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Lot Essay
The present painting is a newly rediscovered trompe l'oeil by the Veronese artist Pietro Rotari (1707-1762). Recorded as such in the earliest inventory of the Royal Painting Gallery of Dresden compiled in 1754, it can thus be dated to the artist's brief stay there between the years 1753-1755 (for the history of the painting as recorded through the various inventories and catalogues of the Royal Gallery see Weber, loc. cit.). A detailed description of the painting -- albeit erroneously in reverse -- can be found only in the 1809 inventory, where the subject is misidentified as Alexander the Great with the wife of Darius. As Weber notes (op. cit., p. 49), the scene itself replicates that of Rotari's original large-scale composition of the Meeting of Alexander and Roxana in the Hermitage, Saint Petersburg (Inv. no. 2223, 243 x 202 cm.; fig. 1), in which it is depicted without the curtain. The standing female figure may thus be identified as Roxana, the daughter of a chieftan of Sogdiana, whom Alexander took as his wife during his Asian campaign (Lucian, Herodotus 4-6, and Plutarch 33.47). The existence of this trompe l'oeil version of the Hermitage painting suggests that the latter must have been painted before the artist's move to Russia in 1756 at the invitation Empress Elizabeth II, to whom he was court painter until his death in 1762.
Rotari had been working at the court of the Holy Roman Empress, Maria-Theresa, in Vienna since about 1751, when he was summoned in the winter of 1752/3 to Dresden by King Augustus III of Poland, an avid collector and patron of the arts. His reign saw the enlargement of the Dresden art collections established by his predecessors and the remodeling of the Stallhof gallery to house the many new acquisitions, which included the hundred best pictures from the collection of the Duke of Modena and Raphael's Sistine Madonna (purchased 1745-46 and 1754 respectively). Augustus resided in Dresden until 1756 and surrounded himself with an international circle of artists, such as Louis de Silvestre, Anton Raphael Mengs, Bernardo Bellotto and Pietro Rotari, whose works hung in the public rooms and private apartments of the Dresden palace as well as in the main gallery. It was here that Rotari produced several portraits of the King and his family as well as a charming series of imaginary portraits, examples of which can still be seen today in the Gemäldegalerie.
The curtain motif in the present work derives from the celebrated competition between the Greek painters Zeuxis and Parrhasios as recorded in Pliny the Elder's Natural History. Zeuxis produced a picture of grapes that were so realistic that birds came to pick at them, whereupon Parrhasios proceded to paint a curtain so lifelike that when Zeuxis came to inspect the work he asked that the curtain be drawn aside and the painting revealed. Realizing his mistake, he conceded the prize to his rival for while he had deceived the birds, Parrhasios had deceived him, an artist. From the mid-seventeenth century onwards, this motif became popular among Dutch artists, particularly those specializing in views of church interiors, since it was perfectly suited to the local practice of placing valuable paintings behind a protective curtain. In such works -- as in the present composition -- the presence of a shadow cast by the curtain on the picture surface makes it clear that the viewer is presented not with a scene behind a curtain but rather a painting of the scene. Some works such as Emanuel de Witte's A Sermon in the Oude Kerk, Delft, in the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, even go so far as to include the curtain rail and a wooden frame in order to reinforce the illusion.
Three similar trompe l'oeil paintings by Rotari are known. Two are portraits in the Royal Palace in Peterhof, where they have hung, since shortly after the artist's death, among the hundreds of bust-length depictions of largely anonymous Russians executed by Rotari during his years there. A third work depicting a Madonna behind a curtain was painted in Vienna for the Holy Roman Empress Maria-Theresa, whom, it is recorded, derived immense pleasure from watching her courtiers fall for the deception (see C.L. von Hagedorn, Lettre à un amateur de la Peinture avec des éclaircissements historiques sur un cabinet, Dresden, 1755, p. 25).
In all four of Rotari's trompe l'oeil paintings, the relationship of the curtain to the rest of the composition is very different to that of the Dutch views of church interiors. In these interior views, the curtain usually covers only a small part of the painting. Thus little or nothing of importance is concealed from the viewer, nor can anything be seen through the curtain itself. In the present composition, however, the trompe l'oeil is more playful and arguably more sophisticated. In choosing to paint a fine, diaphanous curtain, Rotari is clearly concerned with capturing the subtle effects of seeing something -- in this case a painting -- through such a fabric, while at the same time inviting the viewer to guess what the subject of the painting might be. Thus forms can be glimpsed tantalizingly through the more transparent passages of the cloth; however, lest too much be revealed, such passages give way to the less translucent folds in the curtain where the fabric is doubled up and to the shadows these folds cast on the cloth. Such is the skill with which Rotari has painted the fabric that it is the curtain, and not the painted scene it covers, that is the true subject of the painting.
