Luca Giordano in New York

LUCA GIORDANO IN NEW YORK

Luca Giordano in New York

June 2024

INTRODUCTION

Giuseppe Scavizzi

CATALOGUE BY Dominic Ferrante with Robert B. Simon

ROBERT SIMON FINE ART

Front and back covers: Luca Giordano, A Guardian Angel Leading a Child and Allegory of Human Progress.

© 2024 Robert Simon Fine Art, Inc.

Photography by Glenn Castellano

For availability and pricing, please contact the gallery. High-resolution digital photographs and condition reports are available upon request.

A digital copy of the catalogue is accessible on our website: www.robertsimon.com/giordano-exhibition.

ROBERT SIMON FINE ART

22 EAST 80TH STREET · NEW YORK · NY · 10075

TEL: 212·288·9712 FAX: 212·202·4786 BY APPOINTMENT AT: SATIS HOUSE 53 TOWER HILL ROAD EAST · TUXEDO PARK · NY · 10987

TEL: 845·351·2339 FAX: 845·351·4332

Introduction

Interest in Luca Giordano (Naples, 1634–1705) has clearly grown of late; in the last few years his art has been celebrated in different ways and in different countries through articles, exhibitions, and books. This rediscovery was long due; we should remember that in his day (in the second half of the 17th century), Giordano was unquestionably the most sought-after painter on the European stage.

There are many reasons for this lack of recognition, the most obvious being that the painter’s position in the art of his time is still not always clear, even to the art historians. His long career took him through many styles, from one that still reflected Caravaggio to one that, in the words of Francis Haskell, foreshadowed 18th-century painters like Tiepolo. Born in 1634, he was in his early years a bit eclectic in his extremely vast production (his father, a painter who guided his education, pressed him to work faster by telling him “fa presto,” or “work quickly,” the origin of Luca’s nickname). In his earliest paintings he took inspiration from the works of Renaissance masters, from the North and from the South, with a distinctly Venetian palette. From the 1660s he then alternated between an often dark realism in the manner of Ribera for his easel paintings and a florid Baroque à la Rubens for his altarpieces. Still later his work became dependent on that of the dominant figure in central Italy at the time, Pietro da Cortona.

In the 1680s however Giordano developed a style that remained typical for the rest of his life. In the frescos decorating the Galleria degli Specchi in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence he created a complex of mythological stories merging flawlessly into one another in gentle, rounded forms and delicate pastel tones of pinks and pale blues. In his canvases he expanded the range of subjects that he painted, especially in the area of mythology, many of them of an erotic nature. Compositions like the Venus and Satyr, the Rape of Persephone, the Bacchus and Ariadne and other bacchic scenes became so popular that he was forced to replicate them in large numbers. He did almost a dozen replicas of his obviously successful Rape of Europa, some based on the same cartoon and very similar to one another, though each remodeled in a unique set of colors and details. The influence of Bernini’s and Gaulli’s work made his forms lighter and the colors more brilliant. His brushwork

Fig. 1. Luca Giordano, Self-Portrait, oil on canvas, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

became looser, his sketches freer. In fact, Giordano’s sketches became not just preparation for larger works, but works to be admired in themselves, and were often duplicated.

This mature style, which has been called at times pre-18th century (the word Rococo appears to be a prerogative of French art), is also the style he displayed in the many frescos and paintings done in Spain in the ten years he spent there as a court painter of the monarch Charles II. His paintings of the period also appear to move in parallel with French contemporary art, which was about to dominate Europe. It is not by chance that when he became king of Spain, Philip V—as reported by Luca’s biographer Bernardo De Dominici—was so impressed by the painter, then still working for the crown, and especially by his sketches, that he sent some of them to his grandfather Louis XIV. Louis XIV also admired the sketches and intended to ask Giordano to go to France and paint at Fontainebleau. Unfortunately, Giordano was too old to accept the invitation, if it was ever made. In 1702 he left Spain to go back to Naples, where he died three years later.

