THE PROPERTY OF A FAMILY 22 (LUINI 1480/1485-1532 ) The Nativity, with the Journey to Egypt beyond tempera and oil on panel 46æ x 35¡ in. (118.7 x 89.8 cm.) £3,000,000-5,000,000 US$4,000,000-6,600,000 €3,400,000-5,600,000

PROVENANCE: Giuseppe Bianchi, , from whom purchased by James Irvine (1759?-1831) G.C. Williamson, Luini, London, 1899, p. 104. for 350 louis d’or shortly before 27 June 1827, as ‘Madonna Joseph and young B. Berenson, North Italian Painters of the , London and New York, Christ by Luini’ (letter from Irvine to the following), on behalf of the following, 1907, p. 251 (listed under Scotland). Sir William Forbes, 7th Bt. of Pitsligo (1773-1828), Fettercairn House, A. Ottino della Chiesa, Bernardino Luini, , 1956, pp. 39 and 76, no. 54, Kincardineshire, by descent to his son, fig. 128 (‘Importante originale ricco di particolari preziosi’). Sir John Stuart Hepburn Forbes, 8th Bt. of Pitsligo (1804-1866), by whom sold, B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance, Central Italian and North Italian in or soon after 1828, for £800 to the following, Schools, London, 1968, I, p. 228. Sir Archibald Campbell, 2nd Bt. of Succoth, Lord Succoth (1769-1846), P. Humfrey, ‘The collection of Old Master formed by Sir Archibald Garscube House, Dunbartonshire, and by descent to his second son, Campbell of Succoth at Garscube House, near Glasgow’, Journal of the History Sir George Campbell, 4th Bt. of Succoth (1829-1874), recorded as no. 86 in the of Collections, 2009, pp. 4-5, fig. 5. Room at Garscube as by Luini or in an inventory of G. Renzi and M. Romeri, in G. Agosti and J. Stoppa, Bernardino Luini e i suoi 1864 (Glasgow University Archive, Garscube Estate, 80/430, published on line figli, exhibition catalogue, Milan, Palazzo Reale, 2014, p. 180, under no. 30. as a supplement by P. Humfrey, 2009), and by descent to the current owners. T. Tovaglieri, in G. Agosti, R. Sacchi and J. Stoppa, Bernardino Luini e i suoi figli: Itinerari, Milan, 2014, p. 195. EXHIBITED: C. Quattrini, Bernardino Luini, Catalogo generale delle opere, , 2020, Glasgow, Art Gallery, from before 1955 until 1959, on long term loan. pp. 287-8, no. 96, dated about 1520. London, Royal Academy, Italian Art and Britain, 2 January-6 March 1960, no. 117.

LITERATURE: G.F. Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain, London, 1854, III, p. 294, as by Gaudenzio Ferrari (‘To this admirable master I have no hesitation in ascribing a picture … This picture has a great charm of composition, with a fine feeling in the heads, and transparency of colour.’). H.F. Cook, Illustrated Catalogue of Pictures by Masters of the Milanese and allied Schools of Lombardy, London, 1899, p. lvi.