Even with such clues, the subject is not immediately apparent - as previously mentioned, none of the compilers of the old inventories and catalogues, who may have known of Rotari's treatment of the same theme in the Hermitage, correctly identified it. One might speculate that this may be due to the choice of subject itself. Plutarch (33.47) records that meeting of Alexander and Roxana eventually led to a marriage of convenience whereby the Greek general was able to secure the loyalty and support of his conquered enemies. However, the historian seems more interested in the effect that the young, beautiful princess had on Alexander and the fact that the meeting aroused in him "...the only passion which he, the most temperate of men, was overcome by." (ibid.). Seen in this light, the trompe l'oeil device of the curtain finds its ultimate meaning in the very subject it conceals, for what better visual pun could there be than one that throws a discreet veil over so delicate a situation?
Rotari had been working at the court of the Holy Roman Empress, Maria-Theresa, in Vienna since about 1751, when he was summoned in the winter of 1752/3 to Dresden by King Augustus III of Poland, an avid collector and patron of the arts. His reign saw the enlargement of the Dresden art collections established by his predecessors and the remodeling of the Stallhof gallery to house the many new acquisitions, which included the hundred best pictures from the collection of the Duke of Modena and Raphael's Sistine Madonna (purchased 1745-46 and 1754 respectively). Augustus resided in Dresden until 1756 and surrounded himself with an international circle of artists, such as Louis de Silvestre, Anton Raphael Mengs, Bernardo Bellotto and Pietro Rotari, whose works hung in the public rooms and private apartments of the Dresden palace as well as in the main gallery. It was here that Rotari produced several portraits of the King and his family as well as a charming series of imaginary portraits, examples of which can still be seen today in the Gemäldegalerie.
The curtain motif in the present work derives from the celebrated competition between the Greek painters Zeuxis and Parrhasios as recorded in Pliny the Elder's Natural History. Zeuxis produced a picture of grapes that were so realistic that birds came to pick at them, whereupon Parrhasios proceded to paint a curtain so lifelike that when Zeuxis came to inspect the work he asked that the curtain be drawn aside and the painting revealed. Realizing his mistake, he conceded the prize to his rival for while he had deceived the birds, Parrhasios had deceived him, an artist. From the mid-seventeenth century onwards, this motif became popular among Dutch artists, particularly those specializing in views of church interiors, since it was perfectly suited to the local practice of placing valuable paintings behind a protective curtain. In such works -- as in the present composition -- the presence of a shadow cast by the curtain on the picture surface makes it clear that the viewer is presented not with a scene behind a curtain but rather a painting of the scene. Some works such as Emanuel de Witte's A Sermon in the Oude Kerk, Delft, in the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, even go so far as to include the curtain rail and a wooden frame in order to reinforce the illusion.
Three similar trompe l'oeil paintings by Rotari are known. Two are portraits in the Royal Palace in Peterhof, where they have hung, since shortly after the artist's death, among the hundreds of bust-length depictions of largely anonymous Russians executed by Rotari during his years there. A third work depicting a Madonna behind a curtain was painted in Vienna for the Holy Roman Empress Maria-Theresa, whom, it is recorded, derived immense pleasure from watching her courtiers fall for the deception (see C.L. von Hagedorn, Lettre à un amateur de la Peinture avec des éclaircissements historiques sur un cabinet, Dresden, 1755, p. 25).
In all four of Rotari's trompe l'oeil paintings, the relationship of the curtain to the rest of the composition is very different to that of the Dutch views of church interiors. In these interior views, the curtain usually covers only a small part of the painting. Thus little or nothing of importance is concealed from the viewer, nor can anything be seen through the curtain itself. In the present composition, however, the trompe l'oeil is more playful and arguably more sophisticated. In choosing to paint a fine, diaphanous curtain, Rotari is clearly concerned with capturing the subtle effects of seeing something -- in this case a painting -- through such a fabric, while at the same time inviting the viewer to guess what the subject of the painting might be. Thus forms can be glimpsed tantalizingly through the more transparent passages of the cloth; however, lest too much be revealed, such passages give way to the less translucent folds in the curtain where the fabric is doubled up and to the shadows these folds cast on the cloth. Such is the skill with which Rotari has painted the fabric that it is the curtain, and not the painted scene it covers, that is the true subject of the painting.
Even with such clues, the subject is not immediately apparent - as previously mentioned, none of the compilers of the old inventories and catalogues, who may have known of Rotari's treatment of the same theme in the Hermitage, correctly identified it. One might speculate that this may be due to the choice of subject itself. Plutarch (33.47) records that meeting of Alexander and Roxana eventually led to a marriage of convenience whereby the Greek general was able to secure the loyalty and support of his conquered enemies. However, the historian seems more interested in the effect that the young, beautiful princess had on Alexander and the fact that the meeting aroused in him "...the only passion which he, the most temperate of men, was overcome by." (ibid.). Seen in this light, the trompe l'oeil device of the curtain finds its ultimate meaning in the very subject it conceals, for what better visual pun could there be than one that throws a discreet veil over so delicate a situation?