As it will give to the New York public a better knowledge of Luca Giordano, this exhibition, which brings together paintings of diverse style and subject, is more than welcome. Some works bear a relationship to the city of Florence and are to be dated in the 1680s, when the painter was active for many of the most important aristocratic families of that city. The sketch for the Palazzo Medici Riccardi is part of a series of four in which Giordano outlined the whole decoration of the ceiling of the Galleria. As it has been demonstrated recently on the basis of a document, it was executed like the other three in 1682, and its content was faithfully replicated on the wall three years later. The many scenes it contains are sketched with a delightful verve and show Giordano at his best. The grisaille sketch for the frescos of the Corsini dome is of the same date and in the same style, although of a totally different subject. The Flight to Egypt is a variation on a composition created for Vittoria della Rovere, mother of the Grand Duke Cosimo III, and it must have been done at about the same time as the two bozzetti. It is the kind of devotional painting common at the time, gentle and subdued in the expressions and the colors.

The Battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs, which was originally paired with another painting of the same size (the Rape of the Sabine Women), bears in the violence of the scene some resemblance to the monumental canvas of the same subject

formerly in the Stroganoff Palace and now at the Hermitage. It was painted on copper to retain the brilliant quality of the colors. Other small paintings also on copper replicate compositions with historical, poetical, and mythological subjects that Giordano had repeated and perfected through the years—they had become well known and were like a signature of the painter. Similarly based on other compositions (one, the David and Batsheba, also replicated several times) are the two small oil paintings on paper, of unusual technique and size, which, though small, are packed with many charming details. They are certainly not big enough to be preparatory studies; they were probably conceived as a gift to a friend or a powerful client.

Giordano was active in the genre tradition in works of his own (battles, pastoral scenes), and he often collaborated with other specialists of still lifes, landscapes with ruins, and other scenes—here again following Rubens’ example. In these collaborative enterprises he at times designed the compositions with his own figures dominating, at other times he simply added a few details to the compositions of others, adapting them to the subject at hand. In some scenes with fish and fishermen he collaborated with Giuseppe Recco, who was a specialist in the description of marine themes, and in other paintings, with flowers or fruits, like the one presented here, he added figures to the work of Giovanni Battista Ruoppolo.

He painted objects other than canvases when asked, including a clavichord. He also painted overdoors in Spain for the Buen Retiro, the residence of Charles II. The overdoors included in this exhibition show how brilliantly he compacted in the small space available two complex mythological stories in a vortex of entwined bodies. The most surprising piece of the show—surprising because it is a beautiful work previously unknown—is the Guardian Angel, a subject painted by Giordano more than once. The two figures were in a way his specialty, since through his life he must have painted thousands of them in both his religious and secular works. The child following the angel has a grace that no other painter, with the exception of Raphael, was able to match. As for the angel, who leads the child with equal grace, the expanding features of his/her body emanating light have the same commanding presence as a statue by Bernini. For the freedom of the brushwork, this painting must have been one of his last—a testimony of his artistry and his faith.

Giuseppe

Scavizzi

A Guardian Angel Leading a Child

Oil on canvas

40 x 29 ⅝ inches (101.6 x 75.2 cm)

This striking painting of a Guardian Angel leading a child by the hand is a newly discovered work by the artist, having remained unknown since it was brought from Naples to New York in the 1840s by Rocco Martuscelli, the first Consul General and later Chargé d’Affaires of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. It counts as one of the earliest Italian Baroque paintings to have entered an American collection.

Here the dark, brooding setting, the presence of the man being led away by another angel in the lower background, and the fact that the principal angel points upwards towards a divine light together signal that the theme of this painting is the saving of a soul. While it is a late work, painted in the 1690s, the composition hearkens back to Giordano’s youth as it echoes the celebrated painting of the same theme by Pietro da Cortona—Giordano’s teacher during his early years in Rome. By comparison, Giordano’s treatment of the theme is filled with movement and drama, as the angel and child are dynamically posed and wrapped in billowing drapery.

PROVENANCE

Cavaliere Rocco Martuscelli (1801–1853), Naples, Italy; Washington, DC; and New York

Private Collection, Pennsylvania.

LITERATURE

Giuseppe Scavizzi, Luca Giordano: Nuove Opere / Aggiunte al Catalogo, 2003–2023, Todi, 2024, p. 44, cat. no. 138.

Full catalogue entry accessible here.

