GIOVANNI PIETRO RIZZOLI known as GIAMPIETRINO (Milan, 1480/85 - ca. 1553) Christ Carrying the Cross (1535) Oil on panel, 74X58.3 cm Provenance: Milan, private collection Bibliography: The work will be included in the monograph on the artist currently being prepared by Cristina Geddo Painted on a single poplar panel, the work was attributed to Bernardino Luini by Wart Arslan in 1948, who compared it to frescoes painted by the artist in Saronno and suggested a date of 1530. Pallucchini also expressed this view in 1949, indicating a chronology between 1520 and 1525. Having said this, the painting clearly reflects the style of Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli known as Giampietrino (Milan, 1480/85 - c. 1553) in analogy with the Christ Carrying the Cross in the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, with the panel painting now in the Diocesan Museum in Milan and the Christ Carrying the Cross in the Szépmüvészeti Múzeum in Budapest, with the important difference that the composition under examination is a counterpart. As we know, the illustrative model is probably borrowed from a painting by Leonardo that is now lost, but of which there is a graphic testimony in the Accademia in Venice, which shows the Saviour with a similar gait to the left. Nevertheless, the painting presents an anatomical similarity with the already known redactions and the quality of the face, emphasised by the half-closed lips, also responds correctly to the autograph. Equally appreciable is the rendering of the hair, the crown of thorns and the nuanced atmospheric perception of the flesh tones that well evoke Christ's drama and sense of solitude. From an illustrative and technical point of view, the image also corresponds with the Ecce Homo in the Musée de Nancy (oil on panel, 72.4 x 52.5 cm - cf. C. Gelly-Saldias, Nancy: Musée des Beaux-Arts: Peintures italiennes et espagnoles, XIVe ; XIXe siècle, IAC et Musée des Beaux-Arts, 2006, O. 121, no. 73), thus suggesting a date of execution of 1535. We thank Cristina Geddo for the attribution. Reference bibliography: C. Geddo, Le pale d'altare di Giampietrino: ipotesi per un percorso stilistico, in Arte Lombarda, vol. 101, 1992, 2, pp. 73-78 C. Geddo, La Madonna di Castel Vitoni by Giampietrino, in Achademia Leonardi Vinci, VII (1994), pp. 57-67 C. Geddo, Leonardo's drawings of the Last Supper. Un nuovo nome per le teste di Strasburgo, in Tutte le opere non son per istancarmi. Scritti per i settant'anni di Carlo Pedretti, edited by F. Frosini, Rome 1998, pp. 159-172 Giampietrino (replica by), Cristo re, in Pinacoteca Ambrosiana. I. Dipinti dal Medioevo alla metà del Cinquecento, Milan 2005, pp. 131-133, cat. no. 37 Notes on the chronology of the Giampietrino, in Arte e storia di Lombardia. Scritti in memoria di Grazioso Sironi, s.l. [Rome] 2006 (Biblioteca della Nuova Rivista Storica, no. 40), pp. 255-262 C. Geddo, in Capolavori da scoprire. La collezione Borromeo, exhibition catalogue edited by M. Natale, Milan 2006, pp. 200-207, no. 22 C. Geddo, Leonardeschi tra Lombardia ed Europa: i Giampietrino della Mitteleuropa, in Lombardy and Europe. Incroci di storia e cultura, edited by D. Zardin, Milan, Vita e Pensiero, 2014, pp. 69-108