Argus, Io and Mercury in an extensive river landscape

Details

Studio of Salvator Rosa (Arenella, Naples 1615-1673 Rome)
Argus, Io and Mercury in an extensive river landscape
with monogram 'SR' (lower right)
oil on canvas
43 5/8 x 72¾ in. (115.3 x 184.8 cm.)

Provenance

Probably acquired by the Knight family in late 18th century and by descent to
Major Eric Knight; sale at Wolveryley House, near Kiddeminster, circa 1945.
Sydney Harris, Halesowen, by 1960, and by descent to his son
Lyndon Goodwin Harris.

Literature

L. Salerno, Salvator Rosa, Milan, 1963, p. 144, under 'opere non riprodotte', as the prime version ('una replica a Kansas City').
L. Salerno, L'opera completa di Salvator Rosa, Milan, 1975, no. 144, illustrated, as a signed autograph version of the Kansas City picture.
B.B. Fredericksen, 'A pair of pendant pictures by Claude Lorrain and Salvator Rosa from the Chigi Collection', in The Burlington Magazine, August 1991, pp. 543-6, fig. 62, as Salvator Rosa, and under note 18 ('In spite of its Chigi provenance, the Kansas City painting may well be a replica of the Harris version, rather than vice versa').
E.W. Rowlands, Italian Paintings. The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, 1996, pp. 314-5, and fig. 35c, as 'Attributed to Salvator Rosa', or 'a later replica of the Nelson-Atkins canvas and not necessarily by Rosa's hand'.
J. Scott, Salvator Rosa: His Life and Times', Yale, 1995, p. 126, fig. 126, as Salvator Rosa.

Exhibited

London, Royal Academy of Arts, Italian Art and Britain, Winter Exhibition, 1 February-3 June 1960, no. 152, as Salvator Rosa.

Engraved

Maria Catharina Prestel (1747-94).
Pietro Parboni, before 1803.

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 15% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

Lot Essay

Luigi Salerno was first to cite the present work as Salvator Rosa's prime version of the subject and thus the picture first recorded in the Chigi collection in 1658 where it hung as a pendant to Claude's David at the Cave of Adullam (National Gallery, London; op. cit., 1963). However, Salerno subsequently published the canvas, cut down on the right side, in the Nelson Atkins Museum, Kansas, as the original, on the basis that its provenance goes back to Robert Sloane, the buyer of the Rosa and the Claude from the Chigi family at the end of the 18th century (op. cit., 1975). Even so, Burton Fredericksen in 1991 remained equivocal as to which version was the prime one, suggesting that 'in spite of its Chigi provenance, the Kansas city painting may well be a replica of the Harris version rather than vice versa' (loc. cit.). This theory was also taken up by Jonathan Scott who published the present picture in 1996 as the original (loc. cit.). A third version of the composition, adjudged to be a copy, is in the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, Massachusetts.

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