Allegory of Human Progress

(The Triumph of Bacchus and the Triumph of Neptune and Amphitrite)

Oil on canvas

47 ¾ x 74 ¾ inches (121.5 x 190 cm)

Giordano’s Allegory of Human Progress is a monumental and highly-finished oil sketch for one of the artist’s most important commissions, the Galleria in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence. Generally considered his masterpiece, the mural on the barrel-vaulted ceiling measured nearly 25 meters in length and was completed in a matter of months in 1685.

Our painting has recently returned from an exhibition at the Palazzo Medici Riccardi celebrating Giordano’s ambitious project, in which the series of surviving canvases (most of them today in the National Gallery, London) were shown directly beneath their corresponding scenes above. New scholarship has suggested that our canvas is one of four bozzetti created at the outset of the commission, whereas several of the other paintings related to the project were probably done after its completion as ricordi.

In this preparatory design for the ceiling Giordano fashions an inventive and imaginative composition with its dynamic dynamic arrangement of the gods along a diagonal from upper left to lower right. Several mythological figures are identifiable— Bacchus appears at the left in a chariot drawn by panthers, the wind-god Aeolus sends furious winds that fill the sails and buffet the ship of the Argonauts, Atlas passes the weight of the world to Hercules, and Neptune stands on a shell drawn by sea-horses as he reaches toward his wife, the Nereid Amphitrite, who rises up out of the sea while riding a dolphin. Full catalogue entry accessible here.

PROVENANCE

Marchese Francesco Riccardi, Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Florence; by descent in the Riccardi family at the Palazzo Medici Riccardi, the palace sold in 1814; then with the Riccardi family until after 1822

(Probably) Collection of the Earl of Shrewsbury, Staffordshire, Ingestre Hall and Alton Towers

Private Collection, England

With Wildenstein & Company, New York, 1984

Frederick W. Field Collection, Beverly Hills, California, 1984–2003

Private Collection, USA, 2003–2024.

EXHIBITED

Santissima Annunziata, Florence, 18 October 1705, lent by Marchese Cosimo Riccardi (see Nota de’Quadri che son esposti per la Festa di S. Luca degli Accademici del Disegno l’anno 1705, Florence, 1705).

“From Sacred to Sensual: Italian Paintings, 1400–1750,” Berry-Hill Galleries, New York, 20 January – 14 March 1998.

“Luca Giordano: Maestro barocco a Firenze,” Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Florence, 30 March – 5 September 2023.

ENGRAVED

Giovanni Paolo Lasinio, 1822 (in Riccardi Vernaccia, cited below).

LITERATURE

Francesco Saverio Baldinucci, “Vita di Luca Giordano Pittore Napoletano,” (Ms. Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence, c. 153v., ca. 1710–1721); published by Oreste Ferrari, “Una vita inedita di Luca Giordano,” Napoli nobilissima, vol. 4 (1966), p. 130.

Francesco Riccardi Vernaccia, Galleria Riccardiana dipinta da Luca Giordano...incisa da Lasinio figlio, Florence, 1822, pp. 17-20 and pl. IV.

Tony Ellis, Neapolitan Baroque and Rococo Painting, exh. cat., 1 June – 12 August, Durham, 1962, under cat. no. 55, unpaginated (as lost).

Oreste Ferrari and Giuseppe Scavizzi, Luca Giordano, Naples, 1966, vol. 1, p. 100, and vol. 2, p. 113 (as lost).

Paintings by Old Masters, ext. cat., Colnaghi, London, 1968, under cat. no. 2 (as lost).

W. H. Wilson, “An Unpublished Giordano Bozzetto,” Fogg Art Museum Acquisitions 1966–1967, 1968, pp. 28, 30, 32, and 34 (as lost), fig. 4 (Lasinio’s engraving).

Frank Büttner, Die Galleria Riccardiana in Florenz, Frankfurt, 1972, pp. 43-44, 76, 194 note 16, 239-240, and 270 (as lost), fig. 31 (Lasinio’s engraving).

Silvia Meloni Trkulja, “Luca Giordano a Firenze,” Paragone, vol. 23, no. 267 (May 1972), pp. 38-40, 53, note 62.

Marco Chiarini, in The Twilight of the Medici: Late Baroque Art in Florence 1670–1743, ed. Susan Rossen, exh. cat., Detroit and Florence, 1974, pp. 261, 264 (as lost).

