Old Master Paintings
Attributed to DENYS CALVAERT (1540-1619)
The Annunciation
Oil on Copper, Unsigned, Undated. Excellent Condition. In a gilded Frame, also in very good condition.
Measurements: Picture 22.75 x 17.5cm (approx 9 x 6.75 inches);
Framed: 37.5 x 32.5cm (approx 14.75 x 12.75 inches).
This beautiful Oil on Copper, depicting The Annunciation, dates approx 1570 and is attributed to the Flemish Northern Renaissance Master Denys Calvaert (1540-1619): notable are the small, animated, brightly- lit figures, whilst the copper sheet provided an ideal surface for the typically fluid style, enhancing the glowing colours and the jewel-like finish.
A Flemish painter from Antwerp, documented to be still in his native country in 1556, Denys Calvaert (1540-1619) emigrated to Italy in about 1562, with the intention to settle in Rome. Instead, he went to Bologna and entered the workshop of Prospero Fontana and subsequently of Lorenzo Sabbatini. He became known as Dionisio Fiammingo. He had a large Studio, established an academy in 1572 and had more than 100 pupils, among whom were some of the most distinguished artists of the Bolognese School, including Albani, Domenichino and Reni. The more celebrated academy of the Carracci was probably inspired by Calvaert's. He died in Bologna in 1619.
Few paintings by Denys Calvaert are in private hands, the large majority being in museums such as The National Gallery of Scotland, Harvard University Art Museums, Hood Museum of Art and the Pinacoteca di Bologna.
The annunciation
When Calvaert moved from Antwerp to Bologna he introduced this type of small, detailed and highly finished devotional paintings on copper to the city and they became very popular.
The subject here is the Annunciation: the Angel Gabriel appears before the Virgin Mary to tell her that she is with child, and that her child is the Son of God. The Artist includes the traditional attributes of this subject, the lily for purity and the dove for the Holy Spirit. A burst of radiant light emanates from above. Putti emerge from an opening in the clouds. The colour scheme is dominated by blue and gold. The slightly Northern figure types and the mannerist rendering are also characteristic.
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Giuseppe Passeri (1654-1714)
The Immaculate Conception
Measurements: 27.6 x 19.3cm (approx 10.75 x 7.625 inches).
Oil on Copper, 27.6cm x 19.3cm (approx 10.75 inches x 7.625 inches).
This beautiful Oil on Copper by Giuseppe Passeri (1654-1714, depicting The Immaculate Conception is a fine example of Passeri’s highly pictorial manner, typified by the characteristic style of figures and drapery, which is strongly indebted to his master Carlo Maratti, and through the latter, to the classical tradition of Sacchi, Domenichino, Annibale Carracci and foremost Raphael and Michelangelo.
We are grateful to Prof Giancarlo Sestieri for confirming the attribution to G. Passeri.
Giuseppe Passeri is represented at The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, the Museum Kunst Palast in Düsseldorf, and the Albertina in Vienna.
LITERATURE: J.W. Goodison, Catalogue of Paintings in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, Italian School, (page: 129-130) Cambridge University Press, 1967.
Giuseppe Passeri (1654-1714) studied with his uncle, the painter Giovanni Battista Passeri, before entering the studio of Carlo Maratta (1625-1713). He became one of Maratta’s favorite students, and worked with him on a number of significant projects, as well as completing some of his unfinished works. His style, however, was more independent and less indebted to the master. Passeri’s first known dated works were paintings commissioned for the Palazzo Barberini in Rome in 1678. He was to work in Rome for almost his entire career, and nearly all of his most significant paintings are in the city. Elected to the Accademia di San Luca in 1693, he received numerous commissions for religious paintings, such as The Baptism of Constantine painted for the Albani chapel in the church of San Sebastiano fuori le Mura. He also painted elaborate ceiling frescoes for the presbytery of the Duomo at Viterbo, destroyed during the Second World War, and received commissions for mural projects to decorate the palaces and villas of a number of Roman families. In addition to his large-scale work, Passeri also painted several cabinet pictures, and was active as a portrait painter. A large collection of drawings by the artist is in the collection of the Museum Kunst Palast in Düsseldorf, while other important groups are in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle and the Albertina in Vienna.
This modello is bright and clear in its colouring and is a fine early example of what was to be the dominant mode in eighteenth-century Italian painting, the figures moving freely in space rather than locked together in a sophisticated Baroque jigsaw of forms and shadows. Passeri made several drawings and sketches for his compositions, most notably for The Assumption of the Virgin in the nave of S. Maria in Aracaeli, Rome, painted in 1686. Around the same time Passeri made another version on canvas, with some differences, today preserved in the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Rimini. As one of the leading pupils of Carlo Maratti, Giuseppe Passeri followed the classical example of Raphael and Annibale Carracci, whose work exemplified Carracci’s key position at the source of both Baroque and Classical tendencies in later Seicento painting -see Mahon Studies in Seicento Art and Theory, 1947.
