.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This striking canvas, still to this day unlined, has recently been restored to Pietro Paolini’s exceptional oeuvre. Although there are differing opinions, the canvas might to some be identifiable as the missing picture that once formed part of the renowned collection of Stefano Conti in Lucca. A painting of the same subject appears, in fact, in an archival description that records the purchase of a canvas by Conti in 1708 from Alessandro Monsoni, which is described as ‘Un mondone che suona la chitarra con una donna a mano dritta e un cupido addietro’. The composition is as unusual as it is intriguing, a typically idiosyncratic idea from an artist whose reputation as one of the most individual and inventive painters of his time is well established. The compelling gaze of the guitar player and the playful look of Cupid beyond show that uncanny sense of realism which characterizes his work. This strain of realism can be traced back to his early development which saw him absorb the influence of Caravaggio, having been sent to Rome by his father at sixteen, where he worked closely with Angelo Caroselli.
The depiction of the central figure playing a stringed instrument is not coincidental: music was clearly a subject of enduring appeal and intrigue for Paolini, with music-making and instruments frequently playing key roles in his pictures. He shows craftsmen making violins and tuning instruments, he stages concerts peopled with numerous figures and paints individuals playing to no audience except the viewer of the picture. The repeated treatment of musical subjects was in part a reflection of the greater demand for, and production of, stringed instruments in the seventeenth century, especially in Tuscany, and in part an exploration of the fertile relationship between the visual and musical arts.
Conti was a wealthy wool and silk merchant, from an important family in Lucca, who began collecting pictures in 1704. His collection was well documented at the time, becoming a key patron of many artists of the era. He was the subject of a study by Francis Haskell, who reconstructed much of the collection, documenting some of his most important commissions, including a set of four Canalettos painted for Conti between 1725 and 1726, noted in the correspondence between Conti and the artist Alessandro Marchesini, who acted as his agent in acquiring Venetian pictures. It is possible that the present canvas moved to the prestigious Mansi collection after 1750, as a picture of the same subject is identified as being with the latter family by Nicolao Cerù in his Belle Arti in Lucca dal 1753 al presente, before disappearing for over two centuries until its recent rediscovery.
We are grateful to Patrizia Giusti Maccari for endorsing the attribution on the basis of photograph and proposing a date of 1635-40.
The depiction of the central figure playing a stringed instrument is not coincidental: music was clearly a subject of enduring appeal and intrigue for Paolini, with music-making and instruments frequently playing key roles in his pictures. He shows craftsmen making violins and tuning instruments, he stages concerts peopled with numerous figures and paints individuals playing to no audience except the viewer of the picture. The repeated treatment of musical subjects was in part a reflection of the greater demand for, and production of, stringed instruments in the seventeenth century, especially in Tuscany, and in part an exploration of the fertile relationship between the visual and musical arts.
Conti was a wealthy wool and silk merchant, from an important family in Lucca, who began collecting pictures in 1704. His collection was well documented at the time, becoming a key patron of many artists of the era. He was the subject of a study by Francis Haskell, who reconstructed much of the collection, documenting some of his most important commissions, including a set of four Canalettos painted for Conti between 1725 and 1726, noted in the correspondence between Conti and the artist Alessandro Marchesini, who acted as his agent in acquiring Venetian pictures. It is possible that the present canvas moved to the prestigious Mansi collection after 1750, as a picture of the same subject is identified as being with the latter family by Nicolao Cerù in his Belle Arti in Lucca dal 1753 al presente, before disappearing for over two centuries until its recent rediscovery.
We are grateful to Patrizia Giusti Maccari for endorsing the attribution on the basis of photograph and proposing a date of 1635-40.