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Lot Essay
A favourite pupil of Carlo Cignani, Franceschini was one of the most celebrated artists in Bologna in the early eighteenth century. During his lifetime and beyond, he was admired for his graceful classicism, which built on the city’s esteemed tradition and continued the pioneering work of the Carracci and the revolutionary Accademia degli Incamminati. Percy Shelley no less had great words of praise for him, after seeing his work in Bologna, saying that his ‘colouring is less warm than that of Guido but nothing can be more clear and delicate; it is as if he could have dipped his pencil in the hues of some serenest and star-shining twilight. His forms have the same delicacy and aerial loveliness; his eyes are all bright with innocence and love; their lips scarce divided by some gentle and sweet emotion.’ (Shelly, letter from Bologna to Thomas Love Peacock, 9 November 1818, cited in D.C. Miller, Marcantonio Franceschini, Turin, 2001, p. 408).
This newly discovered, unpublished work dates to his early maturity, circa 1690, when Franceschini began to move away from Cignani’s influence and develop his own classical idiom, giving more articulated poses to his figures and making sharper folds in his drapery. His burgeoning reputation at this moment brought commissions from key patrons, both close to home and from further afield. He enjoyed remarkable success from the 1690s onwards, marked most notably by an extended period of patronage from Prince Johann Adam Andreas of Liechtenstein, for whom he supplied pictures for nearly twenty years to decorate the Garten Palast in Rossau-Vienna. Fabio Chiodini notes that this picture could likely be the one listed in the Libro dei Conti (16r and 16v), which records two payments, in 1692, of a total of 750 lire for a work of this subject for Cavaliere Quaresimini di Bergamo:
Adì 1 Agosto (1692) Dal Sig.r Paolo Scipione Pelloni doppie dieci per caparra d’un quadro con Loth, da farsi per un Cavalliero di Bergamo d’accordo in doppie 50 dico......L 150
Adì 15 Ott.bre 1692 Dal Sig.r Paolo Scipione Pelloni doppie quaranta per il Cav.e Quaresimini di Bergamo per residuo del quadro del Loth, dico...600
The price paid for the commission is consistent with a large-scale work such as the picture under discussion, and the date of payment tallies with a plausible date of execution for this fine staging of Lot and his daughters.
Franceschini tackled this subject on at least three previous occasions, including one canvas now in Reggio Emilia (Collezione Credito Emiliano; Miller, ibid., no. 148a) and two versions of the same composition, one in Bologna (Collezione Motta; ibid., no. 24) and the other, slightly later, in the Dulwich Picture Gallery (fig. 1; ibid., no. 79). The Bologna and Dulwich pictures are of smaller dimensions (180 x 140 cm. and 106 x 89 cm. respectively) but share the same tight pyramidal grouping of the figures used here.
We are grateful to Fabio Chiodini for confirming the attribution to Franceschini on the basis of photographs and for his kind assistance in cataloguing this lot.
This newly discovered, unpublished work dates to his early maturity, circa 1690, when Franceschini began to move away from Cignani’s influence and develop his own classical idiom, giving more articulated poses to his figures and making sharper folds in his drapery. His burgeoning reputation at this moment brought commissions from key patrons, both close to home and from further afield. He enjoyed remarkable success from the 1690s onwards, marked most notably by an extended period of patronage from Prince Johann Adam Andreas of Liechtenstein, for whom he supplied pictures for nearly twenty years to decorate the Garten Palast in Rossau-Vienna. Fabio Chiodini notes that this picture could likely be the one listed in the Libro dei Conti (16r and 16v), which records two payments, in 1692, of a total of 750 lire for a work of this subject for Cavaliere Quaresimini di Bergamo:
Adì 1 Agosto (1692) Dal Sig.r Paolo Scipione Pelloni doppie dieci per caparra d’un quadro con Loth, da farsi per un Cavalliero di Bergamo d’accordo in doppie 50 dico......L 150
Adì 15 Ott.bre 1692 Dal Sig.r Paolo Scipione Pelloni doppie quaranta per il Cav.e Quaresimini di Bergamo per residuo del quadro del Loth, dico...600
The price paid for the commission is consistent with a large-scale work such as the picture under discussion, and the date of payment tallies with a plausible date of execution for this fine staging of Lot and his daughters.
Franceschini tackled this subject on at least three previous occasions, including one canvas now in Reggio Emilia (Collezione Credito Emiliano; Miller, ibid., no. 148a) and two versions of the same composition, one in Bologna (Collezione Motta; ibid., no. 24) and the other, slightly later, in the Dulwich Picture Gallery (fig. 1; ibid., no. 79). The Bologna and Dulwich pictures are of smaller dimensions (180 x 140 cm. and 106 x 89 cm. respectively) but share the same tight pyramidal grouping of the figures used here.
We are grateful to Fabio Chiodini for confirming the attribution to Franceschini on the basis of photographs and for his kind assistance in cataloguing this lot.