Prof Giancarlo Sestieri is a well-known expert of Italian XVI and XVII century Italian painting. A senior Christie’s consultant, Prof Sestieri has published several catalogues raisonne and reference books on Old Master Paintings in private and public collections.
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Circle of Karel Breydel
Circle of Karel Breydel (Antwerp 1678- Antwerp 1733)
A Cavalry Skirmish Oil on oak panel, 9.5 x 12.5 in.
Good Condition. In a Gilt composition frame.
We are grateful to Mr Gregory Martin for inspecting the Painting first hand and for advising accordingly
Karel Breydel was known as Le Chevalier (The Knight) because his speciality was to depict battle scenes. Born in 1678 in Antwerp in the southern Netherlands, he worked as a young man in neighbouring Holland and in the German speaking lands to the east at a time when a military alliance of European nations was countering the aggressive, expansionist policy of France. He was to continue his career in the southern Nertherlands and died in Antwerp in 1733.
This small work has many of the characteristics of Breydel’s style, and it may have come from his studio: notable are the small, animated, brightly- lit figures. Red-coated cavalrymen are engaged in point blank conflict, in which three of their opponents have already been slain, while the main battle takes place beyond. It is not known if a particular battle is here depicted, probably not; but the field of battle is a great plain, necessary for the huge armies of the day to manoeuvre and engage.
Breydel’s work is represented in some of the older, public collections in Europe of princely origin.
Mr Gregory Martin was Head of Department for the Dutch and Flemish 17th century Schools at the National Gallery in London. During his ten year service he compiled the catalogue of the Flemish School, published in 1970, which centred on a highly important group of paintings by Rubens and Van Dyck. He was a Senior Director at Christies for many years and is now a consultant, a writer and lecturer. In the early 1990's he was commissioned to compile the Corpus Rubenianum volume on Rubens's paintings for the Banqueting Hall at Whitehall Palace. The first draft was completed in 1999 and the catalogue was published in the Spring of 2006.
Acquired by a Private Collector in Italy
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Hans Johann Rottenhammer
Hans Johann Rottenhammer (Munich 1564 – Augsburg 1625)
Mars, Venus and the Forge of Vulcan – oil on wood cm 32 x cm 40
LITERATURE: Carel van Mander (Rottenhammer’s biographer, 1604); Peltzer, R.A. “Hans Rottenhammer”, Vienne-Leipzig Source title: Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlung in Wien, vol: XXXIII, 1916; Thieme, Ulrich & Becker, Felix “Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Kuenstler”, Leipzig 1935.
Hans Rottenhammer was born in Munich in 1564 and became an apprentice with the court painter, Hans Donauer the Elder. He went to Venice in 1589 but moved to Rome shortly afterwards where he collaborated with his fellow northerners, Paulus Bril and Jan Brueghel I. (see the Gloria Angelica in the Pinacoteca di Brera). Rottenhammer returned to Venice in 1595 where he developed a style which was influenced by the city’s leading painters, especially Veronese (see the Coronation of the Virgin at the National Gallery in London and The feast of the Gods at the State Hermitage Museum). He was much in demand from important patrons, such as the Gonzagas in Mantova, worked in Treviso with Lodewijk Toeput, il Pozzoserrato, finally returning to Germany on 1606 where his Venetian style became hugely successful until his death in 1625.
It is from Rottenhammer’s Venetian period that our painting dates. The subject depicts the illicit love of Venus, wife of Vulcan, god of fire, who falls in love with Mars, the god of war. Rottenhammer shows the goddess, naked on her bed and turned towards Mars. Her maids and a complacent putto pull a red velvet curtain around the bed to conceal their tryst whilst Cupid seems intent in freeing Mars from his footwear, with the god’s shield behind him on the floor. In the background, is the forge where Vulcan, surrounded by high flames, is preparing Jupiter’s thunderbolts.
We are grateful to Prof Maurizio Marini for his help in cataloguing this work and for identifying it to be an autograph painting by Hans Johann Rottenhammer upon first hand inspection. We also thank Sir Denis Mahon who, on the basis of a photograph and a transparency, confirmed the attribution to the German master.
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Follower of Bartolomeo Manfredi (1582-1622)
Two men and a Lady playing Cards at a Table – Oil on Canvas 110cm x 165cm
LITERATURE: A. Moir The Italian Followers of Caravaggio, Cambridge, Mass, 1967; B. Nicholson Bartolomeo Manfredi in Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Art, London 1967 and The International Caravaggesque Movement, Oxford 1979; J. von Sandrart Academie der Bau-, Bild und Mahlerei Kuenste von 1675, Nuernberg, 1675.
