Gustave, Baron de Wappers (Belgian, 1803-1874)
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Gustave, Baron de Wappers (Belgian, 1803-1874)

Boccaccio reading the Decameron to Joanna of Naples

細節
Gustave, Baron de Wappers (Belgian, 1803-1874)
Boccaccio reading the Decameron to Joanna of Naples
signed and dated 'Gustaf Wappers 1849' (lower right)
oil on canvas
67¾ x 893/8 in. (172.2 x 227 cm.)
Painted in 1849
來源
Baron de Pret, by whom commission ed from the artist for 11,000 gold francs.
Elizabeth and Kurt Grabowski, Berlin.
Rudolph Clausen.
出版
F. von Boetticher, Malerwerke des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, vol. II.2, Hofheim am Taunus, 1972, no. 6, p. 973.
展覽
Antwerp, Salon, 1849.
Vienna, Wienerausstellung, 1873.
注意事項
No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

拍品專文

Gustave, Baron de Wappers, was one of the main influences on mid-19th Century Belgian painting and Principal of the School of Fine Arts from 1840 to 1853. He was the leading court painter to the King and was the first artist to paint the Sovereign's portrait from life, as a pair to Ary Scheffer's portrait of the Queen.

In this impressive work, de Wappers depicts Boccaccio reading the Decameron to Joanna of Naples. Joanna, Countess of Provence and Queen of Naples (1343-82), was the beautiful and intelligent patron of poets and scholars, who defended the claim of the house of Anjou to the throne of Naples following the death of her grandfather Robert, King of Naples, in 1343. Under King Robert, Naples had enjoyed a period of prosperity and had become a centre for literature and art.

Boccaccio's name and the title of his most famous work, the Decameron, can be see on the pages of parchment in his lap. Completed between 1348 and 1353, the Decameron, had an enormous impact on the history of European literature, serving as the inspiration for the whole genre of the 'novella' and as the model for other framed story collections, such as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.