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Lot Essay
This picture is a characteristic early work by the young Tintoretto. Pallucchini noted the influence of Bonifazio Veronese ('sopratutto nel brio narrativo'), but also points to 'una corsività pittorica di impronta schiavonesca', suggesting a date of circa 1543. Andrea Meldolla, Lo Schiavone, a key interpreter in Venice of Emilian and other Italian styles, briefly exercised a strong influence on the younger painter, who, as Ridolfi recounts in detail in his biography of 1648 had been cast out of Titian's workshop after an association of almost ten days and was therefore free to look elsewhere for artistic ideas. When less was known about Tintoretto's early work, the distinction between pictures by him and by Schiavone were not fully understood, and this may explain the error by which this panel was listed by Berenson as by both artists in 1932, a confusion repeated in 1957: the 1932 catalogue implies that it was he who first recognised Tintoretto's authorship. As Pallucchini notes, this picture is stylistically inseparable from the somewhat smaller Esther and Ahasueras -- also once attributed to Schiavone -- from the Seilern Collection now in the Courtauld Intitute of Art, Prince's Gate Collection (Pallucchini, no. 45, fig. 55), correctly attributed to Tintoretto by James Byam Shaw and published as such by A. Welsford in 1953 (The Burlington Magazine, XLV, p. 104).
The panel formed part of the celebrated Cook Collection at Doughty House, Richmond. One of the most remarkable assemblages of old master pictures formed in the nineteenth century, this was especially remarkable for its holdings of the Italian renaissance. These must in part have encouraged its inheritor, Sir Herbert Cook's scholarly interest in the Venetian cinquecento. Despite Cook's gift to the National Gallery of Titian's Portrait of a Lady and the subsequent sale of van Eyck's Maries at the Sepulchre, the collection remained largely intact until after the Second World War. Many of the Italian pictures were sold through intermediaries to Samuel H. Kress: major groups of old masters were sold in these rooms, 19 March 1965 and 8 December 2005.
The Arcade Gallery which acquired this panel specialised in mannerist and baroque works. The picture was bought there by the scholar Professor Michael Jaffe, subsequently Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, best known for his life-long study of Rubens, van Dyck and Jordaens.
The panel formed part of the celebrated Cook Collection at Doughty House, Richmond. One of the most remarkable assemblages of old master pictures formed in the nineteenth century, this was especially remarkable for its holdings of the Italian renaissance. These must in part have encouraged its inheritor, Sir Herbert Cook's scholarly interest in the Venetian cinquecento. Despite Cook's gift to the National Gallery of Titian's Portrait of a Lady and the subsequent sale of van Eyck's Maries at the Sepulchre, the collection remained largely intact until after the Second World War. Many of the Italian pictures were sold through intermediaries to Samuel H. Kress: major groups of old masters were sold in these rooms, 19 March 1965 and 8 December 2005.
The Arcade Gallery which acquired this panel specialised in mannerist and baroque works. The picture was bought there by the scholar Professor Michael Jaffe, subsequently Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, best known for his life-long study of Rubens, van Dyck and Jordaens.