UBALDO GANDOLFI (San Matteo della Decima 1728 - Ravenna 1781)

A Sleeping Legionary

Oil on paper laid onto canvas
23.2 x 34.6 cm/ 9 ⅛ x 13 ⅝ inches

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This exquisite work is a preparatory study for one of the figures in Gandolfi’s monumental fresco of the Resurrection, painted in the eleventh chapel of the Portico di San Luca, Bologna, which, due to badly executed restorations in the beginning of the twentieth century is in a deplorable state of preservation (fig. 1).

That Christ rose again on the third day after his death is one of the fundamental tenets of the Christian Faith. Christ was assumed to have returned to earth where he remained for forty days until His Ascension. There is no account of the event in the Scriptures. Christians found confirmation that it actually happened in Christ’s subsequent appearances, all of which became popular subjects in art in their own right, namely Christ appearing to his mother, Noli me tangere, The Incredulity of Thomas and The Supper at Emmaus. Due to the absence of details about the Resurrection in the Bible the Church avoided the portrayal, until the beginning of the fourteenth century. One devotional treatment of the theme showing Christ floating in the air framed by a mandorla became prevalent in Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and then spread to Northern Europe. Gandolfi was familiar with this iconography and took it as a point of departure for his own interpretation of the subject in his monumental fresco, where we see angels lifting the heavy lid of the sarcophagus and Christ issuing from the tomb. The soldiers guarding the tomb behold the spectacle in horror.

Our painting was unknown until 2002, when Donatella Biagi Maino was the first to publish it (see literature). It is not the only preparatory work for Ubaldo’s grand masterpiece. A study for the whole composition survives in the Pinacoteca di Bologna (fig. 2). There is another work showing a reclining figure in the lower left of the fresco, which remains in a private collection (fig. 3). Both are believed to be the works once owned by the marchese Gregorio Casali (1721-1802), Ubaldo’s foremost patron, and described in his will. However, it cannot be ruled out that the description of “un quadretta in carta, con vetro e cornice, il quale contiene una delle figure del bozzetto medisimo” actually refers to our sketch.

The rebuilt basilica of San Luca was consecrated in 1765. In the same year the Accademia Clementina was asked to have the eleventh chapel redecorated. In August of the same year Ubaldo Gandolfi was commissioned to carry out this work finishing it just over a year later. That Ubaldo was assigned the commission to paint a Resurrection in the Portico di San Luca testifies to his solid reputation in Bologna’s artistic milieu by 1765. In this highly accomplished work Ubaldo shows his penchant for the Venetian style which he managed to very subtly, almost intuitively, blend with the Bolognese stylistic idiom.

Provenance:

Collection John Appleby , Jersey
His sale, London (Christie’s), 6 July 2010, no. 5, ill., where acquired

Literature:

D. Biagi Maino, Gaetano e Ubaldo Gandolfi. Opere scelte, exhibition catalogue Cento (Ferrara; Auditorium di San Lorenzo) 2002, p. 21, ill. no. 10

Artist description:

At age seventeen Ubaldo Gandolfi began his training at the Accademia Clementina in Bologna with Felice Torelli, Ercole Graziani II and Ercole Lelli. He was awarded several prizes for his drawing skills while at the Accademia. Between 1749 and 1759 he travelled, probably visiting Florence and Venice. In 1759 Ubaldo completed a large traditional altarpiece for Castel San Pietro, Bologna. The following year the Academy appointed him Director of Drawing, a teaching position he kept for the rest of his career. Ubaldo continued to paint altarpieces for churches and produced devotional paintings as well as historical and mythological subjects. He was also in demand as a portraitist and is known to have been active as a sculptor. A few terracottas have been preserved. Highly esteemed during his lifetime, he and his younger brother Gaetano (1734-1802) dominated the artistic scene in late eighteenth-century Bologna. In 1780 Ubaldo was invited to participate in the decoration of the great Byzantine church of San Vitale at Ravenna. He fell ill while painting the fresco in the cupola and died.