Some Early Works by Girolamo Siciolante da Sermoneta

Author(s): Bernice F. Davidson

Reviewed work(s):
Source: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Mar., 1966), pp. 55-64
Published by: College Art Association
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Some EarlyWorks by GirolamoSiciolanteda Sermoneta

BERNICE F. DAVIDSON

Girolamo Siciolante has been called a rustic, an eclectic, a

Mannerist. In varying degrees, each of these epithets contains
some truth, but all are misleading and are tangential to the
character and intentions of the artist. For although it cannot
be denied that Siciolante was a painter with serious limitations,
he is, nevertheless, a figure of considerable interest, and his
work helped to shape certain significant trends in mid-sixteenth
century Roman painting that generally have been neglected
by historians. Indeed, on the whole, our knowledge of Roman
painting during the 1540's and 1550's is remarkably incomplete and inaccurate. Siciolante is only one victim of our misconceptions. If a great many errors of attribution and chonology have been committed and perpetuated in the literature on
Siciolante, this state of confusion has arisen because none of
the personalities active in Rome at the time (with the exception of Michelangelo) has yet been clearly distinguished or
defined.
The bewilderment over Siciolante has been especially aggravated because a number of his early paintings and drawings
have been considered the work of his master, Perino del Vaga.
It is difficult to decide where this chain of error began: whether
the uncertainty over which paintings and drawings were by
Siciolante led to a faulty assessment of his personality as an
artist (which in turn occasioned further misattributions) or
whether the reticent nature of the man and his work prevented
any clear comprehension of what he might or might not have
been capable of producing. This article is an attempt to extract
Siciolante from the tangle of misattributions and to assess his
position in relation to the painting of his period.
The biographies of Siciolante written by Vasari and Baglione are respectful but impersonal. They include none of those
details of character or behavior that in other "Lives" make
their subjects so vivid to us. We are given only a very incomplete, chronologically confused list of Siciolante's works, and
not a single specific date. With the help, however, of documents, dated paintings, and the invaluable contributions of
Professor Zeri,' and by a closer examination of the character

BdA, 36, 1951. Zeri published the

1 Federico Zeri, "Intorno a Gerolamo Siciolante,"
In his
work and many new attributions.
of Siciolante's
first valid interpretation
Pittura e controriforma
(Rome, 1957, cf. index) he extended his earlier contribution
by relating Siciolante to the Counter-Reformation.
I am deeply grateful to Dr. Sydney J. Freedberg and to Dr. Anne D. Ferry for
their many valuable corrections of and comments on this essay. Neither, however,
saw the final draft of the article, therefore neither can be blamed for condoning its
errors. Dr. Konrad Oberhuber and Michael Hirst also have offered a number of
helpful suggestions.
2 Pietro Pantanelli,
nelli does not cite
century history of
now apparently is

Notizie istoriche . . . di Sormoneta, Rome, 1906, II, 597. Pantahis source for this information but it may be taken from a 17th
the Siciolante family, which once was in the Caetani archive but
missing. The birth-date should be regarded with some skepticism

of Siciolante's work, it is possible to expand somewhat the

sketchy outlines of these earliest biographies.
According to Pantanelli, the historian of Sermoneta, Siciolante was born in 1521 in Sermoneta, one of the many fortress
towns south of Rome held by the Caetani.2 His parents appear
to have been prosperous for they were able to give their children a good education. One son entered the Church, and he
became philosopher, theologian, and arciprete of Santa Maria
in Sermoneta; another became a doctor, and a third son, a lawyer.3 Given this family record of intellectual achievement, one
surely ought not, as Venturi did,'4 attribute to Siciolante the
mentality of a peasant. He too must have received professional
training, and very likely it was in Rome, not the provinces.
In fact, Siciolante probably was a pupil of Leonardo da Pistoia
who seems to have been working in Rome in the late 1530's.r
At the age of twenty Siciolante received the first commission
cited by Vasari-the high altar, inscribed with the date 1541,
which he painted for the Badia of Santi Pietro e Stefano, near
Sermoneta (now in the Palazzo Caetani, Rome; Fig. 1)." Had
Baglione not mentioned Siciolante's associations with Leonardo da Pistoia one might easily overlook the traces of his
influence on the Caetani Altar and on other paintings of the
forties by Siciolante. The flat, oval faces of Siciolante's Madonnas, with their small features, long, straight noses, and
tight little bow mouths must be derived from Leonardo. His
precedent might account also for the clumsy drapery stylethe zig-zag folds and heavy bunches of cloth that cluttered
Siciolante's compositions for many years. These and other
Leonardesque defects of the Caetani Altar are more immediately striking than its virtues. The light contrasts seem overintense, and the colors, to quote Venturi, poco scelti: faults
again due to Leonardo's example.
The figures of the Caetani Altar are organically incoherent,
inconsistent in proportions, and unconvincing in detail (e.g.,
the fingernails appear to have been pasted on, but not quite
in the proper places). The large, awkward figures, which
seem to have been assembled from chunks and slabs of stiffly
joined wood, are crowded together in a manner that is almost

3
4
5

as it may simply have been deduced from Vasari's statement that Siciolante was
twenty when he painted the Caetani Altar (dated 1541).
Pantanelli, Notizie, II, 602.
Venturi, IX, 5, 591.
Giovanni Baglione, Le vite de' pittori, etc., Rome, 1935, 23. It must be Leonardo
Grazia da Pistoia to whom Baglione refers. Vasari does not mention Leonardo in
If Leonardo and Jacopino del Conte executed the Pala
connection with Siciolante.
dei Palafrenieri for Saint Peter's around 1537 (cf. Zeri, "Intorno a Gerolamo Siciounder Leonardo
lante," 148 n. 6) then Siciolante may have served his apprenticeship
in Rome at about that time.
Vasari-Milanesi,
VII, 571. The altarpiece was moved from the abbey to the Palazzo
around the middle of the last century (cf. Gelasio Caetani,
Caetani sometime
Domus Caetani, San Cassiano Val di Pesa, 1933, II, 55).

55

56

TheArtBulletin

to behold.At the sametime,the lightphysicallydisagreeable

yet it too is clumsy and inconsistent.l In some passages the

line is stiff and angular; in others it moves quickly through
hooks and loops. Evidently, the more firmly decided Girolamo
was about parts of the composition-for example, Sts. Peter
and Stephen where pentimenti are confined mainly to the
chalk under-drawing-the stiffer and more wooden his figures
became. Obviously he was uncertain about the pose of the
little St. John, for around this figure his pen wove a knot of
suggestions and cancellations.
The chief interest of the drawing is that it reveals that the
taut, massive structure of the painting was achieved through
deliberate corrections of an originally much freer and more
open design. To create a stronger, more architectonic arrangement, Siciolante reduced the space surrounding the figures and
substituted for the tree a niche which blocks off most of the
landscape background. In time Siciolante grew more skillful
at constructing figures and compositions, but the purposefully
sober, monumental character of this first altarpiece continues
throughout his work to culminate in such powerful, ascetic
masterpieces as the Crucifixion in Santa Maria di Monserrato.
Stylistically very similar to the Caetani Altar is a painting,
now lost, of the Madonna and Child, Sts. Peter, Paul and a
donor, of which a photograph has been published with an attribution to Perino del Vaga.8 A study in the Victoria and
Albert Museum for this painting (Fig. 2), also hitherto attributed to Perino, resembles the more finished parts of the Louvre
Madonna and Saints drawing.g Both painting and drawing
lack any trace of the suavity, grace, and highly accomplished
technique which distinguish the work of Perino del Vaga. The
facial types, the stiff, disjointed structure of the figures, the
drapery with its multiplicity of tight little folds, the peculiar