74 In addition to the hammer price, a Buyer’s Premium (plus VAT) is payable. Other taxes and/or an Artist Resale Royalty 75 fee are also payable if the lot has a tax or λ symbol. Check Section D of the Conditions of Sale at the back of this catalogue. This well-preserved panel is to be counted among the masterpieces of the Cathedral at (Quattrini, no. 50): this can be precisely dated as the full maturity of the Milanese artist, Bernardino Luini. Acquired by it shows the donor, who was appointed a cardinal in 1517 and resigned as the Scottish agent, James Irvine for one major Scottish collector, Sir Bishop of Como in favour of his brother Antonio in the following year, as William Forbes, 7th Bt., it was subsequently sold to another, Sir Archibald a cardinal. The two pictures are stylistically absolutely compatible; and Campbell, 2nd Bt. of Succoth. it may not be wholly coincidental that the Child in Luini’s later Adoration of the Shepherds (Quattrini, no. 141e), supplied to the church of Sant’ Bernardino Luini was the most influential indigenous painter of Abbondio at Como and now also in the Cathedral there, is more closely cinquecento Lombardy. Trained like his future associate, the Piedmontese related to that in the Campbell picture than to the corresponding figures in Gaudenzio Ferrari, under the obscure Gian Stefano Scotto, presumably any of the Nativities that derive from this, although the legs are differently in Milan, he was strongly influenced by Leonardo and may well disposed. That the outsize altarpiece from which that much larger work have owned his cartoon, the Madonna and Child with Saint Anne (London, on canvas comes was a joint project on which both Luini and Gaudenzio ), of which he painted a direct copy (Milan, Ambrosiana), Ferrari contributed may explain Dr. Waagen’s uncharacteristic error in as this is first recorded, with other by the Florentine master, in attributing the Campbell Nativity to the latter. the possession of Luini’s son, Aurelio, also a painter. Many works by Luini were considered to be by Leonardo himself until well into the nineteenth The picture has a distinguished place in the history of collecting in century. But Luini’s interest in Leonardo was never slavish. He was aware Scotland. James Irvine, a painter who had more success as an agent, of ’s mature style, but would remain true to the traditions of his who had made significant purchases in for William Buchanan in Milanese and Lombard predecessors. Partly because of its popularity from 1802-5 and acted for other dealers and collectors, formed a notable the late eighteenth century onwards, much of Luini’s work has suffered: collection in 1826-7 for Sir William Forbes, 7th Bt. of Pitsligo. A prominent numerous frescoes have been detached and some panels have been banker, Forbes acted as executor to James Boswell and in 1797 married transferred to canvas. The Campbell Nativity is one of finest and the best the heiress Williamina Belsches, with whom the young Walter Scott preserved of Luini’s panels intended for private devotion. had been in love: on Scott’s bankruptcy Forbes assumed the key role in the arrangements that led, after his own death, to the settlement of the The chronology of Luini’s work has only been more fully understood in novelist’s debts. Among the pictures Irvine acquired for Sir William were recent years. The first serious endeavour to explain his development Veronese’s Last Communion of Saint Lucy (Washington, National Gallery was that of Ottino della Chiesa, who dated the panel to about 1525. She of Art), Lotto’s Lady as Lucretia (London, National Gallery), portraits placed it after the larger Nativity in the Plymouth collection (Quattrini, attributed to , devotional works by Garofalo and Mazzolino, as well op. cit., no. 152, as of c. 1526-9, which she may not have seen as she was as two major canvases by Ludovico Carracci from the Tanari collection, uncertain of its location), which may come from the Abbey of Chiaravalle Bologna. The high esteem in which Luini’s Nativity was held is implied outside Milan, comparing it in character with this, but considering it finer by the sum, £800, for which Sir John Stuart Hepburn Forbes, 8th. Bt.- (‘di spirito affine al precedente ma più alto’, op. cit., p. 39). As she noted, himself as a boy the subject of a fine portrait by Raeburn recently acquired the Flight into Egypt in the background is related to (but in reverse) that by the National Galleries of Scotland - sold it to Sir Archibald Campbell, similarly placed in the of the Presentation (Quattrini, no. 118c), which 2nd Bt. of Succoth. is dated 1525, in the Santuario at , Luini’s work which represents a high point not only of his development as a painter of frescoes, but also Sir Archibald Campbell, whose collection has been studied by Professor of Lombard . Although the ox and ass imply Humfrey, was the heir of a family that had held land in Dunbartonshire that the panel represents the Nativity, the inclusion of the saddle and of since the seventeenth century, and, like his father, Sir Ilay Campbell, Ist. the water bottle, neither of which appear in other pictures of that subject Bt. of Succoth, Lord Succoth (1734-1823), had a successful legal career. by the artist, would be more normal in a Rest on the Flight: the background Marriage to an heiress, Elizabeth Balfour, enabled him to employ the scene suggests that Luini intended to combine both episodes. architect William Burn - who rebuilt Fettercairn for Sir William Forbes in 1826 - to reconstruct Garscube on an extravagant scale in 1826-7. Like Several scholars collaborated to work on the artist in preparation for Forbes, Campbell set about collecting pictures for his ‘new’ mansion, the 2014 Milan exhibition, for which the loan of the Nativity was agreed, helped by the Scottish painter-cum-agent Andrew Wilson who had been although in the event the organisers were unable to afford the necessary in direct competition with Irvine in Genoa over two decades earlier and costs of foreign loans. In the exhibition catalogue Renzi and Romero made purchases in Italy after he withdrew as Manager of the Trustees’ suggested that the Campbell picture was the prototype of a group of Academy at Edinburgh in 1826. The Luini was by a comfortable margin small devotional pictures of the Nativity, including panels at Berlin (no. the finest Renaissance picture that Campbell acquired, but he also 219) and in the Borromeo collection at Isola Bella (Ottino della Chiesa, bought works given to Moretto and Leonardo - the last a rare portrait op. cit., no.11, fig. 126, ‘autografia controversa’, and no. 62, fig. 127, ‘forse by Zaganelli - as well as Annibale Carracci’s intimate so-called Montalto non interamente autografa’; Quattrini, nos. 35 and 34), as well as that in Madonna (London, National Gallery), a distinguished Genoese portrait by the Accademia Carrara, Bergamo (no. 302; Ottino della Chiesa, op. cit., van Dyck and a characteristic Cuyp. His pictures were complemented by a no. 8, ‘da mani di bottega’; exhibited at Milan, 2014, no. 30, as from the substantial group of Old Master drawings: this included what was perhaps bottega; Quattrini, no. 36), and a picture formerly in the Rittmann-Urech the finest Florentine trecento drawing in any Scottish collection, the sheet and His Veillon collections with the addition of a shepherd (Quattrini, no. attributable to Taddeo Gaddi now with the Woodner Collection in the 98). They convincingly advanced a date of about 1517-8 for the Campbell , Washington, as well as a notable study by Guido picture, by comparison with the signed Trivulzio altarpiece, The Madonna Reni that was purchased for the National Gallery of Scotland when the and Child with Saints with the kneeling Cardinal Scaramuccia Trivulzio, in collection was dispersed at Christie’s, 26 March 1974.

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