Fabia Borroni Salvadori, “L’esposizione del 1705 a Firenze,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, vol. 19, no. 3 (1975), pp. 393, 397.

Ronald Millen, “Luca Giordano in Palazzo Riccardi; II: The Oil Sketches,” in Kunst der Barock in der Toskana, Munich, 1976, pp. 297, 303.

Silvia Meloni Trkulja, “I due primi cataloghi di mostre fiorentine,” in Scritti di storia dell’arte in onore di Ugo Procacci, ed. Maria Grazia Ciardi Dupré Dal Poggetto and Paolo Dal Poggetto, Milan, 1977, vol. 2, pp. 579, 582.

Oreste Ferrari, in Civiltà del Seicento a Napoli, exh. cat., Naples, 1984–1985, vol. 1, pp. 318-319.

Oreste Ferrari, Bozzetti italiani dal Manierismo al Barocco, Naples, 1990, pp. 157, 163, illustrated.

Frank Büttner, “‘All’usanza moderna ridotta’: gli interventi dei Riccardi,” in Il Palazzo Medici Riccardi di Firenze, ed. Giovanni Cherubini and Giovanni Fanelli,

Florence, 1990, p. 160 note 86.

Oreste Ferrari and Giuseppe Scavizzi, Luca Giordano: L’Opera Completa, Naples, 1992, vol. 1, pp. 87, 315, cat. no. A387l, vol. 2, fig. 509.

Gabriele Finaldi in Discovering the Italian Baroque: The Denis Mahon Collection, exh. cat., London, 1997, pp. 80-81, fig. 27.

Robert B. Simon, From Sacred to Sensual: Italian Paintings, 1400–1750, New York, 1998, pp. 80-83, illustrated and cover.

Gabriele Finaldi, “Gli Affreschi di Palazzo Medici Riccardi,” in Luca Giordano: 1634–1705, exh. cat., Naples, 2001, pp. 252, 257 note 31.

Oreste Ferrari, in Oreste Ferrari and Giuseppe Scavizzi, Luca Giordano: Nuove ricerche e inediti, Naples, 2003, p. 74.

Donatella Livia Sparti, “Ciro Ferri and Luca Giordano in the Gallery of Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, vol. 47, no. 1 (2003), pp. 188-206, p. 216n.139.

Cristina Giannini, “Between ‘modello’ and ‘ricordo’ Luca’s ‘macchie’ for the Riccardi and the late-baroque taste for the ‘inaccompli’ / Fra ‘modello’ e ‘ricordo’ le macchie di Luca per i Riccardi e il gusto tardo barocco per l’inaccompli,” in Stanze segrete: gli artisti dei Riccardi. I ‘ricordi’ di Luca Giordano e oltre, exh. cat., Florence, Palazzo Medici Riccardi, 15 April – 17 July 2005, ed. C. Giannini and S. Meloni Trkulja, pp. 1ff, 235ffm for the present work pp. 5n11, 238n11.

Cristina Acidini Luchinat, “The ceiling of Luca Giordano’s gallery: terrestrial courses, stellar triumphs / La volta della galleria di Luca Giordano: percorsi terreni, trionfi stellari,” in Stanze segrete: gli artisti dei Riccardi. I ‘ricordi’ di Luca Giordano e oltre, exh. cat., Florence, Palazzo Medici Riccardi, 15 April – 17 July 2005, ed. C. Giannini and S. Meloni Trkulja, pp. 25-54, 251ff.

Giuseppe Scavizzi, Luca Giordano: His Life and Work, Naples, 2017, pp. 171-173.

Giuseppe Scavizzi in Luca Giordano: Baroque Master in Florence, exh. cat., ed. Riccardo Lattuada, Giuseppe Scavizzi, Valentina Zucchi, Florence, 2023, p. 15.

Francesca Whitlum-Cooper in Luca Giordano: Baroque Master in Florence, exh. cat., ed. Riccardo Lattuada, Giuseppe Scavizzi, Valentina Zucchi, Florence, 2023, p. 68-70.

Valeria Di Fratta in Luca Giordano: Baroque Master in Florence, exh. cat., ed. Riccardo Lattuada, Giuseppe Scavizzi, Valentina Zucchi, Florence, 2023, p. 164, cat. no. 41.

