Csornay Boldizsár - Dobos Zsuzsa - Varga Ágota - Zakariás János szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 98. (Budapest, 2003)

GOLDFARB, HILLIARD T.: A Mysterious Beauty and a French Attribution: The Sleeping Magdalen of Budapest

Another attribution has been that of Sigismondo Coccapani, a Florentine artist of the first quarter of the seventeenth century. That attribution was given considerable weight by its proposition by Roberto Longhi in 1943 and the concurrence of Mina Gregori in 1959.

9 More recently Borea and Cantelli, experts of Florentine painting of the period, have also supported that attribution.

10 Less tenable has been an alternate attribution to Bernardo Strozzi.

11 While the name of Fetti (or "Fetti ?") has been most commonly asserted, it has received little extended defence, apart from references to Fetti's David (Venice, Accademia, fig. 25) of about 1617-1619, discussions generally focusing on the loose treatment of the feathers and elaborate clothing in the latter work. However, as Szigethi has noted, even while defending the Fetti attribution in 1993,

12 the highly detailed treatment of the gold-threaded coverlet on which the figure rests and the more controlled impasto in the Budapest picture are unlike works by Fetti. The latter observation is particularly noteworthy and points to an essential difference in the aesthetic of the Budapest work from the works of Fetti at this period. There is a more naturalistic sensibility in the Sleeping Magdalen than in Fetti 's Venice David, his earlier Suicide of Cleopatra and Artemisia, or Fetti's Dresden David, Venice Melancholia (fig. 26) and Doria Penitent Magdalen, these latter works by Fetti cited by Takács.

13 This difference of vision is evident in a variety of details in these and other paintings. The Budapest Sleeping Magdalen's hands are more sensitively and realistically modelled and the face tenderly caressed and modelled in light and shadow in a quite naturalistic manner unlike the more abstractly generalised and rounded forms in the Fetti pictures. Elements 9 Longhi, R., Ultimi studi sul Caravaggio c la sua cerchia,Proporzioni 1 (1943) 56-57. n. 77. Notably, in the same note, Longhi writes of the close Caravaggesque similarity of Vignon to works given to Fetti and Coccapani, referring to the painting of the "Flute Player" formerly in the Galleria Corsini, generally accepted as by Coccapani, but given by Pigler to Vignon in 1939 and to Ligozzi by H. Voss. As another example, the "Portrait of a Youth" formerly at Althorp and now at the Musée des Beaux-Arts at Caen, is now accepted as a work by Vignon, although it originally bore an attribution to Fetti and was given by H. Voss to Coccapani. See discussion below, note 24. Gregori's concurrence with the Coccapani attribution of the Budapest painting in Mostra del Cigoli e del suo ambiente (A cura di Bucci, Mario - Forlani, Anna), SanMiniato 1959, p. 226. 10 Borea, E., Caravaggio e caravaggeschi nelle Gallerie di Firenze, Florence 1970, p. 94; Cantelli, G., Per Sigismondo Coccapani, célèbre pittore fiorentino nominato il maestro del disegno, Prospettiva 7 (1976) 28. Further references in Barkóczi, Von Raffael bis Tiepolo (n. 7) p. 252. 11 Takács, M., Peintures de Bernardo Strozzi au Musée des Beaux-Arts. BullMusHongrBA 11 (1957) pp. 78-84, esp. p. 80. The Strozzi attribution was also accepted by Goldscheider the following year. 12 Szigethi, A., in L'

Europa della pittura nel XVII secolo, 80 capolavori dai musei ungheresi, Milan 1993, no. 18, p. 86. 13 Takács, loc.cit. (n. 11) p. 80. For reproduction of these works by Fetti, see Safarik, E., Fetti, Milan 1990 (henceforth abbreviated Safarik, 1990) no. 9, p. 49 (Venice, David), no. 116, p. 263 (Cleopatra), no. 114, p. 260 (Artemisia), no. 7, p. 44 (Dresden, David), no. 123, pp. 272-273 (Melancholia) with details, and no. 99, p. 227 (Doria Magdalen). Also, Safarik, E., Domenico Fetti /588/89-/623 (Mantua, Palazzo Te), Milan 1996, in which all of the works, except the Dresden painting, are reproduced in colour, notably no. 20, pp. 118-123, with excellent colour details of the Venice David, no. 13 (Cleopatra), p. 99. no. 15 (Artemisia), pp. 103-104, comparative illustrations in black and white (DresdenDavid) pp. 122-123, again notable for its animated, fluid brushwork, no. 16 (Melancholia), pp. 105-106, with detail in which Fetti's looser, bolder brushwork than in the Budapest painting is evident, especially in the hands; and no. 22 (Dor'vdMagdalen), p. 126, again noteworthy for its more vivid and less tight brushwork. Other comparisons can be readily found.