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Lot Essay
The son of Ercole Procaccini I, and brother of Camillo and Giulio Cesare, Carlantonio enjoyed a considerable reputation during his lifetime painting still lifes, religious works (including frescoes for the Chapel of Saint Francesco and the Church of Saint Angelo, Milan) and landscapes such as the present lot.
In an article in Paragone, Un Italiano nell sra dell'Elsheimer, Roberto Longhi publishes two works by Carlantonio, Christ curing the Blind Man and Mercury and Herse, which like The Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Trafalgar Galleries, London, Trafalgar Galleries at the Royal Academy, London, 1983, no. 17), The Garden of Eden (Anon. sale, Sotheby's, New York, June 3, 1988, lot 31) and the present painting, establish an important link between Paul Bril, Adam Elsheimer, and Jan Brueghel I who was in Milan in 1596 to work for Cardinal Federico Borromeo. The evidence of interaction between these three artists is further strengthened in the present Stoning of Saint Stephen, in which the figures - set in a Brueghelian landscape - recall Elsheimer's painting of the same subject in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, painted circa 1602-5. An execution date for the present work within the final years of Procaccini's life is therefore probable.
In an article in Paragone, Un Italiano nell sra dell'Elsheimer, Roberto Longhi publishes two works by Carlantonio, Christ curing the Blind Man and Mercury and Herse, which like The Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Trafalgar Galleries, London, Trafalgar Galleries at the Royal Academy, London, 1983, no. 17), The Garden of Eden (Anon. sale, Sotheby's, New York, June 3, 1988, lot 31) and the present painting, establish an important link between Paul Bril, Adam Elsheimer, and Jan Brueghel I who was in Milan in 1596 to work for Cardinal Federico Borromeo. The evidence of interaction between these three artists is further strengthened in the present Stoning of Saint Stephen, in which the figures - set in a Brueghelian landscape - recall Elsheimer's painting of the same subject in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, painted circa 1602-5. An execution date for the present work within the final years of Procaccini's life is therefore probable.