Più unica che rara: la genealogia della Vergine a sud delle Alpi. Tradizioni, committenze e canali di circolazione di un'insolita iconografia

Abstract

The iconographic research deals with the particular topic of the Holy Kinship, a common subject in the north of the Alps, but almost absent in Italy. Through a study about the historic and devotional grounds for the fortune of the theme in the transalpine area, especially in the Flemish and Rhenish ones, some suppositions will be stated, which explain the frequency of the Holy Kinship in the southern Piedmont and in Western Liguria. In these regions indeed Gandolfino da Roreto and Lorenzo Fasolo painted the only copies of the subject known in Italy. The study tries to deepen the relationships among artists, cities and committees of the artworks, by reconsidering the many times proposed connection between the Holy Kinship and the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, in order to attribute rather the reasons of the frequency of the subject to the social background of the patrons and to their thriving commercial business in the Netherlands and in the Northwest of Europe.