The Death of St. Joseph

ICONOGRAPHY

The apocryphal 2nd or 3rd century History of Joseph the Carpenter is the only text that recounts the life and death of Joseph¹. He is considered to be the most saintly of all saints, with the Greek theologian St. Gregory of Nazianzus (330 – 390 AD) even writing: «The Lord has brought together in Joseph, as in the sun, all the light and splendour of all the other saints in their entirety».

Almost totally neglected throughout the Middle Ages, the figure of Joseph was taken into consideration again only in the 16th century, after Isidorus Isolanus published his Summa de Donis Santi Joseph in Pavia in 1522.

Jesus’s putative father is endowed with the virtue of chastity at the highest level, becoming its symbol with his attribute of the flowering rod. He is wise in all the theological mysteries, a shining example of obedience, and a symbol of poverty by reason of his humble trade as a carpenter. Yet despite that making him an ideal candidate for the profession of the monastic orders, the dissemination of his cult was chiefly the work of the Jesuits during the Counter-Reformation.

As was customary, the dissemination of his cult was accompanied also by images, and artists were called on with increasing frequency to produce works in which he was the protagonist. His figure emerged from a completely marginal role, to take on a position of growing importance in the very frequent images of the Holy Family. His growing role as a protagonist bore out Isolanus’s contention that he was the happiest of men, having had the good fortune to live by the Saviour’s side.

The history also describes his death, borrowing its account from an apocryphal gospel with the Story of Joseph the Carpenter which Gregory of Nazianzus had read in a Latin translation of the original 4th or 5th century Greek. It is Jesus himself who recounts the moment of the saint’s passing (not so much his death as his transition to Eternal Life), with Joseph displaying his happiness precisely because he has both Jesus and Mary by his side.

This iconography was chosen, in particular, by the so-called confraternities “of good death”.

The presence of the Archangels Michael and/or Gabriel is also due to a scrupulous interpretation of Isolanus’s text, which is clearly what lies behind the picture under discussion here too, whether or not the painter or the patron who commissioned the picture were familiar with it².

The cult of St. Joseph put down roots in Genoa at the turn of the 16th century thanks to the Spanish order of Discalced Carmelites, who chose precisely Genoa as the city in which to establish their first convent in Italy. And even before that, it had been promoted in the city by Ettore Vernazza († 1524) who founded the Ospedale degli Incurabili.

CRITICAL HISTORY AND ATTRIBUTION

Tiziana Zennaro’s meticulous, in-depth analysis of the rich catalogue of Assereto’s autograph works is followed by a repertoire that is de facto an embryonic catalogue for his pupils and followers, dividing the paintings that she does not consider to be autograph into various groups³. It is an extremely interesting exercise that requires updating and verification, both thanks to the opportunity to see the works at first hand rather than in photographs – as in the case of the painting under discussion here – and in the hope that some indisputable evidence will emerge for artists for whom we do not have even one definite work, and whose catalogue is thus completely hypothetical as things stand today.

This is true, in our case, for the Gaudium Magnum Foundation’s painting, which Zennaro knew only from a single photograph and which she assigns to a corpus of works grouped under the hyphothetical name of Daniello Solaro⁴. Raffaele Soprani tells us that Solaro was: «a pupil, and a true imitator of Gioachino, whose style one might almost say he forged». Soprani mentions his activity as a copyist and, while telling us that he also produced «a few paintings of his own invention» with «very fine thoughts»⁵, it is a bold move to link such a description to a painting of the value and quality, not to mention the depth of conception, interpretation and handling, as the picture under discussion here.

In any event, we know of no definite works by Solaro, and I would suggest that that group, while admittedly assembled on the basis of a real internal affinity, should rather be assigned to a given stylistic moment in Assereto’s own development. In the course of his career covering the entire second quarter of the century, Assereto was far from producing constantly identical work. His style underwent a considerable evolution, as we can tell from the substantial differences between his youthful work and his mature output. The painting under discussion here lies somewhere in the middle, and I would argue that it should be dated to some time between 1628 and 1630.

C.D. Dickerson, currently the Senior Curator of European and American Art with the National Gallery in Washington, argued in favour of the painting being fully autograph in the course of an exhibition that he curated for the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, where he was Curator of European Art⁶, as did Jonathan Bober, who is now in charge of the Department of Old Master Prints, also in the National Gallery in Washington⁷. Examination of a number of expert opinions will show how necessary, and obvious, it is to look at this painting as a work of art that is not only in perfect condition, and thus fully appreciable in its painterly values, but is also of the kind of quality and expressive intensity that none of his pupils or followers appear capable of achieving, yet which is typical of the loftiest achievements of Assereto himself.

Comparison with a number of works in Assereto’s rich catalogue reveals, even to those without any particular expertise in his output, not only the stylistic links but also the similarity of the individual figures thanks to their highly individual features.