hands"? with their pasted-on fingernails all suggest Siciolante

as the artist responsible for these works, at an early date
around the time of the Caetani Altar. The composition of the
Victoria and Albert drawing is already close to that of the
painting, the major change being the way St. Peter's right
hand is placed. In the painting, where his hand lies against
the Madonna's arm, parallel to the picture plane, Siciolante
apparently decided to evade the foreshortening problem, which
clearly had defeated him in the drawing.
Another drawing, resembling the Caetani Altar in its composition, and therefore probably from these same years, is the
Marriage of St. Catherine in Christ Church, Oxford (Fig. 4),
there attributed to Bagnacavallo.11 This quick sketch is related
to both the Caetani Altar and the Victoria and Albert drawing
in the Madonna's pose and in many details, for example, Catherine's splay-fingered hand which is so like St. Stephen's right
hand in the painting or the hands of the Madonna in the drawing. The columnar figure of the bearded saint at the left is very
similar to the Caetani St. Peter with his heavy arm and awkward swathings of drapery whose folds shift direction and
collide repeatedly. The erratic, skidding character of the pen
lines recalls passages of the Louvre drawing, although the latter is a more controlled and finished study. The combination
of long or short dashing strokes with rather fussy, tight,
rounded strokes can also be seen in the Louvre study and occasionally in later sketches.
It has not been possible to determine whether the paintings
and drawings discussed above were executed in Sermoneta for
the Caetani or after Siciolante began his professional career
in Rome, for we do not know exactly when he settled there.
The first record of his presence in Rome is in 1543, the year he
was inscribed in the Accademia di San Luca. 12 He must have
joined Perino's shop around that time. Vasari says that he
executed an Annunciation on Perino's design in San Salvatore
in Lauro and that he assisted Perino at the Castel Sant'Angelo,
notably in the loggia overlooking Prati.13 The Annunciation
was destroyed by fire at the end of the sixteenth century and
the loggia is so badly preserved that one cannot judge its style
or authorship.
However, Siciolante's earliest important surviving painting
(Fig. 5), which might de dated around 1543-1545, obviously
was influenced by Perino. Baglione said about this Piethi for

7 Louvre, No. 10.074 (tcole d'Italie XVIe). 376 x 273mm, pen and brown wash over
black chalk. Mr. Philip Pouncey first identified the drawing as a study for the
Caetani Altar. I am deeply grateful to Mlle. Roseline Bacou and the staff of the
Cabinet des Dessins for their always generous assistance.
8 Giuliano Frabetti, "Sulle tracce di Perin del Vaga," Emporium, 127-28, 1958, 201,
fig. 9. Evidently the attribution was made on the basis of an old photograph of a
painting whose present location is unknown.
9 Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Dalton Bequest 1019-1900. 195 x 170mm, pen,
brown wash, white heightening
on grey paper. I am indebted to Mr. Peter WardJackson of the Department of Prints and Drawings for his kind assistance.
10 In this drawing, in the Caetani Altar, and in the study for it, Siciolante places the
two center fingers of a hand close together while the two flanking fingers are spread
wide apart-a
strained and awkward position in a hand held downwards.

11 Christ Church, Oxford, D. 31. 179 x 219mm, pen with brown ink. The works of
neither of the Bagnacavalli have ever been studied systematically.
When surveying
the drawings attributed to them, one begins to feel that the only common denominator in these compositions
is the figure of St. Catherine.
12 Accademia
di San Luca, Vol. 2, Registro degli introiti, fol. 19. Gaetani Moroni
(Dizionario di erudizione storico-ecclesiastica,
Venice, 1840, I, 51) states that Siciolante was listed among the founders of the Congregazione
dei Virtuosi in 1543, but
Professor Ansaldi of the Virtuosi archive has kindly informed me that the Congregazione was not founded in that year and that Siciolante is not mentioned until
1544. Cf. also: J. A. F. Orbaan, "Virtuosi al Pantheon,"
RepKunstW, 37, 1915, 22.
Moroni also mentions a high altar with a Salvatore in Santa Maria della PietA,
Cori, which he says was painted by Siciolante in 1542 (Dizionario, 39, 172). I have

ingcreatesdarkchasmsamongthem,andtheirangularposturesandsomewhat
seemto isolateeach
brooding
expressions
both
and
If
figure
physically spiritually. Siciolantealready
knewpaintings
by Perinodel Vaga,namedby Vasarias his
wasnotyet strongenoughto erasethe
master,his influence
ill-effectsof Siciolante'searliertraining.The CaetaniAltar-

easeandharmony.
It is an austere,
piecehasnoneof Perino's
almosta harshpainting.
A preparatory
study in the Louvrefor the CaetaniAltar
(Fig.3) is executedsomewhatmore fluently than the painting,

SICIOLANTE

Santi Apostoli (now in Poznan): "tutti vogliano; che sia disegno

di Perino suo Maestro; ben egli e vero, che e assai benfatto,
e mostra la bella maniera del Vaga."4 Siciolante must have
studied Perino's now-ruined Descent from the Cross for Santa
Maria sopra Minerva when designing his own Pieth." The
figure of Christ may be derived from that altarpiece, as are
more general elements, such as the pattern of descending
curves linking the figures. In Perino's composition, these
drooping, sagging movements form an almost unbroken chain
whose repetitive effect is one of gentle sadness. Siciolante
tried to apply this pattern of curves to a cubic structure which
he borrowed from another Pieta--the painting by Sebastiano
del Piombo now in Leningrad (Fig. 6). Sebastiano's diagonal
alignment of figures and angular juxtapositions of block-like
shapes, which carry emotional implications of stress and tension, obviously appealed to Siciolante. But two such divergent
ways of manipulating the movement of shapes and lines to
convey two dissimilar moods could only meaningfully be contrasted as Sebastiano himself contrasts them-playing
the
anguished violence of the mourners against the still, relaxed
body of Christ. To fuse the two ways, as Siciolante attempts
to do, merely dilutes the effects of each. The expressive possibilities of his composition are further weakened by his labored
handling of the drapery, which becomes especially distracting
in the senseless elaboration of folds in the foreground.
And yet, although the compositional ideas for the Pieta'
seem confused and the execution often graceless and inexpert,
a certain austere, forceful emotion is communicated through
these massive, monumental figures plunged in solitary gloom.
Siciolante's Pieth is, in a restrained way, dramatic and evidently deeply felt. One senses an intellectual and emotional
concentration on the brooding atmosphere of tragedy, a concentration that excludes rhetorical gestures such as Sebastiano's, or graceful posturing such as Perino's, that might detract from the mood of grief. In Siciolante's painting, the
attitudes of the figures seem the direct and natural expression of
their sorrow and are not imposed upon them by external formal considerations. They are not shaped and twisted to create
complex patterns or flattened to make a design on the surface
plane; the artist does not-as would Perino-interpose between his figures and the spectator the screen of some ornamental device. Only the body of Christ is flattened outward,

been unable to find this painting.