PROVENANCE:
Galerie Fischer, Luzern 12 and 13 June 1963, Lot 69 as Caravaggio; acquired by the Chevalier Family from the Rhineland.
 The Chevaliers, a prominent family of diplomats employed in the Foreign Service, were art historians and important collectors of art. Several periods of residence abroad in Europe, Turkey and Africa led to an expansion in their notable Baroque collection, to include antique Islamic and Byzantine art.
The Caravaggesque Movement was inspired by Caravaggio (1573-1610). Probably the most revolutionary artist of his time, Caravaggio abandoned the rules that had guided a century of artists before him who had idealized the human and religious experience. He was born Michelangelo Merisi on Sept. 28, 1573, in Caravaggio, Italy. As an adult he would become known by the name of his birthplace. Orphaned at age 11, he was apprenticed to the painter Simone Peterzano of Milan for four years. At some time between 1588 and 1592, Caravaggio went to Rome and worked as an assistant to painters of lesser skill. About 1595 he began to sell his paintings through a dealer. The dealer brought Caravaggio to the attention of Cardinal Francesco del Monte. Despite criticism and outcry for his style of realistic and dramatic painting, his reputation increased. He had many encounters with the law during his stay in Rome. He was imprisoned for several assaults and for killing an opponent after a disputed score in a game of court tennis. Caravaggio fled the city and reached Naples early in 1607, and painted there for a time, awaiting a pardon by the pope. Early in 1608 Caravaggio went to Malta and was received as a celebrated artist by the Grand Master of the Knights of St John’s. His paintings of this period were among the greatest of his career. After receiving a pardon from the pope, he was wrongfully arrested and imprisoned for two days. A boat that was to take him to Rome left without him, taking his belongings. Misfortune, exhaustion, and illness overtook him and he collapsed on the beach and died a few days later on July 18, 1610.
One of the most important Caravaggio’s follower was Bartolomeo Manfredi (1582-1622). Born in Mantua and active mainly in Rome, he specialized in low-life scenes of taverns, soldiers in guardrooms, cardplaying, etc, and like Caravaggio, he was responsible for popularizing this kind of work, particularly with painters from France and the Netherlands who came to Italy. In spite of his contemporary reputation, no works survive that are signed or documented as his, and several of the forty or so paintings now given to him were formerly attributed to Caravaggio.
As Sir Denis Mahon quoted in an essay “THE FLAGELLATION OF CHRIST”, July 2004: Roberto Longhi, the most influential Italian critic of the recent past, made a pronouncement in the nineteen-forties that “un genio non mai si ripete” (a genius never repeats himself); and this dictum, which was prima facie quite plausible, he applied of course to Caravaggio. Since then, quite recently, there has occurred a revolution in Caravaggio studies. It was known that the master never made preparatory drawings for his compositions and the fact has in recent months been established that he made an initial rendering of his compositions direct onto the canvas which were naturally full of pentimenti (in the sense of substantial changes of mind) and then repeated them, sometimes with the help of tracings. It must be stressed that from the very beginning it was widely regarded that he was a genius and there was an immediate demand for his work whether replicas by his own hand or copies by other hands.
Our painting above is deep in tone and shows strong contrast. The canvas has been relined and traces of a vertical fold can be observed running through the right card player. The Painting is covered with an uneven, slightly dirty varnish layer but it is in good condition. A conservation Report is available upon request.
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Guido Reni
Guido Reni ( Calvenzano 1575 - Bologna 1642)
The Penitent Magdalene with the Jar of Unguent - Oil on Canvas cm 88 x cm 73)
LITERATURE: G.F. Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain, London 1854; D.S. Pepper Guido Reni, Oxford 1984; D.S. Pepper Guido Reni, Italian Edition, 1988, cat.no. 143, pl. 133; D.S. Pepper Guido Reni's Practice of Repeating Composition, Artibus et Historiae, Cracow, 1999
Guido Reni was born in Bologna and began to study painting at the age of nine, joining the Carracci Academy when he was 20. His studies were influenced by his visits to Rome in about 1600 where antique and recent Roman art became his ideals. After Annibale Carracci's death (1609) he became the leader of the classical school of Emilian painters. His adhesion to this school can be seen in the frescos he painted in Rome in about 1610 in the Quirinal Palace, the Vatican, and various churches (e.g. San Gregorio Magno al Cielo). They were inspired by the return to classical taste and culminated in Aurora in Palazzo Ludovisi. The large altarpieces he painted in Bologna, The Massacre of the Innocents and Pietà dei Mendicanti, both in the Bologna Pinacoteca Nazionale, mark the triumph of design, the ability to control and channel feelings, gestures, expressions, drawing, and colour into a single, eloquent, and faultless form. Guido Reni's success was underlined by the important commissions he received. Toward the end of his life, Reni modified his style, using long, flowing brushstrokes which conveyed an atmosphere laden with intense melancholy. Guido Reni was a quintessentially classical academic but he was also one of the most elegant painters in art history. He was constantly seeking an absolute, rarefied perfection which he measured against classical Antiquity and Raphael.
