The Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist

Indianapolis Museum of Art: Highlights of the Collection (2005)

Ignored by the artist-biographer Giorgio Vasari and his contemporaries, Nosadella's oeuvre has been reassessed only recently by scholars, who have been challenged to distinguish his pictures from those of his master, Pellegrino Tibaldi. Even the authorship of The Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist, now confidently attributed to Nosadella, has oscillated between master and student.

In the early 1500s, Mannerist painters transformed the classically inspired ideals of beauty associated with Renaissance art. This picture displays several distinctive aspects of Mannerist vocabulary: formal complexity, awkward composition, eclectic style, and vibrant coloring. Unlike his master's fluid, near academic reading of Michelangelo's style, Nosadella invested his figures with an exaggerated, almost grotesque monumentality and placed them within a relationship of congested intimacy. His treatment of anatomy and draperies is restlessly idiosyncratic: a prime example is the tortuous knot and the vibrant color on the back of Mary's gown. This energy is mirrored by Jesus' and Mary's abrupt torsion toward the viewer, with their arms penetrating their respective spaces. On the other hand, Joseph and the Baptist's introverted postures emphasize a more contemplative state.

Those few works of him that are known . . . are distinguished by their good color . . . and are full of erudition. And if they are not . . . perfect and studied, they are perhaps more powerful, singular, and resolute.
-Carlo Cesare Malvasia, Felsina Pittrice, 1678

Captain O.E.(?), Yelverton, Devon, England.{1}
Possibly Achillito Chieso, Milan, Italy.
Possibly William Randolph Hearst.{2}
Sale at (Kunsthaus Lempertz, Cologne) in 1957.{3}
(H. Shickman Gallery, New York, New York) by 1966;{4}
Purchased by the John Herron Art Institute, Indianapolis, Indiana, now the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, in 1966 (66.233).
-------
{1} See a partially illegible label on the back of the painting’s frame.
{2} Both these names of owners, Chieso and Hearst, are cited in an exhibition catalogue, but have not been verified. See The Age of Vasari: A Loan Exhibition, Art Gallery, University of Notre Dame and University Art Gallery, SUNY at Binghamton, 1970, catalogue P4, p. 31, 37 (illustration)
{3} Gemälde des 15. – 18. Jahrhunderts, Kunsthaus Lempertz, Cologne, 21 November 1957, no. 29 as “Jacopino del Conte.”
{4} IMA Temporary Receipt No. 7725, dated 7 June 1966.