Siciolante's
Salvator Mundi in the Collegiata,
Cori, is surely of a much later date.
13 Vasari-Milanesi,
V, 626, 628f. The date 1543 is carved on the loggia, but the painted
decoration may be later.
14 Baglione, Le vite, 23. The painting is in the National Museum, Poznan. Apparently

it was sold from the CappellaMuti in 1818 for funds to repair the chapel (cf.
w Poznaniu,
Muzeum Wielkopolskie
Marjan Gumowski,
Krakow, 1924, 9 n. 16).
According to Milanesi (Vasari-Milanesi,
VII, 571 n. 1) the painting was given to
the painter Manno to restore and sell. It then passed to the collection
of Count
Raczynski in Berlin. I am grateful to Prof. Zdzislaw Kepinski for sending me the
the
Pieth
and
for
of
to
photograph
permission
publish it.
15 Although the lower half of Perino's painting had been ruined in the flood of 1530,
Siciolante could have known the studies for it (cf. A. E. Popham, "On some Works

I EARLY

WORKS

but he is presented to the spectator for contemplation and

devotion, perhaps as the embodiment of the Eucharist."'
Siciolante seems to have possessed a mind (similar possibly
to those of his brothers who turned to theology, the law, and
medicine) which worked coolly and rationally, a mind which
could deal cogently with what he considered to be the essential
meaning of each new subject, and which rejected, perhaps as
unworthy, or, at the least, as superfluous, any elaborations or
adornments that might detract from the ideas he believed significant. Siciolante was not an imaginative man-often in later
life he repeated his own compositions or copied from othersbut the sober character of his work, unrelieved by any touches
of fantasy, grace or wit, suggests a personality ruled by firm
aesthetic, moral, and religious principles. In striking contrast
to Perino and to the tradition and attitudes he represented,
Siciolante rarely undertook commissions for secular decorative
work. For the most part, he dedicated his career to painting
church chapels and altarpieces. Although Perino, successful
entrepreneur, might provide the commissions, neither his
worldly tastes nor his artistic principles could have been entirely congenial to Siciolante. As the Poznan Pieth reveals,
Perino's influence on Siciolante was only skin deep. His true
sympathies lay closer to Michelangelo, Sebastiano del Piombo,
and Daniele da Volterra.
Although the Pieth contains no specific references to Michelangelo's Last Judgment, the painting's strong, clear-cut, massive forms, each of which embodies and characterizes some
aspect of grief, must have been the product of long and exceptionally perceptive study of that fresco. Siciolante was twelve
in 1533, when Michelangelo received the commission for the
Last Judgment.-7 For the next nine years, the years of his
training and apprenticeship, until 1541, when he produced his
own first altarpiece, Rome had waited for the completion of
the Last Judgment, destined, it was expected, to be the greatest
painting by the greatest artist of those or perhaps of all times.
That expectation must have weighed heavily on contemporary
artists, especially on the young ones. Once the fresco had been
unveiled, painting in Rome was never quite the same again.
No one could compete, yet no one could hold undeflected to
former ways.
Siciolante's Pieth reflects not a trace of the poetic imagination that shaped Michelangelo's vision of heaven and hell.

by Perino del Vaga," BurlM, 86, 1945, facing p. 60, pl. Ic). Two drawings in
Windsor are related to the Poznan Pieta. One of these is probably, as Philip Pouncey suggests (A. E. Popham and Johannes Wilde, Italian Drawings of the XV and
XVI Centuries in . . . Windsor Castle, London, 1949, 333, No. 928, fig. 179), an
original study for the figure of Christ. Windsor No. 929, of the whole composition,
as is noted in the catalogue, is either a weak copy or a totally reworked original:
probably the former.
16 Cf. Frederick Hartt, "Power and the Individual
in Mannerist
Art," Studies in
Western Art, II, Princeton,
of Christ's body as the
1963, 229, for a discussion
Eucharist.
17 Cf. Johannes Wilde, Italian Drawings in the Department
of Prints and Drawings
in the British Museum: Michelangelo
and his Studio, London, 1953, 99f., concerning the date of the commission.

57

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The Art Bulletin

And unlike most of his contemporaries, he rejected the riches

of Michelangelo's pictorial vocabulary. From his youth, Siciolante must have shared those attitudes that were to characterize the Roman Reformation after the Council of Trent: the
dogmatic conservatism that caused Paul IV to demand the
destruction of the Last Judgment and that moved Giglio to
condemn it because, among other errors, angels, who are easily capable of supporting the world, should not be shown
writhing beneath the weight of the Cross. s Siciolante would
surely have agreed with Giglio that sforzi were both unnecessary and inappropriate for communicating religious meaning.
Already, Siciolante's paintings of the 1540's seem occasionally
to anticipate the decrees of the Council of Trent on art. His
Pieth for Santi Apostoli might almost have been painted in
accordance with those principles of piety, clarity, and simplicity established by the Council in 1563. What did, therefore,
move him deeply in the Last Judgment were the sustained intensity of Michelangelo's piety and the strong, spare, unornamented manner in which he communicated his devotion. These
are precisely the qualities that transcend the pictorial limitations of his own Pieth and rescue it from mediocrity."'
In the fall of 1545, Siciolante, apparently dissatisfied with
the commissions available in Rome, decided that he might be
more successful at a provincial court. Pier Luigi Farnese had
been created Duke of Parma and Piacenza in August of that
year, and in September took formal possession of his territories. From a letter Siciolante wrote on November 3 to his
patron, Bonifacio Caetani, we learn that he had by then reached
Piacenza and presented himself to the duke.20 But unfortunately Pier Luigi did not evidence much interest in his work.
Possibly, at that time he needed fortifications rather than
paintings. Siciolante complained to Bonifacio that he would
never have left Rome had he realized how meager the opportunities would be. Thus far, the duke had only commissioned
one work, "un quadro a olio assai grande dove sarra una madona con cierte altre figure." If nothing more promising is
offered, he says, he will return to Rome in the spring because
he does not wish to waste time.
A Holy Family with Saint Michael, Little Saint John, and an
Angel (Fig. 9), now in the gallery at Parma, may be the painting mentioned in Siciolante's letter; it is almost certainly the
one described by Vasari as having been painted by Siciolante
for Pier Luigi.21 This Holy Family, once attributed to Perino,

more closely approximates his style than any other completely

independent commission of Siciolante's. Probably Siciolante
wished to impress the duke by emphasizing his familiarity
with the style of the papal court. It is often said that the painting was influenced by Correggio. Perhaps the face of the
Christ Child is reminiscent of Correggio putti (the arrangement of drapery in circular patterns over the Madonna's body
also suggests Parmese influence) but Perino, rather than Correggio, inspired most of the figure types, as well as the unusual
softening of mood, forms, and lighting. The tender interplay
of gestures and glances is almost unknown in any other period
of Siciolante's career.
Although the drapery in the painting is still cluttered with
unnecessary complications, Siciolante is beginning to arrange
the folds in patterns that perform rhythmic functions in the
composition. However, the colors in the painting still seem
poorly planned: too varied and too intense. The harsh, rather
metallic blue and bright vermilion of the Madonna's robe are
not agreeable neighbors to the delicate couleurs changeants of
rose and blue lining her mantle, to the olive-greens and rusts
of Michael's garments, or to the deep blue-green swag of
drapery over her head. The abrupt contrasts seem too astringent for the gentle mood of the altarpiece.
Perhaps the study for another Holy Family with St. John,
hitherto attributed to Perino, dates from this same period
(Fig. 7).22 The pose of Madonna and Child recalls the study
(Fig. 2) for the Caetani Altar, but their faces, and the somewhat gentler mood and looser handling suggest a closer relationship to the Parma painting. The drawing style itself bears
only a slight resemblance to Perino's, which is never so uncertain, so tangled with meaningless scribbles, corrections, and
redundancies. The fussy character of the drawing is anticipated in the sketch for the Marriage of St. Catherine (Fig. 4),
as well as by certain passages of the Caetani Altar study. A
parallel may be found in the treatment of drapery, veils, and
hair in the Parma altarpiece.
In spite of Vasari's statement that Siciolante did many
things for Pier Luigi, he mentions specifically only the Holy
Family, and we know of nothing else. Siciolante's whereabouts and activities for the years 1546 to 1548 are, therefore,
a matter of speculation, and none of the the alternatives seems
to account entirely satisfactorily for the facts at present available to us. It generally has been assumed that Siciolante re-

