Nascita e diffusione di una rara iconografia dell’Immacolata Concezione: da Figino e Caravaggio a Bourdon e Quellinus II
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Ambrogio Figino’s Madonna of the Serpent, placed in the oratory of the
Immaculate at Sant’Antonio Abate in Milan, constitutes the well-known
iconographic model for Caravaggio’s Madonna and Child with St. Anne
(Madonna dei Palafrenieri) from the Borghese Gallery in Rome. The
common subject was the Immaculate Conception, a thoroughly discussed theme, especially during the Counter-Reformation. Figino’s painting – which was in the painter’s house in 1591, and would be kept there until his death in 1608 – was probably an altarpiece rejected by the customers, perhaps destined to the church of San Fedele, where Milanese critic Giovan Paolo Lomazzo saw a «Madonna del serpe» by the same artist. It’s likely the Jesuits rejected it because of its ambiguous iconography: since the Child helps Mary smash the serpent, the beholders might have thought she was not able to defeat the Original Sin on her own, and so she had not been conceived immaculate. Such ambiguity probably played a similar role in the unfortunate events of
Caravaggio’s Madonna dei Palafrenieri, which stayed in its place on Ste.
Anne’s altar in the basilica of St. Peter in Rome for only a week.
Successively, the same iconography would be used with completely opposite intentions: in France to support the Protestant refusal of the cult of Mary and Ste. Anne, in the Spanish Netherlands to spread the worship of the Immaculate Conception.
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