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Lot Essay
We are very grateful to Everett Fahy for the attribution, given on the basis of photographs.
Steeped in Cinquecento Piedmontese tradition, Moncalvo had established himself by the 1590s as a key artist in Piedmont, working successfully at Crea in Turin and other centres, including Milan from 1617 to circa 1620, when he returned to Piedmont.
The Scottish merchant and M.P., William Graham, by whom this painting was acquired in the nineteenth century, was an active patron and collector of both old and contemporary masters. A great friend and admirer of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones, many works by whom he owned, he was also a passionate admirer of early Italian painting, an enthusiasm that Gladstone acknowledged when he made him a trustee of the National Gallery in 1884. In addition to paintings by Giotto, Carlo Crivelli, Piero di Cosimo, Dosso Dossi (Circe and her Lovers; Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art), Cosimo Tura (The Flight into Egypt; New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art), Giorgione (Bust portrait of a Courtesan; Pasadena, California, Norton Simon Museum) and numerous fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Venetian works by artists in the circle of Giovanni Bellini, Graham's collection included such works as Claude's Apollo and the Muses on Mount Helicon (Boston, Museum of Fine Arts) and Zurbarán's Immaculate Conception (Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland).
Steeped in Cinquecento Piedmontese tradition, Moncalvo had established himself by the 1590s as a key artist in Piedmont, working successfully at Crea in Turin and other centres, including Milan from 1617 to circa 1620, when he returned to Piedmont.
The Scottish merchant and M.P., William Graham, by whom this painting was acquired in the nineteenth century, was an active patron and collector of both old and contemporary masters. A great friend and admirer of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones, many works by whom he owned, he was also a passionate admirer of early Italian painting, an enthusiasm that Gladstone acknowledged when he made him a trustee of the National Gallery in 1884. In addition to paintings by Giotto, Carlo Crivelli, Piero di Cosimo, Dosso Dossi (Circe and her Lovers; Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art), Cosimo Tura (The Flight into Egypt; New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art), Giorgione (Bust portrait of a Courtesan; Pasadena, California, Norton Simon Museum) and numerous fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Venetian works by artists in the circle of Giovanni Bellini, Graham's collection included such works as Claude's Apollo and the Muses on Mount Helicon (Boston, Museum of Fine Arts) and Zurbarán's Immaculate Conception (Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland).