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Lot Essay
Painted on a grand scale, this unpublished and finely preserved canvas is a significant addition to the pictures produced by Luca Giordano during his stay in Spain, from 1692 until 1702, where he served as court painter for King Charles II.
Born to an artist father, who may himself have worked under Ribera, Giordano’s early biographers present a picture of a self-taught talent, who is not mentioned as being schooled in the workshop of a master, but who instead sharpened his skills by copying paintings, frescoes and sculptures in the churches and galleries around Naples, and then later in Rome. An apprenticeship under Ribera has, nonetheless, been hypothesized. His acquired sobriquet, Fa Presto, has given succor to the appealing idea of the self-educated genius or effortless dilettante, of a man blessed with innate skill, intuitive in design and capable of bravura in execution. Yet if this schooling suggested that he was to be an outsider, then his career told a very different story: he became an artist of the first rank, welcoming major commissions from his native Naples, from Venice and Florence, and also from Spain, where he executed decorative cycles in Toledo's cathedral and at the Escorial.
On the reverse of the picture a label bears the name ‘Muguiro’, undoubtedly a reference to the lineage that descends directly from the Patiño y Rosales family, Marqués del Castelar y Conde de Belveder. Baltasar Patiño y Rosales, known in Italy as Giuseppe Patino (1666-1733), was a Spanish diplomat, soldier and politician with strong family ties to Italy, whom the king had given the title of Marqués de Castelar y Conde de Belveder in February 1693, shortly after Giordano had arrived in Madrid. It seems possible, therefore, that this large canvas was perhaps commissioned on the occasion of the prestigious noble investiture of Balthasar Patiño by Charles II. The use of the precious ultramarine pigment for the Madonna’s mantle, wonderfully preserved, speaks for the importance of the commission.
Numerous comparisons, in terms of both composition and painterly style, can be made with royal commissions painted in Madrid in the final decade of the seventeenth century, some of which are now in the Prado Museum. Particularly striking is the relationship with Giordano’s Adoration of the Shepherds now in the Louvre Museum, Paris, dated 1688-90 and painted in Naples for the Camara de la Reina in the Royal Palace in Madrid. This painting was considered to be a study for a larger version which has been assumed to be the canvas now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. A comparison with the latter, and the other works in the cycle now in Vienna (which also probably originated in one of the Spanish royal palaces), allows us to appreciate the fine quality of the present lot.
Born to an artist father, who may himself have worked under Ribera, Giordano’s early biographers present a picture of a self-taught talent, who is not mentioned as being schooled in the workshop of a master, but who instead sharpened his skills by copying paintings, frescoes and sculptures in the churches and galleries around Naples, and then later in Rome. An apprenticeship under Ribera has, nonetheless, been hypothesized. His acquired sobriquet, Fa Presto, has given succor to the appealing idea of the self-educated genius or effortless dilettante, of a man blessed with innate skill, intuitive in design and capable of bravura in execution. Yet if this schooling suggested that he was to be an outsider, then his career told a very different story: he became an artist of the first rank, welcoming major commissions from his native Naples, from Venice and Florence, and also from Spain, where he executed decorative cycles in Toledo's cathedral and at the Escorial.
On the reverse of the picture a label bears the name ‘Muguiro’, undoubtedly a reference to the lineage that descends directly from the Patiño y Rosales family, Marqués del Castelar y Conde de Belveder. Baltasar Patiño y Rosales, known in Italy as Giuseppe Patino (1666-1733), was a Spanish diplomat, soldier and politician with strong family ties to Italy, whom the king had given the title of Marqués de Castelar y Conde de Belveder in February 1693, shortly after Giordano had arrived in Madrid. It seems possible, therefore, that this large canvas was perhaps commissioned on the occasion of the prestigious noble investiture of Balthasar Patiño by Charles II. The use of the precious ultramarine pigment for the Madonna’s mantle, wonderfully preserved, speaks for the importance of the commission.
Numerous comparisons, in terms of both composition and painterly style, can be made with royal commissions painted in Madrid in the final decade of the seventeenth century, some of which are now in the Prado Museum. Particularly striking is the relationship with Giordano’s Adoration of the Shepherds now in the Louvre Museum, Paris, dated 1688-90 and painted in Naples for the Camara de la Reina in the Royal Palace in Madrid. This painting was considered to be a study for a larger version which has been assumed to be the canvas now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. A comparison with the latter, and the other works in the cycle now in Vienna (which also probably originated in one of the Spanish royal palaces), allows us to appreciate the fine quality of the present lot.