On hearing in 1929 that his native city of Belfast had just built an art gallery but had no paintings to fill it the painter Sir John Lavery decided to generously gift 34 paintings of his own.
Just before this Christmas that same art gallery, now the Ulster Museum, unveiled its most recent acquisition bequeathed through generosity: appropriately a same-named depiction of a Nativity scene dating from the High Renaissance, which the museum’s chief art curator, Anne Stewart, described as “truly a Christmas gift for our visitors”.
Last year this painting was due to be sold for the overseas market, but an export deferral was placed on it. After sufficient funds were raised it was bought and the announcement was made that it would be presented to the Ulster Museum, following a year of conservation in the National Gallery in London. It was placed on display in Belfast a few days before this Christmas.
“The painting, which depicts the Nativity at night, is an exceptionally rare surviving work by the Italian artist, and the only one in the UK,” says an Ulster Museum press release. “It is also the first High Renaissance painting to enter a public collection in Northern Ireland.”
The museum notes that the export bar followed the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest, which is supported by the Arts Council England, deciding “that this painting was of national importance”.
The Nativity painting is by the artist Baldassare Peruzzi. If the name Peruzzi is one that does not readily come to mind, it is worth recalling that he was a respected contemporary of Michelangelo and collaborated with Raphael, Bramante and Sangallo as one of the architects of St Peter’s Basilica. When he died, the respect with which he was held saw Peruzzi buried beside the grave of Raphael in the rotunda of Rome’s Pantheon.
Peruzzi was a veritable renaissance man: he was renowned as an architect, artist and for theatre design. As a painter he is chiefly regarded for his frescos, although sadly only a paucity of them survive intact. However, Peruzzi left a substantial collection of drawings many of which reveal his superb draughtsmanship and knowledge of classical buildings. A good selection of his drawings can be viewed in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Royal Collection. One spectacular drawing of a ceremonial bench, which Peruzzi had intended for his native Sienna, formed part of the collection of the late Brian Sewell and was described by the ascerbic art critic as his “pride and joy”.
As an architect, Peruzzi designed the Villa Farnesina in Rome, decorating its interior with Raphael. He also created the Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne, producing a remarkable curved facade that still today presents itself on the Corso Vittorio Emanuele II. One of his sons, Giovanni Sallustio, became a distinguished architect while another, Onorio, followed his father as a painter. Onorio became a Dominican friar and, troubled by a possible temptation of vanitas, vowed to abandon his painting skills. His superiors did not agree and reassured him that holy obedience trumped personal scruples and set him to decorate the large organ doors of one of their churches.
Very few of Peruzzi’s paintings exist, the Nativity being the sole example in the UK and Ireland. The Nativity is dated around 1515 and is a remarkable depiction, not least of all because Peruzzi, perhaps due to his experience of theatre design, has embraced dramatic effect by portraying the scene at night. This style of nocturnal representation of biblical scenes had contemporaneously been employed by Michelangelo in a lunette in the Sistine Chapel, and also by Raphael in his fresco of the Liberation of St Peter from prison. Nocturnal scenes demand a particular skill of artists with the interplay of light and darkness: the chiaroscuro that later was used to great effect by such as Parmigiano and later again by Rembrandt and Caravaggio.
Peruzzi in his Nativity depiction presents us with several beams of light to assist us in contemplation of the mystery of the incarnation. The first is the striking image of the angel, almost comet like in the sky, announcing the glad tidings of the birth to the shepherds suffused in shade. In contrast there is the subdued light of the moon filtered through clouds to spill over the broken roof of the humble stable and shine on a massive architectural structure representing the power of the classical world.
However, the classical structure is depicted in ruins, mirroring the decayed portrayal of the stable. Because the old classical order of power has passed, and now with this birth a new vibrant age has come in the person of Christ as Saviour. This he portrays in the gentle light emanating from the Christ child. This luminance is diffused on the figures of Mary and Joseph and in turn radiates out to us who observe the scene.
At the very midpoint of the picture, Peruzzi has added one final light which comes from behind the Christ-child: it is the light of dawn breaking over the hills of Bethlehem, just as Christ is the true light of dawn bringing hope to a broken world. For Peruzzi the shadows of the old world are overcome with the radiance of the newborn Christ, and he draws us in to contemplate the great mystery of the saviour’s birth.
This understanding is in harmony with the liturgical texts used through the Christmas Season. The Collect of the Masses of Midnight speak of “this most sacred night radiant with the splendour of true light”. The Dawn Mass refers to us as being “bathed in the new radiance of the incarnate Word” and offers a pray that this same light “may also shine though in our deeds”. A Collect from the Octave of Christmas proclaims that God has “dispersed the darkness of this world by the coming of his light”, and at the vigil of the Epiphany we will pray that “the splendour of God’s majesty may shed its light upon our hearts that we may pass through the shadows of this world to reach the brightness of our eternal home”.
Just as Peruzzi in his art draws us to contemplate the everlasting light of the Christ-child in his Nativity nocturnal depiction, so too the liturgy reminds us that the incarnation disperses the darkness of our world – including the shadows in our own personal lives – and bathes us with the splendour of his everlasting light.
Photo: Baldassare Peruzzi (1481_1536) The Nativity, circa 1515. Acquired following export deferral with the assistance of grants from the Art Fund, the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the Department for Communities NI and the Esmé Mitchell Trust, 2022. (Photo credit: Ulster Museum Collection.)
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