The Angel appearing to Hagar and Ishmael; and The Sacrifice of Isaac

These canvases showing two episodes from the Old Testament are fine examples of the work of Giambattista Pittoni who, along with Giambattista Piazzetta and Giambattista Tiepolo, was one of the most successful rococo painters active in Venice during the first half of the eighteenth century.

Pittoni had previously treated the subject of the Sacrifice of Isaac in circa 1720 for the church of San Francesco della Vigna, Venice (see F. Zava Boccazzi, Pittoni, L' Opera Completa, Venice, 1979, p. 166, no. 204). As with its pendant, the story of Hagar and Ishmael was also one that Pittoni had previously depicted, in this case for the picture in the sacristy of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, one of the Republic's most celebrated churches. Unlike Pittoni's earlier renditions of these subjects, both of which were executed on horizontal canvases, the vertical format employed here lends the compositions a greater unity, thereby amplifying the tension of the unfolding drama, notably in the manner Abraham towers over his blindfolded son and the descending angel appears before Hagar in the desert.

The two pictures elegantly complement one another in terms of tone and balance while their studied asymmetry reveals Pittoni's close affinity with the French Rococo. They can be dated to the 1720s when Pittoni's work took on an overtly rococo flavour, and their success is attested to by the existence of another slightly smaller pair of nearly identical compositions, sold in these Rooms, 8 July 2005, lot 46.

The formative influences on Pittoni's highly individual style have remained something of a mystery. Some scholars have speculated that Pittoni may have spent a period in France, where he would have studied the work of Antoine Coypel, François Lemoyne and Jean Restout, artists who seem to have had a marked influence on his stylistic evolution. Although there is no documentary evidence that Pittoni was in that country, it is possible that he joined his uncle, Francesco Pittoni, on a journey to Paris in 1720 with his fellow Venetians Antonio Maria Zanetti, Rosalba Carriera and Gianantonio Pellegrini.