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Lot Essay
This exceptionally well preserved canvas is a significant addition to the corpus of early pictures by Francesco Guardi, painted when the artist was working with his brother Giovanni Antonio (1699-1760), who had taken over their father’s studio in 1716, and before Francesco established himself as one of the leading view painters in eighteenth century Venice.
This picture, which corresponds closely to Antonio Pellegrini’s treatment of the same subject (c. 1704; Newport, Rhode Island, The Elms), is an example of the Guardi studio practice of borrowing compositions from earlier sources. Between 1729-1747, Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg (1661-1747), Field Marshal of the Venetian armies, commissioned the Guardi brothers to execute numerous copies of Venetian masters, including works by Titian, Tintoretto, Sebastiano Ricci and other contemporary painters. Another version of the present picture, of slightly smaller dimensions (150 x 200 cm.), was included in Pedrocco and Montecuccoli degli Erri’s monograph on Antonio Guardi (Antonio Guardi, Milan, 1992, p. 135, no. 103), along with a pendant depicting The Triumph of a Roman Condottiero (ibid., no 104), both of which were once in the Palazzo Savorgnan di Brazzà, Udine, and are now in a private Venetian collection. Like many of the Guardi studio figurative paintings, the attribution of those works has long been the subject of scholarly debate since they were first published in 1962 as a collaboration between the two brothers. Stylistically, this picture can be compared with two further pictures that have been traditionally given to Antonio and are now accepted as by Francesco: The Immaculate Conception with Saints (Milan, Galleria Bosoni) and The Madonna of Seven Sorrows with Saints and the Four Doctors of the Church (Vienna, Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der bildenden Künste). In this work, Francesco’s lively painterly style is beautifully displayed in passages such as Scipio’s cloak and the attending Roman soldier’s helmet, while the agitated over-hanging canopy, billowing standards and distant landscape reveal the subtle tonal effects for which he would be later celebrated.
The subject, which was particularly popular in eighteenth-century Venetian painting, is told in Livy's History of Rome (Book XXVI, chapter 50). After capturing the Spanish city of New Carthage, Scipio Africanus received as a prize of war a beautiful maiden. On learning that she is betrothed, Scipio, shown seated and holding a baton at the centre of the composition, summons the girl’s fiancé and returns her as a mark of Roman virtue. To the left, Roman soldiers are shown bearing the gold vessels that are offered as a ransom by the girl’s parents, and are subsequently given by Scipio to the bridegroom as a wedding gift.
We are grateful to Charles Beddington and Dr. Mitchell Merling for independently endorsing the attribution after first-hand inspection of the work and on the basis of an image respectively.
This picture, which corresponds closely to Antonio Pellegrini’s treatment of the same subject (c. 1704; Newport, Rhode Island, The Elms), is an example of the Guardi studio practice of borrowing compositions from earlier sources. Between 1729-1747, Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg (1661-1747), Field Marshal of the Venetian armies, commissioned the Guardi brothers to execute numerous copies of Venetian masters, including works by Titian, Tintoretto, Sebastiano Ricci and other contemporary painters. Another version of the present picture, of slightly smaller dimensions (150 x 200 cm.), was included in Pedrocco and Montecuccoli degli Erri’s monograph on Antonio Guardi (Antonio Guardi, Milan, 1992, p. 135, no. 103), along with a pendant depicting The Triumph of a Roman Condottiero (ibid., no 104), both of which were once in the Palazzo Savorgnan di Brazzà, Udine, and are now in a private Venetian collection. Like many of the Guardi studio figurative paintings, the attribution of those works has long been the subject of scholarly debate since they were first published in 1962 as a collaboration between the two brothers. Stylistically, this picture can be compared with two further pictures that have been traditionally given to Antonio and are now accepted as by Francesco: The Immaculate Conception with Saints (Milan, Galleria Bosoni) and The Madonna of Seven Sorrows with Saints and the Four Doctors of the Church (Vienna, Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der bildenden Künste). In this work, Francesco’s lively painterly style is beautifully displayed in passages such as Scipio’s cloak and the attending Roman soldier’s helmet, while the agitated over-hanging canopy, billowing standards and distant landscape reveal the subtle tonal effects for which he would be later celebrated.
The subject, which was particularly popular in eighteenth-century Venetian painting, is told in Livy's History of Rome (Book XXVI, chapter 50). After capturing the Spanish city of New Carthage, Scipio Africanus received as a prize of war a beautiful maiden. On learning that she is betrothed, Scipio, shown seated and holding a baton at the centre of the composition, summons the girl’s fiancé and returns her as a mark of Roman virtue. To the left, Roman soldiers are shown bearing the gold vessels that are offered as a ransom by the girl’s parents, and are subsequently given by Scipio to the bridegroom as a wedding gift.
We are grateful to Charles Beddington and Dr. Mitchell Merling for independently endorsing the attribution after first-hand inspection of the work and on the basis of an image respectively.