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Lot Essay
Ubaldo Gandolfi began his independent career in 1759 with an altarpiece for the parish church of S. Maria Maggiore in the small town of Castel San Pietro, near Bologna. The Assumption of the Virgin with SS Peter, Nicholas of Bari, Louis Gonzaga and Mary Magdalene of Pazzi is very much in the grand tradition of the late Bolognese Baroque, with a palette of pallid colours and a highly finished paint surface. By the later half of the 1760s his painting assumed a fresh vitality and displayed a steady progression towards a greater realism.
Donatella Biagi Maino (op. cit.) suggests that the model for the present painting is likely to be the artist's wife, Rosa Spisani, whom he married in 1760 and who is also reputedly the sitter in the Portrait of a Lady in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. She futhermore goes on to date the picture to the end of the 1760s and compares it to the Andromeda and Perseus and Diana and Endymion in the Collezioni Comunali d'Arte, Bologna. Both of the latter were commissioned by the Marchese Gregorio Casali for the apartments of the Senatori Gonfalonieri in the Palazzo Pubblico, Bologna, in 1770.
We are very grateful to Donatella Biagi Maino for her assistance in cataloguing this lot.
Donatella Biagi Maino (op. cit.) suggests that the model for the present painting is likely to be the artist's wife, Rosa Spisani, whom he married in 1760 and who is also reputedly the sitter in the Portrait of a Lady in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. She futhermore goes on to date the picture to the end of the 1760s and compares it to the Andromeda and Perseus and Diana and Endymion in the Collezioni Comunali d'Arte, Bologna. Both of the latter were commissioned by the Marchese Gregorio Casali for the apartments of the Senatori Gonfalonieri in the Palazzo Pubblico, Bologna, in 1770.
We are very grateful to Donatella Biagi Maino for her assistance in cataloguing this lot.