The first renaissance centurion: the National Gallery of Scotland's new exhibition of Venetian renaissance art in Scottish collections includes a major rediscovery, a painting by Paris Bordon from Mount Stuart, Alexandra Jackson discusses its place in Venetian art, and studies the limited evidence for its date, patronage and provenance

Apollo, August, 2004 by Alexandra Jackson

On the island of Bute, off the west coast of Scotland, in the great Victorian gothic house designed for the 3rd Marquess of Bute by the Scottish architect Robert Rowand Anderson, there hangs an imposing painting by Paris Borden, Christ and the Centurion of Capernaum (Figs. 1 and 2). It forms part of a magnificent collection begun by the 3rd Earl of Bute (1713-92), Secretary of State and 1st Lord of the Treasury during the reign of George III. (1) Intriguingly, the picture appears to be absent from Venetian primary sources, and there is no reference to it in either the monograph on the artist published in 1900 by Luigi Bailo and Gerolamo Biscaro, or the one produced in 1964 by Giordana Mariani Canova. (2) Similarly, the catalogue of the Borden exhibition held in Treviso in 1984 and the subsequent conference papers published in 1987 make no mention of its existence. (3) It is curious that a picture of this scale and ambition has not been catalogued by art historians in Italy from Vasari onwards, which may therefore indicate that it was commissioned outside Venice. The first recognised paintings in sixteenth-century Venice that dealt with the subject matter of the Centurion were those executed by Veronese and his workshop at a later date, and an examination of these works demonstrates that they draw heavily upon Bordon's prototype. (4)

The picture's iconography is drawn from the gospels of Matthew, Luke and John but more particularly from Matthew. (5) All recount the miracle of healing that Christ performed in or near Capernaum upon a sick servant or son of a Roman official. (6) In Bordon's painting, the centurion kneels before Christ, entreating him to save his servant. Christ has turned towards his followers--the disciple Luke on his immediate right, (7) Mark on his left, and Peter in the left foreground (8)--and is pointing towards the centurion, commenting that he has not found such great faith in Israel. The picture is apparently divided into two parts. On the left are his true disciples, while to the right are the centurion's friends mentioned in Luke's gospel, who are presumably included among the faithful by virtue of their friendship with the centurion. A discordant figure stands with his back to us pointing to the kneeling centurion; his lowly clothing suggests that he may be the centurion's servant, who is living proof of the miracle Christ has just performed. By presenting the viewer with three events--the centurion who is asking for the miracle, Christ pointing to the centurion and marvelling at his faith, and the healed servant--the picture encompasses three different time spheres and two evangelists' accounts. This is the only known picture by Borden that illustrates a miracle performed by Christ. He rarely illustrated biblical stories: parables are absent from his repertoire, and only two surviving canvases deal with Old Testament subject matter.

Bordon's Centurion and mid-sixteenth-century Venetian art

Veronese's celebrated representation of Christ and the Centurion of Capernaum, in the Prado, is, according to Von Hadeln, in all probability the one Carlo Ridolfi saw in the Contarini house in Padua (Fig. 3). (9) There are several other versions painted by Veronese and his workshop or attributed to him. (10) A copy in Dresden, acquired in 1747 by Augustus III, when it was attributed to Veronese, was etched in 1743 by Pietro Monaco (Fig. 4) and inscribed 'Pittura di Paulo Caliari Posseduta da] N.H.S. Antonio Grimani alli Servi'. (11)

The Prado picture has been variously dated as probably later 1560s by Cocks and as about 1570 by Pignatti and Pedrocco, and they have associated it with a climate of Counter-Reformation zeal. (12) It is apparent that Veronese had recourse to Bordon's work in the subject matter, size and composition, and he also utilised the idea of a scenographic background introduced into Venetian painting by Bordon's Fisherman Presenting the Ring to the Doge in 1534 (Fig. 5), although Veronese's is based on Palladian architecture. (13) However, he resorted to diagonals and a da sotto in su viewpoint to produce a dramatic effect, and this contrasts with the linearity and lack of spatial cohesion in Bordon's Centurion, where the figures are juxtaposed irrationally and on the right-hand side appear to be treading upon each other's toes. In the Centurion, Bordon consciously reemployed his invenzione in the Fisherman--two groups of onlookers with a kneeling figure in the centre, a repoussoir figure on either side with his back to the spectator, with Christ's pointing finger echoing that of the senator next to the Dogef. (14) The protagonists in the Fisherman are further back from the picture plane; by the time Bordon painted the Centurion, his figures had grown larger.

There are two further points of contact between Burden's paintings. The Mount Stuart picture is almost exactly half the height of the Venetian one, 193 by 302 cm as opposed to 370 by 301 cm, and dispenses with the architectural detail in the top half. Bordon was not given to working large canvases, and apart from his altarpieces and his architectural perspectives, these two works are an anomaly. Similarly, he did not typically include many figures in one work; again, they are the exception to the rule. The choice of canvas size and the number of figures in the Fisherman were determined by its intended purpose as part of the narrative cycle in the Scuola Grande di San Marco. We can only surmise that the size and content of the Mount Stuart picture point to an exalted destination in a palazzo.