Lot Essay
A reduced monochrome version of Marco and Sebastiano Ricci's Allegorical Tomb of Sir Cloudsley Shovel, National Gallery of Art, Washington. The Washington picture was part of an ambitious decorative cycle of twenty-four paintings celebrating the heroes of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the subsequent Whig ascendancy which was commissioned in the 1720's by the exiled Irish impresario Owen McSwinny from groups of prominent Venetian and Bolognese artists, often in collaboration. They included Piazzetta, Pittoni, Canaletto, Monti, as well as with the Riccis, who were also responsible for the Allegorical Tomb of the Duke of Devonshire, now in the Barber Institute, Birmingham.
Although McSwinny was said to have had 19 grisailles in his possession at his death, the location of only 11 is known. The authorship and the role in the commission played by these grisailles have been much discussed. The suggestion made by Jeffery Daniels (Sebastiano Ricci, 1976, pp. 63-4, no. 196; repeated in the same author's L'opera completa di Sebastiano Ricci, 1976, p. 127, under no. 426) that Domenico Fratta, who produced the engraving of the Shovel tomb, also painted this and by extension all the other grisailles seems unlikely, while the convincing attribution of the Louvre grisaille of the Tillotson tomb to Pittoni points to the more plausible possibility that one member from each team was entrusted with the execution of the corresponding grisaile. It has tended to be assumed that the grisailles were produced in preparation for the engravings, but in view of the minor differences between this painting and the corresponding print, as well as the imprecision of the heraldic device, it is tempting to wonder whether the purpose of the grisailles was not to record the compositions of the paintings before their dispatch to England to decorate the Duke of Richmond's dining room at Goodwood. McSwiny wrote to the Duke of Richmond concerning 'Ye Painter who I brought on purpose from Bologna to do ye Chiaro Scuro's for ye Engraver', but these - as Zanotti implied - are likely to have been drawings, not paintings. A drawing of this type by Fratta for the Tillotson tomb, signed and dated 1737, was sold at Phillips, 11 December 1991, lot 155.
The frame of the present picture is very similar to that of the grisaille of the Devonshire tomb at Chatsworth, and to a number of frames of pictures that passed through the hands of Consul Smith, who was a close colleague and friend of McSwinny.
We are grateful to Dr. Robert Oresko for his kind assistance in cataloguing this lot.
Although McSwinny was said to have had 19 grisailles in his possession at his death, the location of only 11 is known. The authorship and the role in the commission played by these grisailles have been much discussed. The suggestion made by Jeffery Daniels (Sebastiano Ricci, 1976, pp. 63-4, no. 196; repeated in the same author's L'opera completa di Sebastiano Ricci, 1976, p. 127, under no. 426) that Domenico Fratta, who produced the engraving of the Shovel tomb, also painted this and by extension all the other grisailles seems unlikely, while the convincing attribution of the Louvre grisaille of the Tillotson tomb to Pittoni points to the more plausible possibility that one member from each team was entrusted with the execution of the corresponding grisaile. It has tended to be assumed that the grisailles were produced in preparation for the engravings, but in view of the minor differences between this painting and the corresponding print, as well as the imprecision of the heraldic device, it is tempting to wonder whether the purpose of the grisailles was not to record the compositions of the paintings before their dispatch to England to decorate the Duke of Richmond's dining room at Goodwood. McSwiny wrote to the Duke of Richmond concerning 'Ye Painter who I brought on purpose from Bologna to do ye Chiaro Scuro's for ye Engraver', but these - as Zanotti implied - are likely to have been drawings, not paintings. A drawing of this type by Fratta for the Tillotson tomb, signed and dated 1737, was sold at Phillips, 11 December 1991, lot 155.
The frame of the present picture is very similar to that of the grisaille of the Devonshire tomb at Chatsworth, and to a number of frames of pictures that passed through the hands of Consul Smith, who was a close colleague and friend of McSwinny.
We are grateful to Dr. Robert Oresko for his kind assistance in cataloguing this lot.