Biagio Betti

(1535 - 1605)

Without frame.
Biagio Betti was a student of Daniele Da Volterra, a lay friar of the Theatine order. An eclectic character, he was in contact with the Roman artistic world but also beyond the Alps. He was familiar with Durer's engravings, which influenced his compositions. Stylistically, he represents a late Roman Mannerism of the last part of the 16th century.
ASOR Studio

Expertise by Professor Claudio Strinati
Biagio Betti (Cutigliano 1545 ca. - Rome 1615) Jesus interrogated in the Sanhedrin (oil on canvas cm 64 x 104)

The painting represents the crucial moment in the story of the Passion of Christ when the Redeemer is brought, after the Capture in the Garden of Gethsemane, to the Sanhedrin, that is, the Jewish Court administered by the Sadducees and the Pharisees, to be interrogated about his alleged sins and subsequently condemned even if the actual sentence was pronounced by Pilate.

The scene is executed, in our painting, with remarkable pictorial skill and refinement with an impeccable and rigorous style in the perspective definition and quite synthetic and summary of the figures, as if the author of the work was primarily a specialized miniaturist such as to devote all his doctrine to the analytical definition of the images accentuating the different states of mind, from the sorrowful sadness of Christ to the bureaucratic arrogance of the high priests who appear in great numbers in the painting and were in fact, according to ancient sources, about seventy and all very combative.

Our painting, for strictly stylistic reasons, seems to date back to the end of the sixteenth century and to be placed in that environment of miniaturized culture that had notable exponents, Italian and Flemish at that time. Among these stands out a painter who was also an eminent religious man, the Theatine father Biagio Betti of whom Giovanni Baglione wrote an exhaustive and erudite biography, describing him as a cultured, authoritative personality, very influential in the debate on religious art and a skilled painter, sculptor and miniaturist himself.

In this biography (published in his book Le Vite de' pittori, scultori e architetti, Rome

1642 (now in the modern edition edited by Barbara Agosti and Patrizia Tosini, Officina

Libraria 2023, vol 1, p.632 ff.) the theological intent is evident and primarily

doctrinal of the works executed by the painter from Chieti, but with a formidable attention

to the intrinsic quality of the paintings and to the iconographic originality. Of the works cited by

Baglione few survive today, but enough to attribute the painting to Biagio Betti

here under examination. In fact, in the church of San Silvestro al Quirinale in Rome there is a

large canvas, certainly autographed by this artist, depicting The Disputation of Jesus

with the Doctors (similar subject, although different, to that of the work here

which, unlike our painting, is a real altarpiece modelled, from an iconographic point of view, on Dürer's prints which were much studied and well-known at the time of Betti. And the setting of our painting is similar and therefore attributable to the

Betti with foundation also through a direct comparison with the Dispute cited which denotes a similar "Nordic" style even if on a monumental scale, while our painting is, as has been noted, absolutely miniaturist. Moreover, Baglione clearly states that the painter Biagio Betti, "was equally a miniaturist and on parchment paper and in everything else he exquisitely colored". This seems to be the case with our painting, a very notable example of a miniature painting of great intrinsic meaning and fine quality of draftsmanship, clearly perceptible even today despite some conservation problems that the work must have had but which do not in the least harm the appreciation and the consequent critical judgment.

I believe it is possible that this painting of ours was executed in conjunction with the Jubilee celebrations of the year 1600 when Father Biagio Betti was at the height of his career and his fame as an authoritative miniaturist and painter.

A painting, therefore, remarkable on the historical-artistic level and also on the doctrinal one, to which I attribute a considerable value of E. 25,000.00

In faith,

Claudio Strinati