Lot and his Daughters

This unlined canvas is a characteristic work by the idiosyncratic seventeenth-century painter, Sebastiano Mazzoni. Born in Florence, Mazzoni worked for most of his life in Venice where he formed a highly individual style, characterised by dynamic compositions, often crowded with twisting figures which, as Ellis Waterhouse observed, 'show flashes of insight in the interpretation of visionary scenes and are unforgettable' (Italian Baroque Painting, London, 1962, p. 129). Scholars have observed some stylistic parallels in the work of his contemporaries Francesco Maffei and Bernardo Strozzi, while others have suggested Mazzoni was the first teacher of Sebastiano Ricci, the artist who revolutionised Venetian painting.

Albert Clinton Landsberg bought the Villa Foscari, also known as La Malcontenta, near Venice in 1926. Designed by Andrea Palladio in 1555-1560 for Nicolo and Alvise Foscari, the villa was decorated with fresco cycles by Battista Franco and Giovanni Battista Zelotti, a long-term associate of Paolo Veronese. In Landsberg’s obituary in the Burlington, Claud Philimore, the English architect who was left La Malcontenta by Landsberg, wrote of his friend: ‘He had the unusual advantage and strength of being broadly clear, at the age of 11 or so, that his aim in life would be the study and pursuit, the possession and adoration, the constant contemplation and evaluation of beauty in all its forms… He was 35 when he first saw the Villa Foscari at Malcontenta and gave himself up to a love affair which ended only with his death' (The Burlington Magazine, CVIII, no. 754, January 1966, pp. 24 & 27).