ADAM ELSHEIMER (workshop of/by) (Frankfurt am Main, 1578 - Rome, 1610) The Miracle of the True Cross The Finding of the Three Crosses Oil on silvered copper, 20.5X23.2 cm (2) Provenance: Silvano Lodi Jr. Collection The works presented here are painted in oil on copper with a precious silver preparation. This technical aspect leads one to judge them to be of considerable importance, suggesting a specific commission and, consequently, not to classify them as mere copies. The scenes, in fact, reflect two episodes illustrating 'the discovery' and 'the authenticity of the cross of Christ' conceived by Adam Elsheimer when he created the so-called Frankfurt Tabernacle (fig. 1) - an altarpiece consisting of seven paintings on silver-plated copper that Cosimo II de' Medici purchased in 1619 from the Spanish nobleman living in Rome, Juan Pérez. Subsequently, the work passed into the collections of the Duke of Arundel (after 1626), the Baron of Torrington (after 1708), the Earl of Bradford (before 1735) and, by now dismembered, it passed through the London art market and partly landed in the Frankfurt Museum in 1950, which in time managed to reunite all the small paintings (cf. M. Waddingham, Elsheimer's Frankfurt Tabernacle: Discovery of the Final Piece, in The Burlington Magazine, CXXIII (1981), pp. 346-350). Having said this, little is known of Juan Pérez's collection, but the painter Agostino Tassi, who acted as mediator between the Spaniard and the Florentine court, described the gentleman as a person 'who deletes asai de pitura' (cf. Lettera di Agostino Tassi in Roma al segretario del Granduca Lorenzo Usimbardi in Firenze, 25 August 1612, ASF, Mediceo del Principato 3506, c.n.- for transcription see: K. Andrews, Adam Elsheimer: Paintings, Drawings, Prints, Phaidon, Oxford 1977). Therefore, it is interesting to note that when Pérez returned home, he took his collection with him, in which a small ebony retable dedicated to the Invention of the Holy Cross is mentioned, with seven painted 'láminas', the central one being larger than the others, which was valued at 'tres mil escudos de plata' and was located in 1679 inside a sacristy or oratory dedicated to the Holy Cross, the headquarters of the confraternity of the same name. As can be deduced from this indication, it is certainly a copy of Elsheimer's altarpiece and is no longer known, suggesting the hypothesis that the collector commissioned a replica after the sale of the original (cf. M. C. Fontana Calvo, El desaparecido colegio de San Alberto de Huesca y la arquitectura carmelitana, Argensola, 121 (2011), pp. 207-272). Returning to the personality of Adam Elsheimer, we know that he reached the Eternal City in 1600 after a stay in Venice, where he collaborated with Johann Rottenhammer (1564-1625). In Rome, the artist enjoyed great success painting refined oils on copper and his first admirers were Cardinal Del Monte and Cardinal Scipione Borghese. The Frankfurt Altarolo can be considered his most ambitious creation, which marks a clear stylistic evolution from the Venetian works, thanks to the influence of Paul Bril, Pietro Paolo Rubens and Michelangelo da Caravaggio. Reference bibliography: K. Andrews, Adam Elsheimer: Paintings, Drawings, Prints, Oxford 1977, pp. 26-27- 44-45; 146-47 R. Klessmann (ed.), Im Detail die Welt entdecken: Adam Elsheimer 1578-1610 (exhibition catalogue), Wolfratshausen 2006, pp. 21- 24-26; 102-115; 193-195. J. von Hennenberg, Elsheimer and Rubens: A Link in Early Century Rome, in Art History, 95 (1995), pp. 35-44. V. Rudolf, D. Fratini, The Stories of the True Cross by Adam Elsheimer: vicissitudes, collecting and fortune in seventeenth-century Florence, Amici di Palazzo Pitti, Bollettino 2016, pp. 22-41