Lot Essay
This striking canvas showing the Liberation of Saint Peter is arguably the finest work from Mattia Preti's early maturity to appear on the market in a generation. Dated to circa 1645 (see Spike and Contini, op. cit., 1999 and 2002 respectively), the composition's theatrical staging and lighting betrays the Caravaggesque idiom that marked Preti's early artistic output from his years in Rome while revealing the emerging influences of Guercino, Lanfranco and the Venetian painters of the previous century. It was during this key period that Preti developed a highly personal style which ultimately revolutionised painting in Naples during the following decade, a city then ravaged by the effects of the 1656 plague and where the Calabrese artist established his position as the leading painter of the Neapolitan Baroque. The picture has only appeared on the market once, when it was acquired by the father of the present owner at Christie's in 1989 for what was then the highest price for a work by the artist at auction (see provenance), a record that has only been surpassed twice since.
The subject is taken from the Acts of the Apostles (12: 6-7): ‘the same night Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains: and the keepers before the door kept the prison. And, behold, the angel of the Lord came upon him, and a light shined in the prison: and he smote Peter on the side, and raised him up, saying, Arise up quickly. And his chains fell off his hands.’ Here Preti has devised a compellingly daring composition; the Angel and Saint, shown in the moments following Peter's release from his chains, occupy the left half of the canvas, while one of the sleeping guards dominates the right foreground. The stark distribution of light across this nocturnal scene - passing from the stealthily departing protagonists to the armour and forearm of the sleeping guard - heightens the drama of Preti’s masterfully cinematographic arrangement. The artist captures these intervals of light with consummate brio, notably in passages where dragged strokes of richly applied white impasto are employed to superb effect, such as in the angel's collar.
This canvas has been dated to the middle years of the 1640s, arguably the most obscure period in terms of Preti’s movements, but unquestionably a pivotal one where his artistic development was concerned. Although Bernardo de’ Dominici claimed, in his colourful account of the artist’s life (1742), that Preti travelled to Spain and Flanders between April 1643 and March 1646 – a period in which he was absent from Rome – recent scholars have disproved this and believe he likely spent time in Venice, where he admired the opulence and poetry of Venetian sixteenth-century painting, and in Bologna, where he was able to study the works of Guercino. As John Spike has observed, compositions such as The Prodigal Son (c.1645; Le Mans, Musée de Tessé) and The Death of Sofonisba (c.1645-60; Rome, Galleria Pallavicini) display a ‘new breadth of vision, an unprecedented theatricality, and appreciation for atmospheric effects that must have been learned in front of the grand canvases in the scuole and palazzi of Venice’ (Spike, op. cit., 1999, p. 26). Roberto Contini (op. cit., 2002, p. 126) argues that the present picture reveals the strong influence of Battistello Caracciolo (1578-1635), the Neapolitan painter with whom some scholars believe Preti trained. He suggests that the figures of Saint Peter and the liberating angel are possibly based on Joseph and Jesus in Caracciolo’s Flight into Egypt in the church of Pietà dei Turchini, Naples, and that the overall composition derives from the Neapolitan’s altarpiece depicting the same saint’s liberation, painted in 1616 for Pio Monte della Misericordia, the church for which Caravaggio executed his celebrated Seven Acts of Mercy (1607). Unlike Caracciolo’s treatment of the subject, in which the figures have dared to pause and engage in conversation, here Preti shows his protagonists in mid-flight, imbuing the scene with a palpable sense of tension; the Saint glances back at the sleeping guard while the angel looks towards the viewer, ensuring we are complicit in their escape.
Preti treated the subject of Saint Peter’s liberation on several occasions during the following decades, notably the exceptionally fine rendition in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden (c.1650) and the monumental canvas in the Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna (fig. 1; c.1665). The latter has been tentatively connected with the picture described by the sometimes unreliable de’ Dominici (1742, pp. 375-76), whose father had been a pupil of Preti in Malta, where the Calabrese artist had settled in 1660, becoming a Knight of Grace in the Order of Saint John soon after, and where he remained until his death in 1699.