(Giovanni Andrea Giglio, "Dialogo

18 Paola Barocchi, Trattati d'arte del cinquecento
. .. degli errori e degli abusi de' pittori circo I'istoria"), Bari, 1961, II, 46.
Trinith dei
for the Cappella Orsini, Santissima
19 Daniele da Volterra's Deposition
to painting of the forties a new
Monti, was even more influential in introducing
But unlike the Pieth, the dramatic effect of
and monumentality.
clarity, simplicity,
the Deposition
depends primarily on the empathic physical impression made upon
the spectator. The Cross and ladders tower over him, their size and height alone
and the large, sweeping gestures of the figures are stirring; they
awe-inspiring,
function precisely in the dual sense of that word. By comparison, Siciolante's
Pieth
rather than expansive. The meagerness
of Siciolante's
is constrained;
concentrated
inventive powers places restrictions on the composition that tend to contribute to its

lack of interest in formal problems was one of his

emotional intensity. Siciolante's
but Daniele's excessive concern with them was to prove
most serious limitations,
even more harmful to the quality of his work.
20 Caetani archives (C. 4221). This letter and a few others by Siciolante were mentioned by Gelasio Caetani (op. cit., II, 56, and cf. index) but have been overlooked
I am very
probably because the book is not easily available.
by art historians,
grateful to Mr. Hubert Howard for permission to use the archive, and to his archivist, Dr. Luigi Fiorani, for his assistance in transcribing some of the letters.
21 Vasari-Milanesi,
VII, 573. The painting was first recognized by Hermann Voss as
in Rom und
the Siciolante mentioned in Vasari (Die Malerei der Splitrenaissance
Florenz, Berlin, 1920, I, 104).

SICIOLANTE I EARLYWORKS

mained in Piacenza until Pier Luigi was assassinated in September, 1547. He then, it is thought, fled to Bologna where he
painted the San Martino Altarpiece, which is dated 1548. However, as we shall see, the San Martino Altarpiece was commissioned before June, 1547, and even if Siciolante departed
from Piacenza as early as the spring of 1547, we are still left
with the year 1546 to 1547 for which we have no known
works by Siciolante. If, on the other hand, Siciolante went
back to Rome in 1546, as he suggested that he might in his
letter to Bonifacio Caetani, he must either have executed the
San Martino Altar in Rome or returned to Bologna in 1548
to finish it. Until new documents or paintings are discovered,
this problem must remain unsolved.
If Siciolante did return to Rome in 1546, he may have resumed work for Perino, perhaps assisting him at this time with
the decoration of the Sala Paolina in the Castel Sant'Angelo.23
When one searches for individual artists among the many who
executed Perino's designs in the Castel Sant'Angelo, the problem seems almost hopeless. Certain assistants, such as Tibaldi,
are, for the most part, easily distinguishable, but Siciolante
did not have Tibaldi's fantastic, irrepressible imagination, or
his technical ability. His contributions to the decoration are
harder to identify. Although Vasari does not mention specifically the frescoes of the Sala Paolina when he says that Siciolante worked for Perino in the Castel Sant'Angelo, a pair of
allegorical over-door figures representing Hope and Love,
with attendant putti (Fig. 8), can, I believe, be ascribed to him.
Unlike the other graceful over-door figures, many of them
executed by Perino's assistants, these are solid, chunky women
with thick bodies, strong shoulders, heavy arms, and the
broad, impassive faces of Siciolante's Madonnas. As in most
figures painted by Siciolante, head, neck, and shoulders of
these figures are put together with little feeling for their organic relationship. Compared with the other slender, sinuous,
elegant over-door ladies, these two seem to act their parts
stiffly, like a pair of country girls who have strayed into sophisticated society. Undoubtedly Siciolante followed Perino's
cartoons as closely as he was able, for one can perceive the
master's idea, but the execution, particularly of the drapery,
shows that Siciolante still did not understand completely how
various subtleties and implications of a subject can be communicated through the formal design. The meaningless proliferation of drapery folds beneath the figure of Hope surely

does not convey Perino's intentions but is typical of Siciolante's work of these years.
Probably early in 1547, perhaps through a recommendation
of Ercole Malvezzi, whom he might have known as governor
of Parma under Pier Luigi, Siciolante received from another
member of the Malvezzi family the commission for an altarpiece in the Carmelite church of San Martino, Bologna (Fig.
12).24 As the inscription on the altarpiece states, Matteo Malvezzi ordered the painting, but before it was completed he died,
whereupon his heirs assumed the obligation. Work on the
commission must, therefore, have begun before June, 1547,
when Matteo died, and continued until 1548, the date on the

22 Victoria and Albert Museum, Dyce 189. 180 x 135mm, pen and brown ink. It is possible that a Holy Family in the Fassini collection (Venturi, IX, 5, fig. 316) may also
date from these years. I have not seen the painting.
23 The surviving archives for Castel Sant'Angelo
cover only the year 1545, but some,
records for 1546, which can no longer be located, were
apparently
incomplete,
published by A. Bertolotti, "Speserie segrete e pubbliche di Papa Paolo III," Atti
e memorie delle R. R. deputazioni di storia patria per provincie dell'Emilia, n. s. 3,
pt. 1, 1878. These archives included payments for work on the vault of the Sala
Paolina in January, 1546. Throughout the many payments for work on this room in
1545, there are repeated references to the vault but none to the wall decoration.
I assume, therefore, that work on the walls did not begin before February, 1546 at

the earliest. The grisaille roundel between the putti is not by Siciolante.
24 The Parma archives include many letters written by Ercole Malvezzi in Parma to
Pier Luigi in Piacenza.
25 For the inscription
on Malvezzi's
tomb cf. Descrizione
della chiesa parrocchiale
di S. Martino Maggiore e luoghi annessi, Bologna, 1839, 18. Giuseppe Fornasini
(Per le nozze Malvezzi-Sacchetti,
Bologna, 1927, 75) says Malvezzi died on June 20
He also says that Malvezzi was born in 1470,
(XIII Kal. Julias on the tombstone).
an error if he died at the age of eighty-three,
as he did according to both Fornasini
and the tomb inscription.
26 Louvre, No. 10.055. 427 x 259mm, pen, brown wash, white heightening
over black
chalk. The drawing was first identified by Philip Pouncey.

painting.25

A study in the Louvre for the San Martino Altar probably

represents the original project as it appeared before Malvezzi's
death (Fig. 11).26 His heirs apparently decided to insert the
donor's portrait, based on some earlier likeness, since Malvezzi was over eighty when he commissioned the painting. In
order to balance the portrait, St. Luke's bull was moved to
the right and the inscription added. Although these changes
can hardly be regarded as improvements, the base of the
throne was also modified and, in the painting, provides a
more satisfactory transition between the upper and lower
halves. The Louvre drawing still shows strong traces of
Perino's influence in some of the faces, in the plump, rounded
modeling of Madonna and Child, and in a certain gentleness
and suavity-especially in figures of the upper half-that have
almost disappeared in the painting. In the drawing, the Madonna and saints bend and turn more gracefully, the drapery
binds them together in flowing curves, the shadows are neither
so dark nor so disruptive as they are in the painting, which, by
contrast, one might almost imagine to be the product of some
student of Giulio Romano. In Giulio's works Siciolante must
have found inspiration for the stiff, statuary figures of his
painting with their stiff torsos, and the tight, short curves of
limbs and drapery, which do not form continuing rhythms,
but are broken, abrupt accents. He also may have appropriated
from Giulio the hard, clear light which isolates parts of the
figures against the shadows.
The hieratic structure of the San Martino Altarpiece, a
Madonna seated on a high throne above saints and donor, may
be derived from Venetian or, more probably, from Ferrarese
prototypes. Venetian Madonnas, however, are always sur-

