The Sacrifice of Polyxena

Details

Giovanni Battista Pittoni (Venice 1687-1767)
The Sacrifice of Polyxena
oil on canvas
50 x 36 in. (127 x 91.5 cm.)

Provenance

Broderip Collection.
Sir K.T. Parker, Director of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 1951.
Anon. Sale [The Property of a Gentleman], Sotheby's, London, 14 June 1961, lot 103 (£3,500 to Colnaghi).

Literature

A. Morassi, 'Pittura veneziana del Settecento in una mostra a Londra', Emporium, May 1951, p. 220.
F. Zava Bocazzi, Pittoni, Venice, 1979, p. 183, no. 254, fig. 267.

Exhibited

London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, 3 January-14 March 1951, and Birmingham, City Art Gallery, 21 March-18 April 1951, Eighteenth Century Venice, p. 29, no. 93.

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

Lot Essay

The subject was one of Pittoni's most original and successful, and there are three variants of the composition: Zava Boccazzi's types A, B and C, of which the prime versions are respectively at Stuttgart, in the J.P. Getty Museum, Malibu, and in the Louvre, Paris (loc. cit., nos. 186, 101, and 144). The present canvas, a signed picture in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg (ibid., no. 79) and the Getty picture are characterised by Zava Boccazzi as 'ottimi esemplari' of type B 'tutti qualificati dall' eccellenza formale e da un cromatismo variato e vivace, con timbri freddi' (ibid., p. 139); she dates all three to 1732. Zava Boccazzi rejects Morassi's view of 1951 that this picture is by an artist from the circle of Sebastiano Ricci, pointing to its close relationship with the signed St. Petersburg picture in which the decoration of the sarcophagus seen in the Getty picture is also omitted.

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