Mars and Venus

The Death of Lucretia Pan and Syrinx

Olindo and Sophronia

Hercules, Nessus, and Deianira

Diana and Endymion

Oil on copper

6 ⅜ x 6 ½ inches (16.1 x 16.3 cm), each

This set of six small copper panels is a remarkable testimony to Luca Giordano’s versatility and virtuosity. While justly celebrated for his grand compositions, here the artist has rethought themes he treated in larger formats and adapted them to an intimate scale. Without sacrificing thematic and expressive elements, Giordano organizes his compositions rationally and legibly, giving greater prominence to the protagonists while describing them with bravura brushwork refined to the scale of miniatures.

While Giordano often painted on copper, particularly during his sojourn in Spain, this set is unique in its diminutive size, evidently the smallest fully realized project by the artist. The subjects are all amorous in theme. Four derive from classical mythology (Mars and Venus; Pan and Syrinx; Hercules, Nessus, and Deianira; and Diana and Endymion), one from Roman history (the Death of Lucretia), and one from Tasso (Olindo and Sophronia). Their original placement is unknown, although it seems likely that they were painted to be incorporated into a piece of furniture—most likely a stipo, an elaborate table cabinet crafted of exotic woods and precious materials that typically featured small paintings on copper. These were particularly prized in Naples, as well as Spain, in the latter half of the 17th century.

On

Loan from a Private Collection

PROVENANCE

Robert L. and Bertina Suida Manning, New York by 1964; by descent to: Private Collection, USA; by whom consigned to:

With Robert Simon Fine Art, New York, 2007; from whom acquired by: J. Clayton Davie, Birmingham, Alabama; by descent to his estate, by whom consigned to:

Brunk Auctions, 7 March 2024, lot 178; where acquired by: Private Collection, Pennsylvania.

EXHIBITED

“Luca Giordano in America,” Brooks Memorial Art Gallery, Memphis, Tennessee, April 1964, no. 5 (Mars and Venu only).

Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama (on long-term loan).

LITERATURE

Michael Milkovich, Luca Giordano in America: Paintings, Drawings, Prints, exh. cat., Memphis, 1964, pp. 8, 32, 39, under cat. no. 5.

The Flight into Egypt

Oil on canvas

29 ¾ x 40 ¼ inches (75.6 x 102.2)

Giordano excelled at painting devotional works and produced many tender depictions of the Virgin and Child or the Holy Family in a variety of sizes and across several media. Here the Holy Family are arranged in a compact group, while the kneeling ferryman energetically punts them over the water. Above, clouds part to let down a stream of light, powering winged putti that parallel the physical force provided by the oarsman. Giordano vividly animates an often static subject, imbuing the scene with motion and drama as both human and divine forces move the boat from right to left.

The present painting stands out for its unusual iconography—the Flight into Egypt by boat—which may have a special symbolic significance, as it draws upon mythological as well as Biblical sources. The passage of the young Christ over water at the outset of his life presages his fate by association with the soul’s being ferried across the river Styx by Charon as the final journey in the cycle of life. Giordano masterfully alludes to this myth within a beautifully devised composition that is set at night but filled with light. This painting is generally dated around 1682, at the outset of the artist’s tenure in Florence.

On Loan from a Private Collection

PROVENANCE

Finarte, Milan, 29 October 1964, lot 2; where acquired by: Private Collection, USA; by whom consigned to: Doyle, New York, 28 January 2015, lot 78, as Follower of Carlo Maratta; where acquired by: Private Collection, New Jersey.

LITERATURE

Oreste Ferrari, “Drawings by Luca Giordano in the British Museum,” The Burlington Magazine, vol. 108, no. 759 (June 1966), pp. 298-307, p. 302, under note 13.

Oreste Ferrari and Giuseppe Scavizzi, Luca Giordano, Naples, 1966, vol. 2, p. 109.

Oreste Ferrari and Giuseppe Scavizzi, Luca Giordano: L’Opera Completa, Naples, 1992, p. 305, cat. no. A320.

Giuseppe Scavizzi, Luca Giordano: Nuove Opere / Aggiunte al Catalogo, 2003–2023, Todi, 2024, p. 38.

The Battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs

Inscribed in paint, verso: no. 22 Giordanz / No. 480

Oil on copper

31 x 36 ¼ inches (79 x 92 cm)

In Greek mythology Lapiths and Centaurs were tribes in ancient Thessaly—Lapiths human in appearance, Centaurs a race of half-human, half-horse creatures. Their legendary battle was occasioned by an invitation to the Centaurs to attend the wedding of the Lapith King Pirithous. A great battle ensued at the wedding feast because the Centaurs, unused to wine, became wild and belligerent.

For the Greeks, as well as for those that followed, the conflict between the Lapiths and the Centaurs was emblematic of the struggle between man and his baser instincts, between civilization and chaos. Giordano has chosen to focus on the central element of the battle, the attempted abduction of Hippodamia, the beautiful bride of the Lapith king, by the Centaur Eurytion. She appears sprawled across the centaur’s withers, his right arm holding her left leg as he grasps her right arm with his left. A Lapith warrior challenges Eurytion, while in the background another Centaur warrior wielding a club and shield fights off armored Lapiths across an overturned banquet table. Dating from the 1690s during Giordano’s time in Spain, this large painting on copper was once paired with a depiction of the Rape of the Sabine Women.

Full catalogue entry accessible here.

PROVENANCE

Private Collection, (“A Deceased Estate”), UK; their sale: Sotheby’s, London, 21 April 1993, lot 44, as Luca Giordano; where acquired by: Stanley Moss, Riverdale-on-Hudson, until 2024.

LITERATURE

Nicola Spinosa, “Altre aggiunte a Luca Giordano,” in Per l’Arte da Venezia all’Europa: Studi in onore di Giuseppe Maria Pilo, ed. Maria Piantoni and Laura De Rossi, vol. 2, “Da Rubens al contemporaneo,” Venice, 2001, pp. 393-398, p. 654, fig. 7.

Giuseppe Scavizzi, Luca Giordano: Nuove Opere / Aggiunte al Catalogo, 2003–2023, Todi, 2024, p. 33, cat. no. 93.

GIOVANNI BATTISTA RUOPPOLO and LUCA GIORDANO

Fruit, Flowers, a Ceramic Dish and a Vase on a Stone Ledge

Beneath a Grape Arbor, with Two Women Gathering the Bounty

Oil on canvas

46 ¼ x 66 ⅝ inches (117.5 x 169.2 cm)

This newly discovered painting is the product of a collaboration between Luca Giordano and Giovanni Battista Ruoppolo—one of the principal still-life painters of 17th-century Naples. Giordano has painted two young women—posed as if in conversation as they are about to gather fruit—and the diminutive, almost sketched figure carrying a basket in the upper right. These figures serve to animate a magnificent composition of nature’s bounty, no doubt the bounty produced at the estate of the painting’s owner.

A spectacular display of fruits is arrayed on a stone ledge: figs, cherries, pears, peaches, plums, and other stone fruits. These are interspersed with flowers—morning glories, bellflowers, narcissuses—all set before an arbor covered with hanging vines producing three varieties of grapes. An upturned blue-and-white majolica bowl centers the composition, with a figured terracotta flowerpot next to it and a wooded landscape in the distance. Ruoppolo’s sensitivity to ceramics—which frequently appear in his compositions and are treated with great realism—is undoubtedly related to the fact that his father, brother, and father-in-law were all majolica makers. Our painting dates from just after 1680, generally considered the height of Ruoppolo’s career.

Full catalogue entry accessible here.

PROVENANCE

Robert Evans (1930–2019), Woodland, Beverly Hills, California.

Erminia and the Shepherds and

Bathsheba at her Bath

Oil on paper

8 ¾ x 11 inches (22.8 x 28.1 cm), each

This pair of paintings illustrate a fascinating aspect of Giordano’s creative process. Painted in oil on paper, these works either served as compositional sketches for larger paintings (either lost or unidentified) or possibly as finished works made as a gift for a friend or patron.

The subject of Erminia and the Shepherds comes from the Italian poet Torquato Tasso’s epic poem, Jerusalem Delivered. Here the Muslim princess Erminia, who has fled Jerusalem, seeks to calm a frightened group of shepherds by removing the armor with which she has disguised herself.