59

60

The Art Bulletin

roundedby landscapesand skies, fruits,birds,or elaborate

architecturalsettings. Even the Ferrareseexamples,while

sometimes
simpler,neverarereducedto so barea stageas
Siciolante'saltarpiece.The only decorativedetailshe includes
arethe attributesrequiredfor identification
of the figures.All

attentionis concentrated
on thesefigureswhicharepressed
intoa rigidlysymmetrical
oval,entirelyfillingthe narrowslab

of space.
withinthisinflexible
Althoughthefiguresappearimmovable
oval pattern,the altarpiece,throughpurelyabstractmeans,

Becauseof the crowded

presentsan animatedappearance.
surface,becauseof the repetitionof short,vigorouscurves,
andespeciallybecauseof the rangeof brighthues,the paint-

which
ingseemslessfrozenandsomberthanthephotograph,
exaggeratesthe valuecontrasts,mightlead one to think.The

colorsaremuchthe sameas thoseof the Parmaaltarpiece

but are distributedwith apparentlygreatercalculation.The

vermilionof the Madonna's

robe,for example,is repeated
in Jerome'scloakwhile the blue of her mantleis echoedin
Luke'srobe.Siciolante'slove of couleurschangeantsreaches

in thefigureof St. Catherine

extremes
whichshimmers,
like
someexoticfish, with pinksand blues,violet and rose, olive
andrustandpalegreen.Owingto the manycouleurschangeants throughoutthe altarpieceand to the smoothlyfinished
applicationof paint,the surfacesgleamwith a metalliclustre
that again remindsone of paintingsby Giulio Romano,or

evenof certainworksby Raphael,

suchas theSt.CeciliaAltar
in Bologna.

Butanestheticresponse
toitsabstract
design-farmoreobtrusivein the photographthanin the painting-by no means

is intendedto predominate
in one'stotalimpression
of the
painting.The compositionis not meantto beguilethe viewer
with its formalintricacies,or to distracthim fromthe serious
religiouscontentof the painting.If the movementsand atti-

tudesof certainfiguresseemforcedorunnatural,
it is because
Siciolante's
not becausehe has
figuresusuallyareawkward,
tried to shape them into ornamentalpatternsor dramatic

poses.AsinthePoznanPietYi,
heseemstohaverejected
almost
completelythe decorativeandrhetoricalformulasso cherished

by most of his contemporaries.

The hard,clearformsof
the figures,their minutelydetailedsurfaces,and highly individualizedfaces recall--perhapsdeliberately-ancientRomanportraitbustsor the portraitsof someQuattrocento
artist
suchas Ghirlandaio.
Siciolantemeansto convinceus of thereal-

27 I have not succeeded in penetrating

the iconography
of the altarpiece. While the
presence of certain figures is easily accounted for-St.
Martin, as titular saint, and
B. Alberto Abbate, a local Carmelite (cf. Gasparo Bombaci, Memorie sacre de' gli
huomini illustri . . . di Bologna, 1640, 65f.)-others
are less explicable. Jerome may
have been included because, with other hermit saints, he was especially
revered
by the Carmelites or because the Vulgate had just been established
by the Council
as the basic Scriptural authority. (St. Jerome, incidentally,
is a curious transmogri-

ity of these figures. And then, having first acknowledged their

physical presence, we are drawn to observe their spiritual state:
the deeply serious concern with which they are debating some
problem of religious import. These saints might be portraits
of Malvezzi's fellow-citizens assembled to discuss a crucial
point of Church doctrine. They wear expressions of frowning
intensity, but their gestures are so reserved and contained that
without previous knowledge of the issue involved, we cannot
guess the true significance of the altarpiece.27Siciolante makes
little attempt to communicate, beyond insisting on the realism
of appearances. He makes no personal appeal to the spectator.
His figures seem withdrawn from ordinary life and are not
easily accessible. The tender human sentiment of the Parma
altarpiece has vanished, and in its place, in spite of the physical
immediacy of the figures, is a mood of severe detachment
from worldly affairs. These saints command worship, not for
any mundane reason-for rich apparel, dramatic conduct, emotional appeal--but because of the gravity and authority of
their demeanor, because of their evidently intense and exclusive concern with issues of theological importance. The discipline of the painting's formal design is the outward expression
of the moral and intellectual discipline of the figures.
While certain other paintings of the thirties and forties
(most of them by Florentines, e.g., Vasari's Immaculate Conception or Jacopino del Conte's Descent from the Cross) may
have been as abstract in design as the San Martino Altar, their
design is rarely matched by so rigorous an abstraction of
spirit. For Vasari, the design becomes an end in itself, and he
delights in playing with its possibilities. Nor can he often resist
including elaborate bits of still life and other fanciful details
to display his skill. In Jacopino's Descent from the Cross,
the composition again serves a primarily decorative functionalthough the painting is filled with gentle pathos-and provides an ornamental frame for the graceful ballet of the Marys.
By comparison, Siciolante's San Martino Altarpiece seems
puritanical: a Mondrian compared to a Braque. Restrained
yet intense, conservative, aristocratic, uncompromising-perhaps no earlier painting by any sixteenth century artist so
clearly embodies the spirit of the Roman Reformation.
Siciolante could not have remained long in Bologna after
finishing the San Martino Altar. Lamo, writing a dozen years
later, mentions, besides the altarpiece, only one other painting
by Siciolante in Bologna, a nude woman, "bella fra molte altre
belle."28 Possibly also a drawing of St. Peter in the Uffizi (Fig.

Erithrean sybil.) But for the other three saints I have

fication of Michelangelo's
One would expect
Luke is especially
found no convincing
puzzling.
explanation.
to find Matthew or even John. I wish to thank the Reverend John O'Malley, S. J.
of the altarpiece and for his asfor his suggestions
concerning the iconography
sistance with the bibliography on the Roman Reformation.
28 Pietro Lamo, Graticola di Bologna ...
[1560], Bologna, 1844, 27.

M2I

SICIOLANTE

1. Madonna and Child with Saints. Rome, Palazzo Caetani (photo: Gabinetto
Fotografico Nazionale)

3. Madonna and Child with Saints. Paris, Louvre, 10.074

2. Madonna and Child, Saints and Donor. London, Victoria and Albert Museum, Dyce 1019-1900

4. Marriage of St. Catherine. Oxford, Christ Church, D 31 (courtesy of the

Governing Body of Christ Church)

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5. Siciolante, PietY.Poznan, Muzeum Norodowego

6. Sebastiano del Piombo, Pieth. Leningrad,Hermitage

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SICIOLANTE
7. Holy Family with St. John. London,
8. Detail

of over-door

Fotografico

Nazionale)

figures.

