Lot Essay
We are grateful to Professor Sandro Bellesi for confirming the attribution from a transparency.
Pietro Dandini was born in Florence in 1646 and worked in the workshop of his uncle, Vincenzo Dandini. He travelled to Venice in 1668-70 and also briefly to Rome. On 28 July 1671, he is recorded on the register of the Accademia del Disegno, with a reference to his stylistic alliance to Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto. This association with the Venetian masters was propitious, leading to a stream of public and private commissions in Florence, particularly of historical and mythological subjects.
Professor Bellesi believes that the quality and luminousity of the glazes and the treatment of the figures in the present work are comparible with Dandini's other works from the 1690s, for example The Martyrdom of Saint John the Baptist, in the Church of San Giovannino dei Cavalieri, Florence, and Belshazzar's Feast, in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow. He suggests that the present work could be the picture recorded in the Dandini inventories of the seventeenth century, and subsequently in the Targioni Tozzetti Collection, Florence.
Professor Bellesi records another version of the same subject by Dandini which was sold in these Rooms, 9 July 1982, lot 16, as Giambattista Langetti (S. Bellesi, Una Vita Inedita di Pier Dandini, Rivista d'Arte, VII, 1991, p.99, fig. 4).
The subject of the present work illustrates Sisygambis, the captured mother of Darius, with Stateira, his wife, and his daughters, prostrate before Alexander the Great (Plutarch 33:21). The Emperor's courtesy and kindness to his captors was held as an exemplar of honour and nobility.
Pietro Dandini was born in Florence in 1646 and worked in the workshop of his uncle, Vincenzo Dandini. He travelled to Venice in 1668-70 and also briefly to Rome. On 28 July 1671, he is recorded on the register of the Accademia del Disegno, with a reference to his stylistic alliance to Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto. This association with the Venetian masters was propitious, leading to a stream of public and private commissions in Florence, particularly of historical and mythological subjects.
Professor Bellesi believes that the quality and luminousity of the glazes and the treatment of the figures in the present work are comparible with Dandini's other works from the 1690s, for example The Martyrdom of Saint John the Baptist, in the Church of San Giovannino dei Cavalieri, Florence, and Belshazzar's Feast, in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow. He suggests that the present work could be the picture recorded in the Dandini inventories of the seventeenth century, and subsequently in the Targioni Tozzetti Collection, Florence.
Professor Bellesi records another version of the same subject by Dandini which was sold in these Rooms, 9 July 1982, lot 16, as Giambattista Langetti (S. Bellesi, Una Vita Inedita di Pier Dandini, Rivista d'Arte, VII, 1991, p.99, fig. 4).
The subject of the present work illustrates Sisygambis, the captured mother of Darius, with Stateira, his wife, and his daughters, prostrate before Alexander the Great (Plutarch 33:21). The Emperor's courtesy and kindness to his captors was held as an exemplar of honour and nobility.