Borromeo Family, Milan, before 1936;

Private Collection, Southern France, since at least circa 19𓆉70.

G. Nicodemi, “La pittura lombarda dal 1630 al 1706,” in Storia di Milano. Il declino spagnolo (1630-1706), Milan𓂃 1958, p. 507, reproduced p. 506 (as “Sebastianone”);

A. Morandotti, “Pittori della realtà popolare nella Lombardia di Giacomo Ceruti: Quesiti intorno a Pietro Bellotti e a Sebastiano Giuliense, il Sebastianone,” in Nuovi Studi: Rivista di arte antica e moderna, no. 18, 2012, anno XVII, p. 240, footnote 48.

This large canvas depicts the “Fiera del Perdono” held during Holy Week in the town of Melegnano, near Milan. It is one of a group of paintings by the same hand which depict various scenes in and around the Lombard capital: a View of the Castello Sforzesco, Milan; a View of Piazza Cordusio, Milan; the Carnival in the Piazza del Duomo, Milan (dated 1677), and the present canvas.¹ These paintings bore a traditional attribution to a certain “Sebastianone,” an artist who was recorded in Milanese inventories in the early 18th century as a painter of portraits and genre scenes. Although he still remains a somewhat mysterious figure, the artist has been convincingly identified by Alessandro Morandotti with Sebastiano Giuliense, a painter recorded as active in Milan by 1673.² Morandotti identifies a corpus of 🐈works by Giuliense, il Sebastian🔯one, consisting of peasant subjects, in the manner of Giacomo Ceruti, as well as portraits, works that period documents confirm that he produced; however, he considers the topographical views, including the present painting, to be by a different hand.

The “Fiera del Perdono” (literally the “Fair of Dispensation”) is held every year on Holy Thursday and Good Friday in Melegnano, a town on the outskirts of Milan. It was instituted in 1563 when Pope Pius IV authorized it by Papal Bull, a document which is to this day displayed during the period of the fair in the church of the Natività di San Giovanni Battista, itself depicted in the upper right of the painting. Tradition has it that the Pope, born Giovanni Angelo Medici in nearby Milan, had taken refuge in the parish house there, and as a result felt in debt to its citizens. His familial connection to Melegnano was very close; his brother held the fiefdom of the town from the Sforza, and he himself was later to own the castle at its center.³

The Melegnano fair quickly became an🍷 important event; a contemporary witness noted that by 1616, it drew an “immensa folla,” with many people from the surrounding area coming in to shop and enjoy themselves in what was an otherwise pious, Lenten period. This included the added benefit of absolution that atte꧂ndance at the fair conferred. This canvas captures perfectly the bustling market that took place every year. Rambunctious children fill the foreground, their games flanking a group of gentlemen on horseback in the center. Beyond them are a variety of figures selling a wide array of objects, clothing, and food. Two strong diagonals invite the audience deeper into the scene. The first is the line of market stalls at center that recedes into the distance through an archway and onto a tree-lined road.

1. Of these four, only the present painting and the Carnival in the Piazza del Duomo have reappeared, the latter shown by the dealer Minozzi in the Biennale in Florence in 2007. There are copies of the Carnival and the View of the Castello Sforzesco in the Museo di Milano, Palazzo Morando Attendolo Bologn൩ini, (see Morandotti 2012, p. 240, footnote 48).

2. Morandotti 2012, p. 237.

3. Legend has 🅠it that the future pope was not allowed to enter the castle by his own brother’s widow, and was 🎀thus forced to accept the hospitality elsewhere in town.