In its companion, the Old Testament figure Bathsheba is seen naked at her bath while she is spied upon from the distance by King David. Although the subjects are from different sources—one Biblical, one literary—they are bound together by both female subjects and themes of concealment and revelation.

On Loan from a Private Collection

PROVENANCE

With Coll & Cortes, Madrid

With Colnaghi, London

Private Collection, New Jersey

LITERATURE

Nicola Spinosa, Pittura del Seicento a Napoli, vol. 2, “Da Mattia Preti a Luca Giordano. Natura in Posa,” Naples, 2011, p. 186, cat. nos. 108-109. Giuseppe Scavizzi, Luca Giordano: Nuove Opere / Aggiunte al Catalogo, 2003–2023, Todi, 2024, p. 42, cat. nos. 122-123.

Allegory of the Preaching of the Divine Word (Sketch for a Spandrel of the Corsini Chapel in Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence)

Oil on canvas

19 ⅛ x 15 ⅛ inches (48.6 x 38.5 cm)

Giordano’s major public commission in Florence was his fresco decoration of the Chapel devoted to Saint Andrea Corsini in the Church of the Carmine. This grisaille oil sketch is preparatory for one of the four pendentives around the cupola of the chapel. It is a primo pensiero (or first idea) illustrating one of the allegories of the saint’s virtues. It has been thought to be the work listed in an inventory of Andrea and Lorenzo Del Rosso, friends of Giordano with whom the artist stayed during his time in Florence. A letter by Andrea of 1682 refers to what Giordano termed a macchia—a rough sketch—for the project, which was commissioned by the cousins Bartolomeo and Neri Corsini to celebrate their ancestor, who had been canonized in 1629.

Painting in monochrome is part of a longstanding tradition in the history of European art of creating images devoid of color. Giordano’s decision here to paint in black and white against a prepared ground was undoubtedly intended as a display of his virtuosity. His expert skill in describing the forms—modelled only in light and shadow—would have greatly excited its original owner and continues to impress today.

Full catalogue entry accessible here.

PROVENANCE

(Probably) Andrea and Lorenzo Del Rosso, Florence, by 1689 Christie’s, London, 12 December 1985, lot 221; where acquired by: Stanley Moss, Riverdale-on-Hudson, until 2024.

EXHIBITED

“Luca Giordano: Maestro barocco a Firenze,” Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Florence, 30 March – 5 September 2023.

LITERATURE

Oreste Ferrari and Giuseppe Scavizzi, Luca Giordano, Naples, 1966, vol. 2, p. 105, vol. 3, p. 194.

Oreste Ferrari and Giuseppe Scavizzi, Luca Giordano: L’Opera Completa, Naples, 1992, vo. 1, p. 301, cat. no. A300, vol. 2, fig. 403.

Brigitte Daprà, in Luca Giordano: 1634–1705, exh. cat., Naples, 2001, p. 240, under cat. no. 76.

Donatella Livia Sparti, “Ciro Ferri and Luca Giordano in the Gallery of Palazzo Medici Riccardi,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, vol. 47, no. 1 (2003), p. 220, note 196.

Elena Fumagalli, “Luca Giordano a Firenze: dipinti e ‘macchie,’” in Gli Uffizi e il territorio: bozzetti di Luca Giordano e Taddeo Mazzi per due grandi complessi monastici, ed. Alessandra Griffo and Maria Matilde Simari, Florence, 2017, p. 19.

Maria Matilde Simari, “Tre ‘pensieri’ fiorentini del Signor Luca Giordano per la cupola Corsini al Carmine,” in Gli Uffizi e il territorio: bozzetti di Luca Giordano e Taddeo Mazzi per due grandi complessi monastici, ed. Alessandra Griffo and Maria Matilde Simari, Florence, 2017, p. 47, fig. 15.

Silvia Benassai in Luca Giordano: Baroque Master in Florence, exh. cat., ed. Riccardo Lattuada, Giuseppe Scavizzi, Valentina Zucchi, Florence, 2023, p. 102, cat. no. 11.

