Christ and the Woman of Canaan

Details

Sebastiano Ricci (Belluno 1659-1734 Venice)
Christ and the Woman of Canaan
oil on canvas
16 3/8 x 23½ in. (41.1 x 59.7 cm.)

Provenance

Sir George Colenbrooke, Bt.; Christie's, London, 22 April 1774, lot 28, as Seb. Ricci, The woman taken in adultery (22½ gns. to Martin).
By descent to E. Bromley Martin, Ham Court, Upton-on-Severn; Christie's, London, 4 December 1925, lot 46, with the former pendant (32 gns. to Lilienfeld).
R. Miller-Aicholz, Vienna, 1967.
with Galerie Saint-Lucas, Vienna, 1969 (as advertised in Apollo, September 1969, pl. CXXXVI).
with Galerie Kurt Meissner, Zurich, 1972.

Literature

J. Daniels, Sebastiano Ricci, Bath, 1976, p. 155, no. 538, fig. 206.
J. Daniels, L'opera completa di Sebastiano Ricci, Milan, 1976, p. 132, no. 475.
G.M. Pilo, Sebastiano Ricci e la pittura veneziana del Settecento, Pordenone, 1976, pp. 70-3 and 99, note 158.
D.M. Pagano, in La Collezione Farnese. I dipinti lombardi, liguri, veneti, toscani, umbri, romani, fiamminghi. Altre scuole. Fasti Farnesiani, ed. N. Spinosa, Naples, 1995, p. 41.
A. Scarpa, Sebastiano Ricci, Milan, 2006, p. 345, no. 564, fig. 590.

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

This picture is an autograph replica of the Christ and the Woman from Canann in the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples, where it is exhibited with its pendant, Christ and the Centurion. It is described by Daniels as a 'lighter, fresher version of the Naples picture' (op. cit., Bath, 1976) and is dated by him to around the end of the 1720s. Another version of Christ and the Centurion is in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow. It has been suggested by both Professor Giuseppe Maria Pilo and Dr. Annalisa Scarpa Sonino that the Moscow picture could very possibly be the pendant to this painting.

We are grateful to Dr. Annalisa Scarpa Sonino for confirming the attribution on the basis of photographs, and for noting that the 2001 Sotheby's provenance listed in her catalogue raisonné is incorrect.

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