For the figure of the angel, see Tobias in The Guardian Angel in the City Museum in Birmingham (FIG. 1)⁸ or the page, also shown in a three-quarter pose and on the left, like a prop, in the extremely fine Alexander and Diogenes now in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin (FIG. 2)⁹.

For the figure of Jesus, we can look at a number of Assereto’s “storied” paintings, such as Christ Healing the Blind Man in the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh (PA) (FIG. 3)¹⁰, or the Ecstasy of St. Catherine of Siena in the Musei di Strada Nuova¹¹. But we should also look at the figure of Jacob in the Sale of the Birthright in the same civic collection in Genoa (FIG. 4)¹².

For the figure of Joseph, in addition to the same figure seen, in a mirror image, in Assereto’s other version of the subject (FIG. 5)¹³, we have but to look at a study in oil on paper applied onto canvas in the Grasso Collection in Chiavari¹⁴ and at a painting in the Costa Collection¹⁵ with a head of an old man that is this head’s “twin” and for which the painter adopted bold foreshortening – the same that we can also see, in fact bearing an even greater likeness, in Lot and His Daughters in a private collection in Reggio Emilia¹⁶.

And finally, for the splendid profile of the Virgin Mary, we might look at the fine bozzetto on copper in the Galleria Nazionale di Palazzo Spinola in Genoa¹⁷, where we will find the same unique handling of the figure’s eyes, a detail which, like others that can be found in the marvellous brushwork of the Gaudium Magnum picture, it is almost impossible to imagine being painted by one of Assereto’s pupils or followers.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE PAINTING

As we have seen, Assereto painted another version of the same subject, a picture formerly in the collection of Angelo Costa in Genoa and subsequently acquired by the Cassa di Risparmio di Genova e Imperia (later Carige, now PBper Banca; FIG. 5)¹⁸. This vertical format painting is inferior to the work under discussion here, suggesting that it was probably intended for private devotion, where our painting, precisely on account of its considerable size for a subject with only four figures, is more likely to have been intended for a convent, an oratory or some other form of public display.

The Costa version’s scenic layout reveals a similarly bold handling of space, yet the brushwork is softer, which would indicate a later date, some time in the 1640s.

In his analysis of the work, Franco Renzo Pesenti perfectly grasps the quality that makes it especially intense, lending it that strength of emotional involvement that it shares with the Gaudium Magnum version. He calls this quality the «tactile interaction between the figures»¹⁹.

The play of hands is a constant feature of Assereto’s expressive vocabulary, as we can see, for example, in his celebrated masterpiece The Supper at Emmaus, also in the Costa collection²⁰, where the breaking of the bread acquires its fully sacred nature precisely in the magical circle of the hands. Here, we see Jesus and Mary resting one hand on their breast to underscore their deep love and equally deep grief, while with the other they delicately touch, almost caress, the hand of Joseph as, on the one hand, a mark of compassion, and on the other, as a demonstrative act of deep and intimate affection. «Physical contact is tasked with the last flow of affection», as Pesenti brilliantly puts it²¹. In actual fact, Christ appears almost to be pointing to himself, the Saviour, as though to say: «There is no death, there is salvation».

It is interesting to note that the Costa picture clearly highlights, in the left foreground, a glass phial containing an ointment used to alleviate pain, a detail which the artist decided to include, as Pesenti points out, «because everything is likened here to earthly reality», an interpretation confirmed also by the absence of the archangels. In our painting, on the other hand, both the angel on the left and the astonishing monochrome cloud of cherubs in the background move everything onto a transcendent plane, underscoring a proximity with the seat of the Divine.

The angel, a superb figure also in terms of its artistic execution, is set like a kind of prop to create a perspective imbalance in the composition, which thus loses its centrality. That centrality, however, is restored by the intensity of the peak moment in the human drama (and the divine mystery) which Assereto asks us to witness: following the angel’s gaze, we are immersed in that intense moment of prayer.

The artist constructs his message not only with poses and gestures, but also with colour: the angel is many-hued and the wonderfully marbled green of his tunic is a sign of hope; Jesus and Mary wear a symphony of different reds, the skilful mark of a great master (and of a patron of substance, if we consider, for example, the artist’s use of costly lacquers), lending importance to the colour that symbolises both grief and love.

The figure of Joseph is almost split between two pure colours: brown (a pigment that belongs to the group known as “earths”) and white (the most resistant of pigments), in other words, at once the earthiest and the most ethereal qualities that colour can express, thus using a painter’s tools to convey the message of transition between earth and heaven, between time and eternity.

The figures are silhouettes standing out against the brown background: nothing distracts us from the intense warning that the painting seeks to convey. The figures take shape, formed by firm, masterly brush strokes, to emerge as the protagonists, at once human and divine, of a moment that falls to all of us but which, for the believer, has a very different meaning from the end.