Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.17018/portal.2023.9
Ferdo Goglia’s restoration of the painting Susanna and the Elders from the Strossmayer Gallery: the process of protecting the painting and preserving its provenance
Ivan Ferenčak
orcid.org/0000-0001-9443-0420
; Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Strossmayer Gallery of Old Masters
Abstract
In these parts, Ferdo Goglia (1869–1943) is considered the first qualified art restorer. He began his two-decade-long collaboration with the Strossmayer Gallery of Old Masters of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (HAZU) in 1920. During that period, he restored 177 paintings from the Gallery. He kept meticulous records of his own restorations, and although the notebook with data on restorations of paintings from the Strossmayer Gallery has been lost, we know about most of his restorations from later transcriptions. Among the works of art Goglia restored for the Gallery was the painting Susanna and the Elders The intervention included the restoration of the back of the painting. Goglia also removed the earlier markings from the back, probably due to the creation of new cradling, and stored them in an envelope with information about the painting. Thanks to this procedure, in which we recognize an early example of care for the markings on the backs of paintings, important clues for establishing the provenance of this painting have been preserved. The markings are two coats of arms and two labels with handwritten numbering. The two identical plaster coats of arms are casts of a wax seal, such as are often found on the backs of paintings. All the elements of the coat of arms indicate it belongs to the German ruling house of Wittelsbach, so this mark in itself links our painting to the collections on which the (pre)history of Munich's Alte Pinakothek rests. One of the labels can be connected with the handwritten inventory and enables a closer identification of the painting within the Wittelsbach collection. An identical label was preserved on the back of the painting Nativity and Adoration of the Shepherds from the Strossmayer Gallery. Iva Pasini Tržec and Ljerka Dulibić thoroughly researched the history of this painting, exhaustively analysed the markings on its back and reconstructed painting’s earlier provenance. Comparative analysis of the labels with numbers that correspond to the numbers and descriptions of the paintings in the handwritten inventory Verzeichnis der A[nno] 1799 in der Churfürstl. Galerie zu München aufgestellten vorzüglichen Gemälde of 1799 provided further confirmation of the identification of the paintings within the Wittelsbach collection. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the Susanna and the Elders can be found in other handwritten inventories (1765) and the printed catalogues of the collection by Christian von Mannlich (1810) and by Johann Georg von Dillis (1831), when it was located in the Hofgartengalerie in Munich, and the Schleißheim Palace (Neue Schloss) near Munich. In the mid-19th century, it was included in the sale of art from the royal collection known as the Schleißheimer Versteigerung (1852), and it was then bought by a certain Erdmansdorfer. After it was sold, the location of the Susanna and the Elders was undisclosed for the next two decades, when it was added to the collection of Bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer. Although we do not know the exact moment it was acquired, the painting came into the bishop's possession (shortly) before February 1872, when it was mentioned in one of Strossmayer's letters as one of the newly-acquired works of art. During the 18th and 19th centuries and the first half of the 20th, the painting was attributed to the Antwerp painter Frans Floris (1519/20–1570). In the early 1960s, Grgo Gamulin attributed it to a contemporary of Floris, Master of the Prodigal Son, an attribution that is still valid today. The notname ‘Master of the Prodigal Son’ was given by Georges Hulin de Loo in 1909 after a painting at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and subsequent attempts at identification of the artist have not been successful. The still-unidentified painter – or, according to recent interpretations, group of painters – were active in Antwerp from the 1530s to the 1560s, and they supplied the market with numerous versions of popular compositional solutions. The workshop of the Master of the Prodigal Son produced several versions of the Old Testament story of Susanna and the elders, known mostly from several copies of varying quality. Among them, the composition of our painting exists in several fairly similar versions, filled with references to the Italian Renaissance, as well as ancient art and motifs that deepen the iconography of the theme. Including the painting from the Strossmayer Gallery, we know of five versions and one fragment that were or are attributed to the Master of the Prodigal Son and another version attributed to a follower of Jan Massijs (1509–1575), a painter who was also active in Antwerp. The group of figures and the fountain in the foreground are largely identical, while the differences are primarily noticeable in the depiction of the landscape in the background. Taking into account their similarities and differences, the painting from the Strossmayer Gallery is the closest to the two examples recorded in the first half of the 20th century in Munich and Berlin. Due to the existence of several very similar versions, the markings that closely link our painting to a very specific context are an indispensable material confirmation for the well-founded establishment of its provenance, and a reliable argument for linking the Susanna and the Elders from the Strossmayer Gallery with the sources of the Bavarian collection.
Keywords
Strossmayer Gallery of Old Masters HAZU; Master of the Prodigal Son; Flemish painting; history of restoration practice; Ferdo Goglia; analysis of the back of the painting; Wittelsbach family; Schleissheimer Versteigerung; provenance reserach
Hrčak ID:
312367
URI
Publication date:
29.12.2023.
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