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Lot Essay
The facts surrounding Alberto Carlieri's life and career are not entirely clear: possibly of French origin, he most likely spent his youth in Rome before pursuing his career in the same city. He only features sparingly in inventories and documentary sources, where some of his work is recorded in the Palazzo Colonna and the Villa Paolina, but he was evidently a prolific and popular artist. He is mentioned as a pupil of the architect Giuseppe Marchi and the Jesuit artist Andrea Pozzo, under whom he would have been schooled in architectural painting and the use of quadratura, a technique mastered by Pozzo. Carlieri’s decorative architectural canvasses, though, also owe much to his predecessors in the genre, Viviano and Nicolò Codazzi, Alessandro Salucci and, in particular, Giovanni Ghisolfi.
David Marshall has established a corpus of his work, noting the tendency for many of his paintings to be frequently confused in the past with the work of the young Giovanni Paolo Panini. Marshall categorises the present work as one of Carlieri’s 'centralised palatial interiors', and notes that the elaborate wall feature seen through the central arch is very similar to a drawing from Pozzo’s Prospettiva (see Marshall, op. cit., p. 77 and fig. 81); it was not uncommon for Carlieri to borrow Pozzo’s designs for some of these centralised interior compositions. The lot formed a pair with a composition showing Christ before Herod (see ibid., AC108, fig. 91). In its depth and complexity, with the double colonnades and the statues sitting in the niches of the wall feature, the present picture stands out in Carlieri’s oeuvre as one of his most accomplished and decorative works.
We are grateful to Professor David Marshall for his assistance in cataloguing the present lot.
David Marshall has established a corpus of his work, noting the tendency for many of his paintings to be frequently confused in the past with the work of the young Giovanni Paolo Panini. Marshall categorises the present work as one of Carlieri’s 'centralised palatial interiors', and notes that the elaborate wall feature seen through the central arch is very similar to a drawing from Pozzo’s Prospettiva (see Marshall, op. cit., p. 77 and fig. 81); it was not uncommon for Carlieri to borrow Pozzo’s designs for some of these centralised interior compositions. The lot formed a pair with a composition showing Christ before Herod (see ibid., AC108, fig. 91). In its depth and complexity, with the double colonnades and the statues sitting in the niches of the wall feature, the present picture stands out in Carlieri’s oeuvre as one of his most accomplished and decorative works.
We are grateful to Professor David Marshall for his assistance in cataloguing the present lot.