La Salita al Calvario di Scipione Pulzone: le copie, la filologia e il prototipo per Marcantonio Colonna

Since 2012, when Scipione Pulzone’s
Way to Calvary (1581-83) was first published,
a considerable number of copies
and variants of the composition have come
to light. In this article, a detailed philological
examination of the fourteen versions presently
known is carried out, in order to define
the exact appearance of the original work
and confirm the identification of the version
belonging to a private collection in Italy with
the replica painted in 1583 for cardinal Ferdinando
de’ Medici, as well as to validate the
hypothesis that the prototype commissioned
to Pulzone by Marcantonio Colonna
in 1579 is the version now in the Budapest
Museum of Fine Arts, which is undoubtedly
the best of all for quality of execution. As
more or less altered copies, all the other extant
examples of the image can be related
to one or the other of these originals, according
to a model that, in the author’s intention,
should be possible to apply to any
subsequent versions. Furthermore, the
Medici replica is characterised by an interesting
detail directly alluding to its patron: in
fact, the sword born by the soldier in the
foreground reproduces a falchion presently
in the Wallace Collection, which was made
for duke Cosimo de’ Medici before 1569.
Presumably Cosimo gave it to his son Ferdinando,
who took it to Rome where it was
admired not only by Pulzone but also by
Paris Nogari, as can be observed in the latter`
s fresco representing the Library of Alexandria
in the Salone Sistino of the Vatican
Library, painted in 1588-89.