A NOTE ON THE PROVENANCE
Prince Eugène de Beauharnais (fig. 2; 1781-1824), to whom this picture once belonged, was a statesman, military commander and the step-son of Napoleon Bonaparte; his mother, Josephine (1763-1814), married Napoleon after the death of his father Viscount Alexandre (1760-94). A year after the proclamation of the Empire in 1804, Napoleon appointed Eugène Viceroy of Italy, a position he occupied until April 1814 when the Convention of Mantua was signed and he relinquished control of the Kingdom. It was almost certainly during this period that he acquired the present canvas. Eugène formed a large collection of pictures during his years in Italy, including Guercino’s Vision of Saint Jerome (c.1621; Moscow, Pushkin Museum) – an early work by the Cento artist that Preti himself would have greatly admired – and Guido Reni’s copper from circa 1596-97 of the Assumption of the Virgin, now in the Städel Museum, Frankfurt. A large canvas by Alessandro Tiarini of the Holy Family under an Arch (c.1625), that was no doubt acquired by Eugène during the same period, followed the same path as the present picture and remains in the Lansdowne collection (see the exhibition catalogue: England and the Seicento, A Loan Exhibition of Bolognese Paintings from British Collections, Agnew’s, London, 1973, no. 50).
Eugène gave the picture to his friend and near-contemporary, Auguste-Charles-Joseph, Comte de Flahaut de La Billarderie, Comte de Flahaut (1785-1870). Charles was thought to be the offspring of his mother’s liaison with Talleyrand, with whom he was closely connected throughout his life. He was present at the Battle of Austerlitz in December 1805 and is thought to have had a liaison with Napoleon’s younger sister, Caroline Bonaparte, around this time. He later became the lover of Hortense de Beauharnais, Eugène’s sister and wife of Louis Bonaparte, making her both step-daughter and sister-in-law of Napoleon. Their affair resulted in the birth of a son, Charles-Auguste-Louis-Joseph Demorny, later Duc de Morny, who formed an impressive collection of pictures, the most celebrated of which was Fragonard’s The Swing (c.1767-8; London, Wallace Collection). After the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, where he served as aide-de-camp to Napoleon, Charles de Flahaut lived in exile in Germany and then England where, in 1817, he married Margaret Mercer Elphinstone, who became Baroness Keith following her father’s death in 1823. The present picture passed to their eldest daughter, Emily Jane, who married, in 1843, Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 4th Marquess of Lansdowne.
The subject is taken from the Acts of the Apostles (12: 6-7): ‘the same night Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains: and the keepers before the door kept the prison. And, behold, the angel of the Lord came upon him, and a light shined in the prison: and he smote Peter on the side, and raised him up, saying, Arise up quickly. And his chains fell off his hands.’ Here Preti has devised a compellingly daring composition; the Angel and Saint, shown in the moments following Peter's release from his chains, occupy the left half of the canvas, while one of the sleeping guards dominates the right foreground. The stark distribution of light across this nocturnal scene - passing from the stealthily departing protagonists to the armour and forearm of the sleeping guard - heightens the drama of Preti’s masterfully cinematographic arrangement. The artist captures these intervals of light with consummate brio, notably in passages where dragged strokes of richly applied white impasto are employed to superb effect, such as in the angel's collar.
