Carlo FACHINETTI (FACCHINETTI) (Florence, 1870 – 1951)
Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist
30.5 x 30 cm. (12 x 11 15⁄16 in.)
Circa 1910.
Gouached watercolor and gold highlights on paper laid down on pasteboard.
Signed lower right.
Carlo Fachinetti studied painting under Guiseppe Ciaranfi at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence. A decorator and landscape painter, he was known mainly for sentimental happy family scenes showing mothers and their young children in impeccable rustic interiors which were filled with Christian allusions.
A sensitive attentive painter, Fachinetti also specialized in small-scale bodycolor reproductions of masterpieces by Verrocchio, Botticelli, Raphael, Perugino, and other great Italian Renaissance masters. With a remarkable technique and attention to minute detail worthy of 16th century manuscript illuminators such as Paolo Giovio or Francesco da Castello, the artist transformed these large paintings into precious delicate miniatures.
Our drawing was inspired by the Madonna del Sacco (Madonna of the Sack) by Pietro Perugino, painted in about 1495-1500 and conserved in the Pitti Palace in Florence. This in turn was derived from Perugino’s Virgin and Child in the Chartreuse Polyptych in Pavia.
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