Rome,

Victoria
Castel

and Albert Museum,

Sant'Angelo

(photo:

Dyce 189
Gabinetto

9. Holy Family with St. Michael. Parma, Pinacoteca (photo: Anderson)

10

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SICIOLANTE

10. St. Peter. Florence,Uffizi 13553

11. Madonna and Child with Saints. Paris, Louvre10.055

12. Madonna and Child with Saints. Bologna, San Martino

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SICIOLANTE

13. Marriage of Alexander and Roxane. Rome, Galleria Borghese (photo: Ali-

nari)
14. Baptism of Clovis. Rome, San Luigi dei Francesi (photo: Gabinetto
FotograficoNazionale)

15. Study for the Assumption of the Virgin, Rome, Santa Maria dell'Anima.
FormerlyGeiger collection (photo: Witt Library)

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SICIOLANTE

16. Caetani Chapel. Sermoneta, San Giuseppe (photo: Soprintendenza ai Monumenti del Lazio)

17. Detail of the Caetani Chapel. Sermoneta, San Giuseppe (photo: Soprintendenza ai Monumenti del Lazio)

SICIOLANTE I EARLY WORKS

10), there attributed to Perino, may have been executed at this

time.29 The hard, shiny, crinkled-metal surface and dark
shadows which eat away the saint's figure closely resemble
the drawing for the San Martino Altarpiece. No painting for
which the St. Peter was designed is known.
In October of 1547, while Siciolante was perhaps in Bologna,
Perino del Vaga died, leaving many unfinished commissions
and bestowing fresh opportunities upon the younger, less successful artists of his entourage. No doubt, as soon as he could
get away, Siciolante returned to Rome to secure his share of
this inheritance.
With other artists of Perino's circle, Siciolante took over the
commission for a chapel in San Luigi dei Francesi. A contract
had been signed on March 20, 1547 between Nicold Dupre'
and Perino for painting and stucco in the chapel"o but by the
time of his death the following October, Perino had been paid
only fifty of the 250 scudi promised him. A few weeks later, on
November 13, 1547, Jacopino del Conte contracted to finish
the chapel in Perino's stead.-1 According to Vasari, Jacopino
painted the altarpiece, as well as "molte cose" along with
Siciolante.32 Of the two large side-wall frescoes, one, the Baptism of Clovis (Fig. 14), is attributed by tradition to Siciolante.
The Baptism probably was Siciolante's first independent
fresco in Rome after Perino's death. One imagines that he
felt a heavy responsibility for continuing the best traditions
of Roman fresco painting and that he looked to the "old masters," to Raphael and to Michelangelo for inspiration." In
the Baptism he tried to recapture the harmonious symmetry,
grandeur, and monumentality of the Stanza della Segnatura. He
distributed his figures, like those of the School of Athens, in a
spacious, centralized architectural setting. As Professor Freedberg has pointed out to me, the arrangement of figures
resembles that of the Donation of Rome in the Sala di Costantino. Evidently, Siciolante considered borrowing from an obvious source, the Baptism of Constantine, but, after studying the
fresco, rejected its agitation and complexities, and referred to
the Donation of Rome on the adjoining wall for his composition.34 But only the bones of this composition interested
him, not its surface appearance. The figures in Siciolante's
Baptism move quietly and naturally; their few gestures are

controlled and deliberately placed. Beside their subdued devotional attitudes even Raphael's figures seem almost operatic,
Giulio's and Penni's frivolous. At the time that Siciolante
painted his Baptism, Michelangelo was finishing work on the
Cappella Paolina. In Michelangelo's frescoes, Siciolante found
authority for the bareness and sobriety of the Baptism. From
them too he must have acquired certain peculiarities of his
figure style, especially the tendency to treat the figures as detached rectangular units, contained and isolated in their responses to the central dramatic action.
In the Baptism of Clovis, the colors are as muted as the
expressive content of the fresco: soft ochre-yellows, pale
greens, accents of rust and violet against the predominating
grey of the architecture. There are no chattering bystanders,
posturing courtiers, rich clothing, elaborate armor or coiffures.
As in the Poznan Pieta and the San Martino Altar, Siciolante
avoids any distractions to mind or eye. All attention is to be
concentrated on the miracle of the sacrament. Within the absolute symmetry of the architecture, the figures are arranged
in diagonals which converge at one point, on St. Remi, archbishop of Reims, as he is about to perform the act that will convert King Clovis to Christianity." It is a moment of wonder, of
suspense, and of deliberation. As he waits for the consummation of the act, the spectator's eye travels over the kneeling
women, led by Queen Clotilda, up through the gesture of one
man's hand to the crucified Christ in the center. Here he
pauses, contemplates the sacrifice at the heart of Christianity,
turns again to the scene of conversion to Christ's church.
As a diagram of the triumph of Christianity, the composition
certainly was skillfully planned. However, the Baptism of
Clovis presents no passionate appeal for crusades against the
unbeliever; its full religious impact is not immediately accessible and can be understood only through deliberate effort.
Siciolante was not, of course, exceptional in his intellectualization of religious themes. The court of Paul III liked complicated allegories and imprese whose often farfetched meanings
were already incomprehensible at the time without the original
programs for guidance. Even Carnival carts, whose subject
was, in one year at least, the triumph of the Church over the
infidel, were extraordinarily abstruse compilations of classi-

29 Uffizi No. 13553 F. Oval format, 215 x 159mm, black chalk, pen, grey-brown wash,
white heightening,
on brownish paper.
30 Umberto Gnoli, "Documenti senza casa," RivdA, 17, 1935, 216f.
31 Ibid., 217. Unfortunately
Gnoli does not transcribe the text of this lost document
so that it is not possible to tell which statements are his own editorial interpretation and which were actually contained in the document. He says Jacopino promised to finish the chapel, Perino "essendo
alcuni giorni innanzi morto," but he
gives the date of the document as November 13, 1548. Since Perino died October 19,
1547, either the date Gnoli transcribes is incorrect or the statement is Gnoli's own
mistake.
32 Vasari-Milanesi,
VII, 416, 573. For the subjects of the scenes see Mgr. D'Armailhacq, L'dglise nationale de Saint-Louis des FranGais A Rome, Rome, 1894, 131ff.
33 Some have seen the influence of Garofalo and other Emilian painters in this fresco.

and certain of these

It is undeniable
exist between
that similarities
Siciolante
rather than from
artists, but I suspect that they result from parallel developments
direct influence. The influence of Jacopino appears to me more
any significant,
obvious in the figure style of the fresco.
is hard to judge from the
34 A drawing by Siciolante (or a copy after his drawing-it
for the Baptism is, or was, in the Iaremitch collection,
U.S.S.R. The
photograph)
both in the gendrawing is closer than the fresco to the Donation of Constantine,
eral disposition of figures and in individual motifs.
35 According to legend, the phial of holy oil was brought from heaven by a dove.
and restoration
of the
Unless the dove has been lost through the deterioration
eliminated
St. Remi's gesture
it, although
fresco, it would seem that Siciolante
the
Strangely,
suggests that the phial which he holds aloft may be miraculous.
phial itself is so painted that it resembles a white dove.

61

62

The Art Bulletin

cal, contemporary, and Christian motifs.36 The remarkable

thing about the Baptism of Clovis is certainly not its pondered,
rational approach to one of the most stirring issues of the day,
but rather the lucidity and simplicity with which Siciolante sets
forth his ideas. One need only compare the Baptism with
Vasari's frescoes executed a few years earlier in the Cancelleria to grasp the unusual clarity of Siciolante's communication and of the form in which it is presented.
Apart from the old masters-Michelangelo and Sebastiano
da Volterra provides the only comdel Piombo-Daniele
Roman painting of the forties. By this
in
parable development
time, Daniele must have begun work on the Cappella della
Rovere in Santissima Trinita dei Monti. While the figures and
settings of these frescoes are even more self-consciously monumental than Siciolante's, the compositions lack his singleness
and clarity of intention. In his second chapel in Santissima
Trinit' dei Monti, Daniele's obsessive concern with complex
problems of space, and the form and movement of figures
within space, blights most of the frescoes with an arid, labored appearance. Only the Assumption retains all the dramatic power of his earlier Deposition. In the Assumption,
where he is at his best, Daniele far surpasses Siciolante. By
comparison, Siciolante's composition seems limp and tepid,
his forms devoid of energy, his figures but feebly expressive.
In the Baptism, and in many subsequent works, Siciolante, by
his intellectual approach, his emotional restraint, and his reduction of pictorial means, sinks dangerously close to vapidity.
During the spring and summer of 1549, Siciolante was
working on a commission for the French ambassador, Claude
d'Urfe. On June 5, 1549, Siciolante wrote to Bonifacio Caetani
regretting that he could not come to Sermoneta to paint some
rooms for him because he was behind on an "opera" which
he had promised the ambassador.7 It would be tempting to
identify this unfortunately vague reference with the chapel
in San Luigi dei Francesi, but there appear to be no grounds
for associating the chapel with D'Urf6.
However, probably sometime around 1549, Siciolante did
return to Sermoneta to paint a chapel for Bonifacio Caetani in
the church of San Giuseppe (Figs. 16, 17). Throughout his
life, Siciolante maintained close ties with Bonifacio, addressed
letters to him as patron, signed them as vassal, and performed
many minor commissions for him. Sermoneta was only a few

