); NM Cat. 1958, p.114 
(as Benedetto Luti, St Romuald Healing a Possessed Woman);
NM Cat. 1990, p. 90 (as Placido Costanzi, St Romuald Healing a 
Possessed Woman).

In the 18th-century inventory of the Martelli
Collection, this painting was assigned to Francesco
Albani and the subject identified as a deed
performed by St Romuald. As confirmed by their
close numbers in the original inventory, it was
presumed to be a companion piece to St Catherine
(NM 98, cat. no. 7).¹ A later attribution proposed
Benedetto Luti as its author. This was probably
because Luti was originally regarded as the
author of the presumed companion piece NM 98,
and would accordingly have been considered to
have painted both. When Anthony Clark visited
the Nationalmuseum in the mid 1960s for his
research on the Nicola Pio portrait collection,
he probably saw NM 1 and assigned it instead
to Placido Costanzi.² As for NM 98, he rightly
questioned the Luti attribution.³

In 1995, the present painting was recognized
by Dieter Graf as an alternative version of a work
by Antonio Pietro De Pietri, now in the Museé
des Beaux-Arts, Dijon [Fig. 1].⁴ Two preparatory
drawings are preserved, one at Windsor Castle
and the other at Holkham Hall.⁵

The work was originally intended for the
Abbey of Cîteaux, where it hung as a companion
piece to Giuseppe Passeri’s St Bernard Received
into Cîteaux.⁶ Indeed, the present painting, like
the Dijon version, shows a particular episode
in the life of that saint: his interference in the
dispute regarding the simultaneous election of
two popes, Anacletus II and Innocent II. St
Bernard, who was firmly convinced of the rightful
claim of Innocent II, is here shown next to the
Pope, whilst Anacletus’s successor, the antipope
Victor IV, pays his submissive respects. Marguerite
Guillaume has noted that the scene is set in
Milan, as shown by the presence of the standard
of the city, the crowned cross. Milan was indeed
one of the last cities to surrender to the authority
of Innocent II, which makes it a proper context
for this allegorical summit of the schism.

The Dijon version and the present painting differ
greatly in composition, although these differences
are certainly more formal than content-related.
The Allegory of Blasphemy, represented
by the woman turning her eyes and showing her
tongue, is placed on the left- and the right-hand
sides of the paintings, respectively. Furthermore,
in the Stockholm version, the Pope is wearing his
mitre, a detail lacking in the Dijon painting. Other
compositional details and the reversed placement
of the figures distinguish the two paintings
and stress the fact that these are two independent
versions of the same subject.
SNE

1 NM Archives, Kongl. Museum, F :1, Catalogue du Cabinet
de Martelli (à Rome). Recorded under the name of Benedetto
Luti is: Ste Catherine pendent de No 144 par Albane. The
latter is NM 1.
2 Bjurström 1995, p. 7.
3 See entry no. 6 in the present catalogue.
4 NM Archives, Dokumentationsarkivet, “Pietro Antonio
De Pietri”; Guillaume 1980, cat. no. 95, pp. 61–62.
5 Blunt and Cooke 1960, no. [End]

Utforska konstnärer och föremål som finns i Nationalmuseums samlingar.

Explore the artists and artworks of Nationalmuseum Sweden.

Antonio Pietro Pietri | Upphörandet av Anacletus schism | Nationalmuseum

Antonio Pietro Pietri | The Cessation of the Schism of Anacletus | Nationalmuseum

Foto: Max Enander /  Svenska kyrkan / Nationalmuseum 2013