This canvas has been dated to the middle years of the 1640s, arguably the most obscure period in terms of Preti’s movements, but unquestionably a pivotal one where his artistic development was concerned. Although Bernardo de’ Dominici claimed, in his colourful account of the artist’s life (1742), that Preti travelled to Spain and Flanders between April 1643 and March 1646 – a period in which he was absent from Rome – recent scholars have disproved this and believe he likely spent time in Venice, where he admired the opulence and poetry of Venetian sixteenth-century painting, and in Bologna, where he was able to study the works of Guercino. As John Spike has observed, compositions such as The Prodigal Son (c.1645; Le Mans, Musée de Tessé) and The Death of Sofonisba (c.1645-60; Rome, Galleria Pallavicini) display a ‘new breadth of vision, an unprecedented theatricality, and appreciation for atmospheric effects that must have been learned in front of the grand canvases in the scuole and palazzi of Venice’ (Spike, op. cit., 1999, p. 26). Roberto Contini (op. cit., 2002, p. 126) argues that the present picture reveals the strong influence of Battistello Caracciolo (1578-1635), the Neapolitan painter with whom some scholars believe Preti trained. He suggests that the figures of Saint Peter and the liberating angel are possibly based on Joseph and Jesus in Caracciolo’s Flight into Egypt in the church of Pietà dei Turchini, Naples, and that the overall composition derives from the Neapolitan’s altarpiece depicting the same saint’s liberation, painted in 1616 for Pio Monte della Misericordia, the church for which Caravaggio executed his celebrated Seven Acts of Mercy (1607). Unlike Caracciolo’s treatment of the subject, in which the figures have dared to pause and engage in conversation, here Preti shows his protagonists in mid-flight, imbuing the scene with a palpable sense of tension; the Saint glances back at the sleeping guard while the angel looks towards the viewer, ensuring we are complicit in their escape.
Preti treated the subject of Saint Peter’s liberation on several occasions during the following decades, notably the exceptionally fine rendition in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden (c.1650) and the monumental canvas in the Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna (fig. 1; c.1665). The latter has been tentatively connected with the picture described by the sometimes unreliable de’ Dominici (1742, pp. 375-76), whose father had been a pupil of Preti in Malta, where the Calabrese artist had settled in 1660, becoming a Knight of Grace in the Order of Saint John soon after, and where he remained until his death in 1699.
A NOTE ON THE PROVENANCE
Prince Eugène de Beauharnais (fig. 2; 1781-1824), to whom this picture once belonged, was a statesman, military commander and the step-son of Napoleon Bonaparte; his mother, Josephine (1763-1814), married Napoleon after the death of his father Viscount Alexandre (1760-94). A year after the proclamation of the Empire in 1804, Napoleon appointed Eugène Viceroy of Italy, a position he occupied until April 1814 when the Convention of Mantua was signed and he relinquished control of the Kingdom. It was almost certainly during this period that he acquired the present canvas. Eugène formed a large collection of pictures during his years in Italy, including Guercino’s Vision of Saint Jerome (c.1621; Moscow, Pushkin Museum) – an early work by the Cento artist that Preti himself would have greatly admired – and Guido Reni’s copper from circa 1596-97 of the Assumption of the Virgin, now in the Städel Museum, Frankfurt. A large canvas by Alessandro Tiarini of the Holy Family under an Arch (c.1625), that was no doubt acquired by Eugène during the same period, followed the same path as the present picture and remains in the Lansdowne collection (see the exhibition catalogue: England and the Seicento, A Loan Exhibition of Bolognese Paintings from British Collections, Agnew’s, London, 1973, no. 50).
Eugène gave the picture to his friend and near-contemporary, Auguste-Charles-Joseph, Comte de Flahaut de La Billarderie, Comte de Flahaut (1785-1870). Charles was thought to be the offspring of his mother’s liaison with Talleyrand, with whom he was closely connected throughout his life. He was present at the Battle of Austerlitz in December 1805 and is thought to have had a liaison with Napoleon’s younger sister, Caroline Bonaparte, around this time. He later became the lover of Hortense de Beauharnais, Eugène’s sister and wife of Louis Bonaparte, making her both step-daughter and sister-in-law of Napoleon. Their affair resulted in the birth of a son, Charles-Auguste-Louis-Joseph Demorny, later Duc de Morny, who formed an impressive collection of pictures, the most celebrated of which was Fragonard’s The Swing (c.1767-8; London, Wallace Collection). After the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, where he served as aide-de-camp to Napoleon, Charles de Flahaut lived in exile in Germany and then England where, in 1817, he married Margaret Mercer Elphinstone, who became Baroness Keith following her father’s death in 1823. The present picture passed to their eldest daughter, Emily Jane, who married, in 1843, Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 4th Marquess of Lansdowne.