Bernardino Luini takes his name from Luino, a town on Lake Maggiore near his birthplace Dumenza in the mountains above the lake. He adopted a style that proclaimed him the inheritor of Leonardo da Vinciin Northern Italy; he possessed manuscripts and drawings by Leonardo and often quoted motifs and figures from his work. Luini was also complimented as the Lombard Raphael. In his stylistic allegiances there is a pronounced combination of characteristics derived from these two famous artists who stand for the values of Classicism.[1] It is this concentrated blend of excellence that led to Luini being considered a great figure in the Lombard Renaissance.

With the Infant Christ in her arms, the Virgin kneels in adoration on the rough stable floor. Joseph stands behind in an attitude of ecstatic veneration. Two little angels prepare the Infant’s bed of straw in the manger; the ox and ass look on. The Christ Child alone looks out at the spectator, with arms open as if to embrace all mankind. The other protagonists are concerned just with him, his immediate comfort and his future. A little scene of the Annunciation to the Shepherds in the left background is a gorgeous detail: the announcing angel, outlined in pink, appears in a ball of light in the star-studded sky, while the two shepherds with their sheep are silhouettes in the darkness. Luini’s colour, described by contemporaries as calore di vita [warmth of life], is in evidence here in the soft flesh tones, the playful complementary colours of the garments and violet reflections in the shadows.[2]

The prototype for the composition was developed by Luini in a painting now in the Borromeo collection at Isola Bella, Lake Maggiore. This unique private gallery, which has remained as it was since the time of Cardinal Borromeo in the sixteenth century, gives some idea of the way the Bergamo panel may have been hung and appreciated.

Luini was a prolific artist, as well known for his frescoes as for his painting, but is poorly documented. He was especially popular in the nineteenth century when Count Guglielmo Lochis was forming his collection—this panel being one of the most admired works in the collection;[3] and his works were loved by John Ruskin who praised and copied his paintings. It has recently been discovered that Luini’s patrons in Milan, such as Gerolamo Rabia and Cardinal Bernardino Carvajal, who commissioned his Virgin and Child 1512 in the abbey of Chiaravalle, were part of a circle around the friar Amedeo Mendez da Silva and the Order he founded in Lombardy, the Amadeiti. Luini’s relationship with this politically powerful group of intellectuals still needs to be understood.

Giovanni Morelli, when deciding which part of the Lochis collection should go to the Accademia Carrara,[4] was immediately impressed with this scene, recognising the painting’s worth and what is known as Luini’s light and warm style of colouring. He wrote:

A most beautiful painting. It is a work of the artist’s so called blond style—and is one of the pearls of this collection.[5]

Jaynie Anderson

[1] Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519); Raphael (1483–1520).

[2] Angela Ottino della Chiesa, Accademia Carrara, Bergamo: Istituto italiano d’Arti Grafiche, 1967, p. 101

[3] Guglielmo Lochis, La pinacoteca e la villa Lochis alla Crocetta di Mozzo presso Bergamo con notizie biografiche degli autori dei quadri, Bergamo: Tipografia Natali, 1858, pp. 79–81.

[4] See Giovanni Valegussa, ‘The Accademia Carrara: Collections, collectors and community’, pp. 48–49.

[5] ‘Bellissima. Opera della maniera così detta bionda dell’autore—una delle perle di questa raccolta’: from Morelli’s annotated copy of the Lochis catalogue of 1865, Milan, Biblioteca dell’Accademia di Belle arti di Brera, D. III.4.