Giacomo del Po (Rome 1652-1726 Naples)
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Giacomo del Po (Rome 1652-1726 Naples)

The Adoration of the Shepherds

Details
Giacomo del Po (Rome 1652-1726 Naples)
The Adoration of the Shepherds
oil on canvas, oval made up to a rectangle, framed as an oval
49 x 43 1/8 in. (124.5 x 109.5 cm.)
Provenance
Aurenhammer collection, Vienna, by 1980.
Literature
N. Spinosa, catalogue of the exhibition, Civiltà del '700 a Napoli, Naples, 1980, p. 48, under no. 15a-b.
Idem, Pittura napoletana del Settecento, Naples, 1986, pp. 143 and 292, no. 178, fig. 208
Special notice
No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis

Lot Essay

The son of Pietro del Po (1610-92), a minor painter noted for his engravings, Giacomo was trained in his father's studio in Rome. Elected in 1674 as a member of the Accademia di San Luca, which he subsequently served in various official positions, he departed for Naples in 1683 with his family, probably in the suite of Gaspar Mendéz de Haro y Guzmán, Marqués del Carpio, who was appointed Viceroy of Naples in that year. Giacomo del Po's earliest surviving work is in the late Baroque classicist idiom then current in Rome; in Naples, however, he soon came under the influence of Giordano, an influence evident in works as early as the Plague of Sorrento of 1687 in San Antonino, Sorrento.

In the few pictures securely datable to the 1690s, such as the Annunciation and Visitation in San Agostino degli Scalzi, Naples, his accommodation of Neapolitan traditions is even stronger, indicating the artistic development that would make del Po one of the most dominant painters in Naples, with Francesco Solimena and Paolo de Matteis. In contrast to Solimena's powerful chiaroscuro and de Matteis's restrained classicism, he offered an expressive, anti-classical style characterized by bold brushstrokes of deeply saturated colour, shimmering light effects and sweeping compositional movements that bear a strong affinity to the Genoese works of Gregorio de' Ferrari.

The present composition is an autograph variant of a painting of circa 1719 by del Po in the church of San Michele, Anacapri. Both paintings have pairs: the former a Presentation in the Temple (location unknown) and the latter an Agony in the Garden (in situ). Professor Spinosa (1986, loc. cit.) compares the quality present work with that of the bozzetti for the canvases of circa 1722 for the ceilings of the Belvedere, Vienna. The latter paintings, of which two out of the original three survive, and which may be counted amongst the greatest of del Po's works, served as models for central European painters throughout the eighteenth century.

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