Lot Essay
We are grateful to Sir Denis Mahon for confirming the attribution, after inspection of the original.
Born in Lucca in 1612, by the mid- to late 1620s Testa was in Rome, where he became known as 'il Lucchesino'. There he was apparently discovered and put to work by Joachim von Sandrart in his project to engrave the ancient statues in the collection of Vincenzo Giustiniani - Testa providing preparatory drawings for some of the engravings, that were published in circa 1631 as the Galleria Giustiniani. By 1630 Testa was working in the studio of Domenichino. At this time he also made drawings of antiquities, reportedly filling five large volumes for Cassiano dal Pozzo's Museum Chartaceum.
Through Sandrart, dal Pozzo and Domenichino, Testa gained entry into a group of artists that included Nicolas Poussin, Claude Lorrain and Gaspard Dughet, who shared and stimulated his interest in the Classical tradition. The influence of Poussin (to whom the picture was previously attributed, according to an inscription and inventory number on the back of the relining canvas, presumably copied from the original canvas) is particularly strong in the present picture. The treatment of the sky, foliage and landscape as well as the way in which the light falls on and models the angels in this picture, is strongly reminiscent of Poussin's canvases of the mid- to late-1620s. The idea of placing the central figure group to one side before or under some kind of canopy surrounded or held up by putti, was used on several occasions by Poussin in this period (see, for example, his Acis and Galatea of circa 1628 in the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, and the Mars and Venus in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and later, circa 1633-1635 in his Rest on the Flight into Egypt now in the Oskar Reinhart Institute, Winterthur).
Testa himself used a very similar layout in his etching of The Garden of Charity (circa 1631-37) and, most strikingly, in his Idyllic Landscape in the Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome - also from his early years in Rome - which includes both the idea of having the main figure group resting to the right under a canopy tied to a tree, and a very similar rocky mountain background on the left side of the canvas.
Testa was to return to the subject of The Rest on the Flight into Egypt later in his career (Dorotheum, Vienna, 17 June 1969, lot 131, 129 x 100 cm.), but there he does not seem to express so successfully the touching combination of playful intimacy and vulnerability that pervades the present picture.
Born in Lucca in 1612, by the mid- to late 1620s Testa was in Rome, where he became known as 'il Lucchesino'. There he was apparently discovered and put to work by Joachim von Sandrart in his project to engrave the ancient statues in the collection of Vincenzo Giustiniani - Testa providing preparatory drawings for some of the engravings, that were published in circa 1631 as the Galleria Giustiniani. By 1630 Testa was working in the studio of Domenichino. At this time he also made drawings of antiquities, reportedly filling five large volumes for Cassiano dal Pozzo's Museum Chartaceum.
Through Sandrart, dal Pozzo and Domenichino, Testa gained entry into a group of artists that included Nicolas Poussin, Claude Lorrain and Gaspard Dughet, who shared and stimulated his interest in the Classical tradition. The influence of Poussin (to whom the picture was previously attributed, according to an inscription and inventory number on the back of the relining canvas, presumably copied from the original canvas) is particularly strong in the present picture. The treatment of the sky, foliage and landscape as well as the way in which the light falls on and models the angels in this picture, is strongly reminiscent of Poussin's canvases of the mid- to late-1620s. The idea of placing the central figure group to one side before or under some kind of canopy surrounded or held up by putti, was used on several occasions by Poussin in this period (see, for example, his Acis and Galatea of circa 1628 in the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, and the Mars and Venus in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and later, circa 1633-1635 in his Rest on the Flight into Egypt now in the Oskar Reinhart Institute, Winterthur).
Testa himself used a very similar layout in his etching of The Garden of Charity (circa 1631-37) and, most strikingly, in his Idyllic Landscape in the Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome - also from his early years in Rome - which includes both the idea of having the main figure group resting to the right under a canopy tied to a tree, and a very similar rocky mountain background on the left side of the canvas.
Testa was to return to the subject of The Rest on the Flight into Egypt later in his career (Dorotheum, Vienna, 17 June 1969, lot 131, 129 x 100 cm.), but there he does not seem to express so successfully the touching combination of playful intimacy and vulnerability that pervades the present picture.