hours ride from Rome, and it was even possible to go down for
a day, as Siciolante offered to do on one occasion.38
Unfortunately, the Caetani archives apparently do not preserve any account books, other than notations of minor household expenses, from before the end of the sixteenth century.
It has been impossible, therefore, to fix a precise date to the
chapel, but the cool, sharp light illuminating the frescoed
scenes and the somewhat metallic treatment of the drapery
(though less pronounced than in the oil medium) suggest a
date of around 1548-1550, not much later than the San Martino Altar. In spite of the difference in scale, the chapel frescoes
are also closely related stylistically to the Baptism of Clovis.
In fact, the small vault compartment with the Arrest of Christ
might be considered a reduced version of that composition.
The chapel in San Giuseppe is perhaps the most attractive
work Siciolante ever did, especially because of the unusually
delicate, subtle range of colors, but also because of the handsome proportions of the painted architecture, and the refined
decorative detail. The general design of the chapel follows
Peruzzi's Ponzetti chapel in Santa Maria della Pace, with a
Madonna below, and compartments containing Old and New
Testament scenes above. Some of the heads also seem to be
derived from Peruzzi, as is the occasionally knifelike treatment
of the drapery folds. But the prevailing influence is still Perino's. The powdery pastel colors, the play of violets and
bleached terra cottas against the cool, grey painted architecture
resemble Perino's frescoes in the Palazzo Baldassini and probably also the Madonna chapel in San Marcello.9 Many of the
figures-for example, those in the Resurrection-are so like
Perino's that one suspects them to be copies, although the
models are not known. But it is significant that, for the most
part, these derivations seem to refer to works of the 1520's or
earlier. Almost nothing-except perhaps the caryatids enframing the Madonna-reminds one of Perino's latest known
chapel decoration, the Cappella Massimi in Santissima Trinita
dei Monti.40
In fact, the Caetani chapel appears to signal, even more distinctly than the Baptism of Clovis, a deliberate return to the
style of painting in Rome before the Sack. The flat, linear
architecture with its crisp, delicate detail, the refined, thinly
spaced grotesque ornament, the types and poses of figures,
might almost persuade one that the chapel had been painted the
year Siciolante was born. Nearly every figure is a by-now-

in
36 Cf. Vincenzo Forcella, Tornei e giostre, ingressi trionfali e feste carnevalesche
Roma sotto Paolo III, Rome, 1885, 87ff. (Carnival of 1545).
but D'Urf6 held the
37 C. 4585 I. Siciolante does not actually name the ambassador,
de France, Paris, 1909, I, 116).
post from 1548 to 1551 (Rene Ancel, Nonciatures
referred to in the letter is not
38 C. 5463. It is possible that the "MO Girollamo"
to Siciolante
Other references
Siciolante.
may be
regarding minor commissions
found in: C. 5810 I, November 15, 1556, concerning stone Siciolante brought from
the design for an impresa (cf.
Monte Nero; C. 5933, January 1, 1557, concerning
also 5935, 5942); C. 9450 I, January 19, 1574, from Siciolante to Bonifacio Caetani
concerning a frame and various other items. There is also an undated letter (C.

5929 X) to Bonifacio, assigned in the archive, for no stated reason, to 1557, from
Pietro Cella (who wrote the letter) and Siciolante explaining that they were not at
there are other
incident during Carnival. Undoubtedly
fault in some housebreaking
references to Siciolante among the hundreds of letters preserved in the archive,
which I have barely skimmed. Siciolante may also have owned property in Sermoneta for he is apparently listed in a census of the town as "Jeronimo Ciciulante"
(C. 6803, undated but assigned in the archive to 1559).
and the San Marcello chapel see
39 For Perino's studies for the Palazzo Baldassini
Bernice Davidson,
"Early Drawings by Perino del Vaga," Master Drawings, 1, pt.
3, 1963, pls. 2, 4a.

SICIOLANTE

canonic type and evokes memories of the great masters and

great monuments from the golden age before the Sack of
Rome. Siciolante quotes Raphael, Michelangelo, Perino, and
Peruzzi, just as they in their day had quoted from works of
antiquity, and with the same fluency, the same confident blending of ingredients to form a consistent whole. It is only
through close comparison with the original sources of his inspiration, with the Ponzetti chapel or with Raphael's Logge,
that the neo-classical character of these frescoes becomes apparent. While the borrowings in the Caetani chapel have little
in common with those ludicrously inappropriate lexicons of
famous figures produced by some of his contemporaries, Siciolante does not entirely erase the quotation marks. There is a
faintly self-conscious quality to his syntax. Each figure is a
little bit isolated and set apart from its neighbors, with a minimum of overlapping, in an open, friezelike arrangement. The
figures and the rhythmic patterns linking them are brittle and
sharply defined. It is almost as though Siciolante were trying
to adapt forms from the classical masters to a structural pattern that is intended to suggest the style of the late Quattrocento, the frescoes of, say, Pinturicchio.41
Indeed, in many ways, Siciolante's paintings throughout his
career recall-not always or entirely deliberately-the late
Quattrocento. In his often awkward striving for monumentality of figures and settings, his careful surface realism, his
nearly static compositions, his sober and impassive actors,
Siciolante transmits the heritage of such fin de siecle painters
as Domenico Ghirlandaio deep into the sixteenth century, to
a time when the taste for revivals of the Quattrocento became
common. His prosaic, somewhat archaistic translations of the
art of his immediate predecessors-of Michelangelo and Sebastiano del Piombo in particular-had even larger, more direct
consequences, for, with Daniele, his example gave significant
impetus to the classicistic current in sixteenth century Roman
art and led eventually to the kind of vacuous monumentality
frequently seen in the work of such artists as Livio Agresti or
Girolamo Muziano.
It is not the purpose of this article to follow Siciolante's
activities beyond the 1540's, but because the next decade of
his career remains a blank (no known documented works survive from the fifties), I should like merely to suggest a few new
dates and attributions to help fill the gap. Venturi lists only

40 For Perino's design for the Cappella Massimi see: J. A. Gere, "Two late Fresco
Cycles by Perino del Vaga in the Massimi Chapel and the Sala Paolina," BurlM,
102, 1960, figs. 16, 17.
41 Wolfgang Lotz ("Mannerism
in Architecture:
Changing Aspects," Studies in Western Art, II, Princeton, 1963, 243f.) has found similar revival tendencies
in Roman
architecture of the fifties and sixties.
42 Venturi, IX, 5, p. 548. The arms of Giulio III are mentioned
in Vasari-Milanesi,
VI, 584.
43 Archivio di Stato, Camerale I, 1519, fols. 76, 86v. I am indebted to Dr. Anna Maria
Corbo of the Archivio for helping me to locate the Sant'Andrea payments.

