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Lot Essay
This splendid pair of canvases, in their original frames, were painted for the Genoese banker Marchese Niccolo Maria Pallavicini (1650-1714), one of the wealthiest patrons of his day. Pallavicini was a connoisseur of discriminating taste who set about forming probably the most important private collection of contemporary art in Rome, employing Carlo Maratti, whom Pascoli describes as ‘suo grande amico’ (Vite de Pittori, etc., I, 1730, p. 141), and Giuseppe Bartolomeo Chiari, who was Maratti’s closest associate from 1666 until the latter’s death in 1713.
A remarkably vivid account exists of their acquisition - as works by Maratti - by Richard Dalton in Rome in the mid-eighteenth century. Dalton visited Italy in summer of 1758, charged by Lord Bute to collect drawings and other material for the Prince of Wales, later King George III, and on his own behalf, and by Sir Richard Grosvenor to purchase pictures. His progress is graphically documented in correspondence with both Bute and Grosvenor. On 8 July 1758 Dalton reported to the latter from Florence that he had seen pictures being offered by Marchese Arnaldi which had been in the collection of Marchese Niccolo Maria Pallavicini. Sir Horace Mann had already secured, for Henry Hoare, Maratti’s portrait of Pallavicini now at Stourhead (fig. 1; S. Rudolph, La pittura del ‘700 a Roma, Rome, 1983, pl. 436). Dalton continued:
‘there are two very fine Carlo Maratti’s Ovals about four feet four inches long & 3-3-broad, fine well preserv’d pictures which are also finely engrav’d and in Frey’s collection of prints, one is Bethsheba a bathing & her maids, one holds a glass as she is combing her hair/David at a distance, the other is Hagar & Ismael, She comforted by the Angel, These pictures they ask 4 hundred crowns for each, ye is a hundred pounds a piece, and I imagine will take seventy each, then they will be vastly cheap/for I’m certain they wou’d sell for two hundred in England, a piece I mean. These shall secure for you.’
In a further letter of 16 September 1758, Dalton reported on the frames of these canvases and his other Arnaldi purchases:
‘The frames are good and truely C. Maratti frames, which are much the fashion in England. They are about seven inches broad. He made the designs of all the furniture of the House as well as the frames for the Prince of Palavacini at Rome, to whom the collections belonged formerly.’
The two pictures, with a Susannah of the same format, cost 410 zecchini, the equivalent of L212. Blunt and Cooke (op. cit.) connect The Angel appearing to Hagar with two Maratti drawings at Windsor, pointing out that both ‘differ substantially from the [present] composition [...] and must be either preliminary versions, or later variants’. Another drawing at Chatsworth is of a same composition as the second Windsor drawing. Chiari, working alongside Maratti, would have had access to these preliminary drawings, and may have contributed to the creation of the compositions. The Frey engravings by Robert van Audenaerd mentioned by Dalton are also of different compositions, the Bathsheba being after the picture painted by Maratti in 1693 for the Prince of Liechtenstein (H. Voss, Die Malerei des Barock im Rom, 1924, illustrated p. 345). The composition of the Bathsheba canvas here must have met with particular success, given that there are two other known versions by Chiari, including one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
A remarkably vivid account exists of their acquisition - as works by Maratti - by Richard Dalton in Rome in the mid-eighteenth century. Dalton visited Italy in summer of 1758, charged by Lord Bute to collect drawings and other material for the Prince of Wales, later King George III, and on his own behalf, and by Sir Richard Grosvenor to purchase pictures. His progress is graphically documented in correspondence with both Bute and Grosvenor. On 8 July 1758 Dalton reported to the latter from Florence that he had seen pictures being offered by Marchese Arnaldi which had been in the collection of Marchese Niccolo Maria Pallavicini. Sir Horace Mann had already secured, for Henry Hoare, Maratti’s portrait of Pallavicini now at Stourhead (fig. 1; S. Rudolph, La pittura del ‘700 a Roma, Rome, 1983, pl. 436). Dalton continued:
‘there are two very fine Carlo Maratti’s Ovals about four feet four inches long & 3-3-broad, fine well preserv’d pictures which are also finely engrav’d and in Frey’s collection of prints, one is Bethsheba a bathing & her maids, one holds a glass as she is combing her hair/David at a distance, the other is Hagar & Ismael, She comforted by the Angel, These pictures they ask 4 hundred crowns for each, ye is a hundred pounds a piece, and I imagine will take seventy each, then they will be vastly cheap/for I’m certain they wou’d sell for two hundred in England, a piece I mean. These shall secure for you.’
In a further letter of 16 September 1758, Dalton reported on the frames of these canvases and his other Arnaldi purchases:
‘The frames are good and truely C. Maratti frames, which are much the fashion in England. They are about seven inches broad. He made the designs of all the furniture of the House as well as the frames for the Prince of Palavacini at Rome, to whom the collections belonged formerly.’
The two pictures, with a Susannah of the same format, cost 410 zecchini, the equivalent of L212. Blunt and Cooke (op. cit.) connect The Angel appearing to Hagar with two Maratti drawings at Windsor, pointing out that both ‘differ substantially from the [present] composition [...] and must be either preliminary versions, or later variants’. Another drawing at Chatsworth is of a same composition as the second Windsor drawing. Chiari, working alongside Maratti, would have had access to these preliminary drawings, and may have contributed to the creation of the compositions. The Frey engravings by Robert van Audenaerd mentioned by Dalton are also of different compositions, the Bathsheba being after the picture painted by Maratti in 1693 for the Prince of Liechtenstein (H. Voss, Die Malerei des Barock im Rom, 1924, illustrated p. 345). The composition of the Bathsheba canvas here must have met with particular success, given that there are two other known versions by Chiari, including one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.