Our painting above has been confirmed to be an autograph work by Sir Denis Mahon and the late Dr Stephen Pepper, who dated it to the first half of 1630, placing it in the period he defined as Reni's second manner. In Dr Pepper's letter to the owner dated 5th January 1998, he writes: "The present painting is a superb example of Reni's mature style probably executed during the first half of the 1630s. Reni's artistic career can be divided roughly in two parts called "prima and seconda maniera". In his first manner Reni emphasizes chiaroscuro effects to achieve a very powerful three-dimensional modeling, whereas in the second style he reduces the effects of modeling and instead stresses the texture and softness of the contours of the figures. We can more or less establish the change from one to the other of the two styles to take place around 1630, that is about the date of Reni's votive picture of the Pala della Peste. The present painting is very similar to a painting in the National Gallery in London (see D.S. Pepper, "Guido Reni", Italian ed., 1988, cat. no. 143, pl. 133, there dated 1634-35. It is very difficult to determine the exact relation of dates of the two paintings, but it would appear to be the case that the present picture dates two to three years earlier than the London picture. The reason for saying this is that it is clearly more defined in contours and features, and its surface slightly harder and more porcelain, which appears to be a characteristic of the works of the 1630-32 period that then progressively softens. In any case the present work shows all the wonder and beauty of Reni's mastery. The hair falls in loose and alluring fashion over the penitent's shoulders, her eyes turn toward heaven as she seeks the forgiveness of her sins, and the mixture of her beauty and her pity appeal in equal measure to the viewer's sensibility. This is Reni at his best, in which the sureness of his touch transforms the simplest representation into an image of extraordinary devotion." D. Stephen Pepper - 1998
The painting is in the private collection of a very famous artist. It is unframed, in very good condition. A written report by Simon Parkes Conservation Inc. New York is available upon request.
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Cesare Gennari
Cesare Gennari (Cento 1637 - Bologna 1688)
Magdalene in Penitence - Oil on Canvas cm 240 x cm 169
Cesare Gennari was the son of Ercole and Lucia Barbieri, sister of Guercino, the Master Baroque painter. With his brother Benedetto, he worked in the Master's workshop and was possibly the most talented of the two, although unlike Benedetto, who spent considerable time abroad and worked for notable patrons, he remained in his native surroundings all his life. Important works by Cesare Gennari include "S. Rosa da Lima" in the San Domenico Church in Bologna, the "Pace" and "Carita'" in the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica in Rome (see "Benedetto Gennari e La Bottega del Guercino" by Prisco Bagni - 1986.
Our painting above "Maddalena Penitente" is a wonderful example of the masterly technique of Cesare Gennari, whose work was of such high quality to be at times mistaken for that of Guercino himself. On 22nd March 1975, the eminent art historian Carlo Volpe ascribed it to Guercino and wrote at the end of a two page communication (which will be sold with the painting): "Va segnalato infine che il quadro potra' forse identificarsi con la "Santa Maria Maddalena" eseguita ad istanza dell'Eminente Santa Croce, consegnata l'11 marzo del 1652 in saldo di ducatoni 125: un prezzo corrispondente a quello richiesto dal Guercino per un quadro di questo tipo, come il "San Giovanni" della Pinacoteca di Forli' del 1654" "It is to be noted that the picture could be possibly identified with the "St Mary Magdalene" commissioned by Cardinal Santa Croce and delivered on 11th March 1652 in settlement of ducatoni 125: an equivalent price charged by Guercino for paintings of this type, such as the "St John" in the Pinacoteca di Forli' dated 1654".
The painting was purchased by the present owner at the Finarte auction in Milan, on 5th December 1978, Lot 60. In 1986, the art historian Prisco Bagni published "Benedetto Gennari e la Bottega del Guercino" and ascribed it to Cesare Gennari (Page 312, No. 174). His opinion is shared by Sir Denis Mahon, who wrote the introduction of the book.
It is to be noted that the work commissioned by Cardinal Santa Croce, mentioned by Volpe and recorded in the "Libro dei Conti" (see Mahon/Barbara Guelfi "Il Libro dei Conti del Guercino", Bologna 1997 has not yet been identified.
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