Massacre of the Innocents

According to Vasari, who probably met the artist in person, Gambara received his early training with Giulio Campi in Cremona, where he developed his distinctive style derived from Lombard and Emilian Mannerism.¹ In 1549 the artist returned to his native town of Brescia, where he became an assistant to Girolamo Romanino and married the latter’s daughter in 1556. A prolific fresco painter and draftsman, Gambara became the leading artist in Brescia after Romanino’s death in 1560.

The major project of Gambara’s career, however, was not in Brescia but in Parma, where between 1567 and 1573 he decorated the nave and the west wall of the cathedral with frescoes. He began with the nave, for which he received payments from July 1567 to June 1571.² In a series of wide, oblong frescoes, he illustrated the life of Christ, beginning with the Annunciation to the Virgin at upper right when facing the altar and progressing to the Resurrection of Christ on the left, north wall. These culminate in the monumental Ascension of Christ on the inner facade at west, painted in 1571–73.³

Such a complex program necessitated careful planning, as evidenced by the half a dozen drawings connected to this project. Of these, the Morgan’s Massacre of the Innocents, for a compartment on the north wall, is the largest and arguably the most accomplished.⁴ With repeated curvilinear strokes of black chalk, Gambara deftly mapped out the violent scene in which, according to the Gospel of Matthew, King Herod sent his soldiers to kill all male infants in Bethlehem so as to reverse the prophecy that he would lose his throne to a newborn king. In a vignette at upper left, the Holy Family, with the Virgin and Christ child astride a donkey, can be seen escaping, the forward inclination of the Virgin’s body communicating to the viewer the urgency of the flight. Softer strokes of white chalk, especially on the horse’s broad chest and in the central group of a soldier grappling with a fleeing mother, serve to illuminate the night scene. Like Campi, Gambara was highly influenced by the art of Pordenone (see I, 70 and IV, 69), here clearly visible in the daringly foreshortened horse and rider at right, a group that was removed for the fresco and replaced by foot soldiers, one of whom raises aloft a flailing infant. The rider may have been seen as too heroic, although it is not clear whether his removal was dictated by textual or artistic concerns. The prominent soldier seen at center was turned to face the viewer, again possibly considered a more decorous aspect.

A number of other studies for Parma Cathedral are known, most of them in pen and ink on blue paper.⁵ The Seated Female Figure at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, for one of the allegories adjacent to a window in a lunette, is a notable exception.⁶ It is in the same technique as the Morgan Massacre and probably dates from the same moment in the artist’s career. The Morgan is fortunate in possessing an unusually strong group of four drawings by Gambara. Besides the current example, there is the Standing Warrior Turned to the Right (1980.59), identified by Janos Scholz as a study for the Old Testament figure of Joshua frescoed in grisaille on the inner facade of the Parma cathedral, where he looks upward to witness the Ascension of Christ.⁷ A recent bequest to the Morgan, the Study of a Man Seen from Behind Climbing onto a Cloud, was identified by Jennifer Tonkovich as a further study for one of the prophets in the lunettes of Parma Cathedral.⁸ And finally, there is in the Morgan collection the red chalk Three Kings on Their Way to Bethlehem, presumably from early in Gambara’s career based on its similarity to Romanino in the handling of the chalk and the figure style.⁹

Begni Redona and Vezzoli published as autograph a series of twelve highly finished compositional studies in pen and ink and white heightening, including one for the Massacre of the Innocents, which reflect very late stages in the design of the frescoes.¹⁰ Differences between the drawings and frescoes make it unlikely that the former are copies. A pen-and-ink compositional drawing of the Massacre of the Innocents Before Herod in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan, from the collection of Padre Sebastiano Resta and connected by Resta with the Parma cathedral fresco, is not, in fact, related to the com- position of either the Morgan drawing or the fresco.¹¹ In this writer’s opinion, it is probably not even by Gambara.

—REP

Footnotes:

1. Vasari 1996, 2:466; Vasari 1878–85, 6:498.
2. Begni Redona and Vezzoli 1978, 261–62.
3. Begni Redona and Vezzoli 1978, 262.
4. Janos Scholz was the first to note the connection to the Parma fresco; Popham 1955, 75n6.
5. Judgment of Solomon (for the fifth bay on the left), Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. 9926; Five Apostles in the Ascension, British Museum, Lon- don, inv. t,13.41; Three Apostles in the Ascension, British Museum, London, inv. 1946,0713.105; and Christ Ascending to Heaven, British Museum, London, inv. t,13.39; see Begni Redona and Vezzoli 1978, no. 17–19. A sketch for the entire Ascension of Christ is in the Accademia Carrara, Bergamo, inv. 463.
6. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, inv. wa1938.90. See Begni Redona and Vezzoli 1978, no. 28. Also compare in style and technique Jael and Sisera, British Museum, London, inv. 1946,0713.276; see Begni Redona and Vezzoli 1978, no. 16.
7. See Scholz 1958, 418. Scholz acquired this drawing together with the Massacre of the Innocents.
8. The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, inv. 2012.5. Oral communication to Daniella Berman, as indicated in a paper written by Berman while a student at Institute of Fine Arts, New York (a copy is in the departmental file).
9. The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, inv. 1993.148.
10. Collection of Enrico Gambara, Parma. See Begni Redona and Vezzoli 1978, nos. 34–45.
11. Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan, Cod. Resta, F. 261 inf. 121, 119. See Begni Redona and Vezzoli 1978, no. 24.