Giovanni Battista Pittoni* (1687-1767)

VARIOUS PROPERTIES

Details

Giovanni Battista Pittoni* (1687-1767)

The Sacrifice of Polyxena at the Tomb of Achilles

oil on canvas
20¼ x 39½in. (51.5 x 100.5cm.)

Provenance

J.S.W.S. Erle Drax, Olantigh Towers, Wye, Kent; (+) Christie's, London, Feb. 19, 1910, lot 55 as G.B. Tiepolo, (140gns. to Buttery).
Sir Herbert Cook, Bt., Doughty House, Richmond, Sussex, by 1911, and by descent to
Sir Frederick Cook, Bt.
Akron Art Institute, Ohio, USA, by 1959; Sotheby's, New York, Jan. 8, 1981, lot 36, ($42,500).
with Chaucer Fine Art, London, 1981.

Literature

T. Borenius, A Catalogue of the Paintings at Doughty House, Richmond, in the Collection of Sir Frederick Cook, 1913, I, no. 191.
A. Graves, A Century of Loan Exhibitions, 1913, II, pp. 939.
M. Brockwell, Abridged Catalogue of the Pictures at Doughty House, Richmond, Surrey, in the collection of Sir Herbert Cook, Bart., 1932, p. 79, no. 191.
H. Voss, in Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler, ed. U. Thieme-Becker, XXVII, 1933, pp. 119-21.
R. Pallucchini, I Disegni di Giambattista Pittoni, 1945, p. 20, pl. XIV.
A. Morassi, Pittura veneziana del Settecento in una Mostra a Londra, Emporium, CXIII, May 1951, p. 220.
I. Fenyo, Zur Kunst Giovanni Battista Pittoni, Acta Historiae Artium Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 1954, I, p. 291.
F. Zava Boccazzi, Pittoni, L'Opera Completa, 1979, p. 111, no. I, figs. 278-9.

Exhibited

London, Burlington Fine Arts Club, Venetian Painting of the 18th Century, 1911, no. 11.
Florence, Palazzo Pitti, Mostra della Pittura Italiana del Seicento e del Settecento, 1922, no. 775.
London, Whitechapel, Art Gallery; and Birmingham, Museum and Art Gallery, Eighteenth Century Venice, 1951, no. 94.

Lot Essay

This is an autograph variant, greatly reduced in scale, of Pittoni's painting in the Palazzo Taverna a Monte Giordano, Rome (oil on canvas, 370 by 680 cm.; Zava Boccazzi, op. cit., no. 166, figs. 271 and 272). The principal difference between these two versions is in the pose of the standing soldier and the seated woman on the extreme left. A further autograph variant is in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (oil on canvas, 56 by 98cm.; ibid., no. 145, figs. 274 and 276). The subject was a great popular success and led to several further commissions for secondary versions from Pittoni and his workshop, including some of vertical format. Zava Boccazzi dates the present picture circa 1732-3, shortly after the Palazzo Taverna picture of circa 1730-2 (documented before 11 November 1734). In pictures such as these, from the period of his early maturity, Pittoni has already broken free from the influence of Giordano and Solimena and approaches the more opulent decorative manner of Tiepolo.