I EARLY

WORKS

two works, both lost, for these years: a coat of arms for Giulio
III and an altar for Sant'Andrea in Via Flaminia, which, following Bertolotti, he dates 1552.42 The only payments I have
found for the latter appear in 1553 and 1554.43
Probably between 1550 and 1555, Siciolante painted some
part of the decoration for the Palazzo Spada. Vasari says that
he did a room with scenes from Roman history, but I can see
no signs of his collaboration in the rooms with paintings of
Roman subjects.44 However, a frieze with the story of Psyche
in a small room at the front of the palace is so close to Siciolante's paintings of the late forties that if it is not his work, one
must look for some hitherto unknown assistant or imitator.
The frieze has been so heavily repainted, perhaps in the seventeenth century, that it is impossible to reach any firm conclusions about the execution. The compositions are imitated from
Perino's story of Psyche in the Castel Sant'Angelo.
Perhaps also during the 1550's Siciolante undertook another
commission for fresco decoration, that of the Casino OlgiatiBevilacqua. This so-called Villa of Raphael was destroyed in
the last century, but three scenes from one frescoed ceilingthe Marriage of Alexander and Roxane (Fig. 13), the Archers,
and the Offering to Vertumnis and Pomona-were detached
and now hang in the Galleria Borghese.45 The frescoes, even
before being detached, were in poor condition, but two of
them seem to me to have been painted by Siciolante. The
Archers may be by some other hand.
The powdery pastel colors of these works, dominated by
greys and pale jade green, with touches of a golden yellow,
wine, rose, and couleurs changeants, are very similar to, although cooler than, those of the Caetani chapel in Sermoneta.
The faces of the figures are typical of Siciolante, with their
bright eyes (the whites sharply defined, the irises very dark),
their long, rather thick noses with bulbous tips, their short
upper lips and small, pursed mouths, and their thick, curly
hair with one lock falling over the forehead.
These frescoes generally have been considered the work of
some immediate follower of Raphael-occasionally of Perino
-but there has been little agreement concerning the attribution, date, or relative quality of the three fragments. Such
diversity of opinion is understandable since the frescoes were
imitations of works by other artists, and since Siciolante, as in
the Caetani chapel, deliberately tried to recreate the style of
an earlier epoch.

44 Vasari-Milanesi,
VII, 572. Baglione, Le vite, 24. Cf. Jack Wasserman's
arguments
for dating the palace construction
during the time of Paul III, "Palazzo Spada,"
AB, 43, 1961, 58-63. The fresco decorations may have been started during the late
forties but probably were for the most part executed under Giulio III. Apparently
Cardinal Capodiferro fell into disgrace with Paul IV, and after his election to the
papacy lived far from Rome (Ancel, Nonciatures,
I, 15f.). It is likely, therefore, that
work on the palace ceased at that time.
45 Cf. Paola della Pergola, Galleria Borghese, Rome, 1957, II, Nos. 180-82, for the
history and sources of the frescoes.

63

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The Art Bulletin

Perhaps during the second half of the decade, Siciolante

painted the Fugger chapel in Santa Maria dell'Anima. Schmidlin cites a document dated April, 1549, in which the church
authorities beg Anton Fugger to have his chapel painted; it
was evidently not the first time the request had been made.46
Because of this document, the chapel usually is dated around
1549-1550, but, judging from stylistic evidence, Fugger must
have delayed yet longer before he at last commissioned Siciolante to paint scenes from the life of the Virgin. These frescoes
already approach Siciolante's late style and are so closely related to the chapel in San Tommaso dei Cenci, dated 1565, that
they can hardly have been painted a full fifteen years earlier.
In the kneeling women of the Baptism of Clovis, one can find
prototypes for the massive figures of the Fugger chapel whose
ponderous drapery loops in abstract patterns that deny the
laws of gravity and anatomy. The drapery folds of the Anima

in Rom, Freiburg, 1906,

46 Joseph Schmidlin, Geschichte der deutschen Nationalkirche
243. I have been unable to locate this document. The church archives do not, so as
I was able to discover, include any material on the chapel.
47 The present location of this drawing is unknown. When in the Geiger collection it
was attributed to Fra Bartolommeo.
A study by Siciolante for one of the kneeling
apostles of the Fugger chapel vault is in the Albertina as Franciabigio
(Alfred Stix
umbrischen und ramischen
and L. Frahlich-Bum, Die Zeichnungen der toskanischen,
has also recognized
Schulen,
1932, No. 164). Dr. Konrad Oberhuber
Vienna,
In the Fugger chapel frescoes and in later works,
this drawing as a Siciolante.
such as San Tommaso dei Cenci, there may be some oddly delayed influence from
Pordenone's frescoes in Piacenza.
48 Madonna and Child with St. John, No. 219 (cf. Venturi, IX, 5, fig. 315); St. Andrew,
No. 38; and St. Catherine of Alexandria, No. 40.
49 A few paintings that have been assigned to Siciolante's
early years seem to me
doubtful attributions.
The Venus Urania in the Italian embassy in London might
be a work of 1544-45 as has been suggested,
but it is impossible
to
conceivably
a painting which is reputedly in poor condition (Zeri,
judge from bad photographs
"Intorno a Gerolamo Siciolante,"
148, fig. 13). Neither the Chigi-Volpi di Misurata
(I have been unable to discover whether the painting is still in the latter collection) Holy Family (Zeri, loc.cit., 142, fig. 5) nor the Zagreb, Strossmayer
Gallery
107 n. 27) seem to me to be by SicioHoly Family (Zeri, Pittura e controriforma,
is too crude and coarsely simplified in execution,
lante. The latter especially
too

figures are not yet completely molded into the pervasive,

swinging curves that characterize the late works. One can
still find clumsy bunches, angular accents, long, limp swags
that break the rhythmic continuity. In these frescoes, and especially in a preparatory drawing for the Assumption of the Virgin (Fig. 15), Siciolante appears to have been strongly influenced by Daniele da Volterra.47
Among other works that may date from this decade are
three paintings in the Galleria Colonna.48 The Madonna and
Child with St. John, once attributed to Giulio Romano, is virtually copied from that artist's altarpiece in the Anima. The
Madonna and Child has already been recognized as Siciolante's
work, but the two panels with Sts. Andrew and Catherine of
Alexandria are still attributed to the school of Giulio Romano.49
The Frick Collection

vulgarized in sentiment to be his. The former I would attribute to Jacopino del

Conte. As Dr. Zeri has observed, Jacopino influenced the formation of Siciolante's
in the
similar. The Annunciation
style; at times their paintings can be confusingly
church of the Cappuccini (Venturi, IX, 5, fig. 305) is by Siciolante but probably
is not as early a work as Venturi considers it to be. The signature and possibly
a date in the lower left-hand corner are obscured by abrasions and over-painting.
is attributed to Siciolante
The Noli Me Tangere hanging opposite the Annunciation
in the church guide sheet but is by Marco Pino. The portrait of Paul III in
to Siciolante
to Perino and attributed
Santa Francesca Romana, once assigned
109, fig. 23), looks more like Siciolante in the photoby Voss (Spfitrenaissance,
colorless
graph than it does in actuality. The painting is very drab in tone-almost
vivid palette. The paint itself is dry and the individual
-quite unlike Siciolante's
in the rather sallow flesh areas--again
brushstrokes
often are visible, especially
of Siciolante's
unlike the richly oily consistency
paint and its smooth, unbroken
surfaces. Zeri (Pittura e controriforma,
fig. 2) has published as Jacopino del Conte
a portrait of Paul III with Ottavio Farnese, which is obviously related to the Santa
Francesca Romana painting. In technique the latter seems to me closer to Jacopino
than to Siciolante, but I am not entirely convinced Jacopino was its author. The
Corsini (now Barberini) Holy Family (cf. Zeri, "Intorno a Gerolamo Siciolante,"
141f.) I believe to have been at least partly executed by Jacopino. It is a puzzling
work, much in need of cleaning, and may have been painted by more than one
hand. The head of the Virgin closely resembles the head of one of the Marys in
Jacopino's San Giovanni Decollato Deposition.