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Lot Essay
Nicola Grassi was born in the Friulian town of Udine, east of the Veneto, the third son of the tailor Giacomo Grassi and his wife Osvalda. At age of twelve he moved with his parents to Venice, where in 1705 he was apprenticed to the talented portraitist Nicolò Cassana, a sensitive colourist informed by the tenebrism of his Genoese father and teacher Giovanni Francesco Cassana. Nicolò enjoyed the friendship and patronage of Grand Duke Ferdinando de' Medici, and had experience painting for the tastes of the Medici court in Florence. This combination of Genoese and Florentine traits informed the training of Grassi, whose style, however, is resolutely Venetian in character. He had arrived in Venice in time to absorb the influence of a generation of artists slightly older than him - especially Sebastiano Ricci (born 1659), Pellegrini (born 1675) and Bencovich (born 1677). His combination of brooding tenebrism with the vibrant colorito so typical of eighteenth-century Venice is close to that of Giambattista Piazzetta, born one year later than Grassi in 1683; indeed, as an old inscription on the reverse of the stretcher attests, this work was for a time considered to be by Piazzetta. Grassi's style appealed to Piazzetta's long-standing patron Reichsgraf Feldmarschal Johan Matthias von der Schulenburg (with Consul Smith, undoubtedly the greatest private patron of the arts in eighteenth-century Venice), whose Palazzo Loredan a San Trovaso contained a portrait of 'Fra Paulo Sarpi consultore di Stato della Serenissima Republica di Venezi' by 'Nicolo Grasso', valued at 18 ducats in 1738 (see A. Binion, La Galleria scomparsa del maresciallo von der Schulenburg, Milan, 1990, pp. 208 and 265).
The present work is a particularly charming example of the fluidity of Grassi's paint handling; his alert, energetic draughtsmanship; sense of psychology and drama; and bold colouring. The Holy Family is a subject which recurs several times in Grassi's oeuvre, as it does in that of many of his contemporaries. A Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist was signaled as being in a private collection, Udine, at the time of the landmark exhibition in Tolmezzo, Palazzo Frisacco; while another of nearly identical composition, cropped at the right, was catalogued as formerly in a private collection, Venice (see R. Pallucchini, L. Moretti et al., Nicola Grassi e il Rococ europeo, Udine, 1982, figs. 5 and 56, respectively). A Madonna and Child of similar colouring was at Sotheby's, London, 11 December 2003, lot 197 (£26,400). Although most of Grassi's works remain in churches in and around Friuli and the Veneto, they are also represented in the museums of Munich, Stuttgart, Budapest, Warsaw and Venice (see A. Rizzi, ed., Nicola Grassi: Catalogo della mostra, Udine, 1982).
The present work is a particularly charming example of the fluidity of Grassi's paint handling; his alert, energetic draughtsmanship; sense of psychology and drama; and bold colouring. The Holy Family is a subject which recurs several times in Grassi's oeuvre, as it does in that of many of his contemporaries. A Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist was signaled as being in a private collection, Udine, at the time of the landmark exhibition in Tolmezzo, Palazzo Frisacco; while another of nearly identical composition, cropped at the right, was catalogued as formerly in a private collection, Venice (see R. Pallucchini, L. Moretti et al., Nicola Grassi e il Rococ europeo, Udine, 1982, figs. 5 and 56, respectively). A Madonna and Child of similar colouring was at Sotheby's, London, 11 December 2003, lot 197 (£26,400). Although most of Grassi's works remain in churches in and around Friuli and the Veneto, they are also represented in the museums of Munich, Stuttgart, Budapest, Warsaw and Venice (see A. Rizzi, ed., Nicola Grassi: Catalogo della mostra, Udine, 1982).