The Battle Between the Gods and the Giants and

The Massacre of the Children of Niobe

Oil on paper, laid down on canvas

6 ¾ x 44 ½ inches (17 x 113 cm) and 6 ¾ x 45 ½ inches (17 x 118 cm)

These two oil sketches on joined sheets of paper brilliantly substantiate Luca Giordano’s sobriquet “fa presto,” or “work quickly.” They were painted with phenomenal facility and rapidity, integrating many of the artist’s familiar figural types into new compositions of unusual format. The broad horizontal layout of each painting suggests that these were designs for overdoors, although they cannot be associated with any known surviving project by the artist.

In each painting a fluid arrangement of wounded and dead mortals is displayed along the bottom half of the composition. There is a focus, almost a mounding of the bodies, at the center—in one with Giants holding boulders, in the other with figures on horseback. Bracketing each of these scenes of the defeated are the victorious gods, wielding their weapons, whether bow-and-arrow, sword, or thunderbolt.

Full catalogue entry accessible here.

PROVENANCE

Private Collection, New York, 2013–2024.

Study of Two Figures in a Classical Setting

Black chalk with ink wash on paper

7 ¾ x 4 ¾ inches (19.7 x 12.1 cm)

Giordano’s legendary speed is here self-evident in the bold and fluent lines quickly applied to the paper and enhanced by a subtle application of ink wash. While they are standing in repose, the two men conversing are depicted with movement and drama, particularly in the rendering of the drapery and the outline of the figure at left. With a few flashes of chalk, Giordano gives volume and breathes life into the figure in the foreground, positioned with one arm akimbo and the other held to his chest.

Our drawing has not yet been associated with a painting by Giordano, but given its spirited treatment, it was likely intended as a study for part of a larger composition. The colonnades that fill the background of the scene evoke an outdoor and perhaps ancient setting, suggesting a classical or mythological subject—both favorites of the artist and his patrons.

Full catalogue entry accessible here.

PROVENANCE

Phillips, London, 12 December 1990, lot 138; where acquired by: Stanley Moss, Riverdale-on-Hudson, until 2024.

Perseus Turning Phineas and his Followers to Stone

Oil on canvas

61 x 89 inches (155 x 227.7 cm)

This expansive canvas captures the climactic moment of the wedding feast of Perseus and Andromeda, which was disrupted by the vengeful Phineas, the former suitor of the bride, and his entourage. Far outnumbered by these unwelcome guests, Perseus held aloft the severed head of Medusa—the gorgon he had recently slain—whose hideous appearance would turn anyone who looked upon her to stone. While Perseus averted his gaze, Phineus and his followers looked upon Medusa’s severed head and suffered the consequences.

Giordano has brilliantly depicted the intruders turning into stone. Playing off of the dark ambience and with a masterful use of light and shadow, the artist has captured the figures in various stages of petrification, as the colors and flesh tones disappear and their skin turns to pallid grey. While the present work shares some compositional elements and figural poses with Giordano’s monumental treatment of the subject now in the National Gallery, London, this work was conceived independently and presents a rethinking of this frenetic scene, one of high drama that probes the nature of visual experience.

On Loan from a Private Collection

PROVENANCE

With Heim Gallery, London, by 1966

Sotheby’s, London, 10 July 1974, lot 37; where acquired by a private collector and by whom gifted on 24 April 2018 to the present owner.

EXHIBITED

“Italian Paintings and Sculptures,” London, Heim Galley, 1966, no. 12.

Birmingham, Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery, on long-term loan, 1968–1973.

South Hadley, MA, Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, on long-term loan, 1984–2020.

“Acquisition in Focus: Luca Giordano,” London, The National Gallery, June 1985.

LITERATURE

Oreste Ferrari and Giuseppe Scavizzi, Luca Giordano, 1966, vol. 1, pp. 98, 118-119, 333, and vol. 3, fig. 235.

Michael Helston, Luca Giordano, Perseus Turning Phineas and his Followers to Stone, London, 1985, p. 9, fig. 7.

Oreste Ferrari and Giuseppe Scavizzi, Luca Giordano: L’Opera Completa, Naples, 1992, vol. 1, p. 297, cat. no. A275, and vol. 2, p. 619, fig. 387.

Gabriele Finaldi in Luca Giordano: 1634–1705, exh. cat., Naples, 2001, p. 212, under cat. no. 71.