FACES 3 th th From 17 to 20 Century GALLERIA CARLO VIRGILIO & C0. GALLERIA CARLO VIRGILIO & Co. ARTE ANTICA MODERNA E CONTEMPORANEA Acknowledgements Raffaella Bellini, Andrea Daninos, Renzo Mangili, Federico Piscopo, Marco Pupillo, Anna Maria Zuccotti English Translations Sophie Henderson Photo Credits Arte Fotografica, Rome Foto Giusti Claudio, Lastra a Signa The editor will be pleased to honour any outstanding royalties concerning the use of photographic images that it has so far not been possible to ascertain. ISBN 978-88-942099-8-3 © Edizioni del Borghetto Tel. + 39 06 6871093 - Fax +39 06 68130028 e-mail: [email protected] http//www.carlovirgilio.it FACES 3 th th From 17 to 20 Century Edited by Francesca Romana Morelli Catalogue entries Manuel Carrera, Eugenio Maria Costantini, Bernardo Falconi, Liletta Fornasari, Anna Frasca Rath, Stefano Grandesso, Fernando Mazzocca, Francesca Romana Morelli, Barbara Musetti, Emiliano Orsini, Matteo Piccioni, Giuseppe Porzio, Patrizia Rosazza Ferraris, Renato Ruotolo, Caterina Volpi TEFAF Maastricht March 7–15, 2020 e GALLERIA CARLO VIRGILIO & Co. ARTE ANTICA MODERNA E CONTEMPORANEA ISBN 978-88-942099-8-3 Via della Lupa, 10 - 00186 Roma 59 Jermyn Street, Flat 5 - London SW1Y 6LX Tel. +39 06 6871093 [email protected] - [email protected] www.carlovirgilio.it CATALOGUE 1. SALVATOR ROSA Naples 1615–Rome 1673 Screaming Skull ca. 1640–1645 Oil on canvas, 24 x 19.3 cm Provenance: Italy, private collection This small canvas portrays a skull in the act (1650-1673) (Democritus in Meditation of screaming (or sneering), with its mouth at the Statens Museum in Copenhagen open wide and tufts of grey hair attached and Fragile Humanity at the Fitzwilliam to the head. Rendered with rapid strokes Museum in Cambridge to cite some more of thick paint, the head emerging from a celebrated examples). Equally, among ruddy-brown background and lit by an the sketches of the Florentine years, the oblique light, the work draws on the well image of a skull is found next to enigmatic known theme of vanitas, in the Nordic philosophical figures and old witches mould, but also evokes the sorcerous (Mahoney 1977, nos. 13.3, 25.14). climate of the Sabbaths, a pictorial genre The grotesque, imaginary and corrosive introduced into Italy with the diffusion vein of the painter’s fantasy was expressed of Dutch prints. The wispy waves of hair with particular success in the Tuscan seemingly moved by the wind and the years above all relating to witchcraft, the glimmers of red within the eye sockets give eccentric genre of Nordic origins and on the cranium a disquieting sense of life and which Rosa focussed on several occasions movement, making it into a near typical for educated Tuscan clients (the Niccolini baroque image of metamorphosis, the and Corsini families and Carlo De Rossi). It nightmare of a corpse returning from the was a production, for the most part, aimed dead or a live person becoming a skeleton; a at small studies or rooms, often executed on witch; or a gorgon on the point of petrifying precious supports (slate, copper and Ruin the observer; a damned soul about to be marble) and in small formats (H. Langdon, sucked back down to hell. in Salvator Rosa 2010, n. 23, p. 178). The cultured and ironic character of this At the same time, absorbed by theatrical picture, or divertissement, the allusion to experiences with his companions of the magic and witchery, alongside the layered Accademia dei Percossi, Salvator Rosa gave rendering, the warm browns and reds, to life to a new genre of pictorial portrait, the grey-blue hair applied with a technique the so-called “testacce” or heads, which is approaching the Neapolitan method to say studies in painting and drawing of of Ribera (1591-1652) and Francesco poses, expressions and characters drawn Fracanzano (1612-1656), lead its attribution from theatrical observation and intended in to the eccentric and grotesque production most cases for intellectual friends, literary of Salvator Rosa, an artist whose prolific people, actors and musicians (Portrait of fantasy left us various examples of subjects a Poet, priv. coll., Volpi 2014, no. 428, p. treated in unusual ways in the most diverse 428, Portrait of a Philosopher, whereabouts formats and presented on varied supports. unknown, Volpi 2014, no. 84, p. 429, At least from Rosa’s Florentine years Portrait, Rome, priv. coll., Volpi 2014, no. (1640-1650) skulls are recurrent in his 115, p. 449, Portrait of a Poet, Strasbourg, paintings and drawings, and the presence of Musée des Beaux Arts, Volpi 2014, no. a death’s head as the emblem of melancholy 151, p. 472), works that were carried out meditation on vanitas becomes a near in a frenzy, satirical style, with fast, thick distinctive trait of the artist and his poetic brushwork and an economy of colour. (Ebert-Schifferer 2008). Indeed we find it The small canvas with the Skull is half in the famous Self-Portrait/Portrait of a way between the genres just described, re- Philosopher at the Metropolitan Museum proposed and re-invented by Rosa from his of New York (Volpi 2014, no. 140, p. 465), very early years in Florence (1640-1645). in the painting Moral Philosophy at Caldaro This eccentric and disturbing cranium, (Volpi 2014, no. 159, p. 477), and again in that seems to scream and laugh at the numerous works from the Roman period same time, and to come to life as a chilling 6 7 sorceress, zombie or mummy is the work it is possible to demonstrate close stylistic of the brilliant and uninhibited imagination affinities with works from the sixteen forties that was able to operate a formal and such as Witch from the Musei Capitolini conceptual synthesis from different sources and above all, given the similar palette elaborated between Naples, Rome and and scream, with the Witch, previously Florence. The grotesque scream, of which Altomani (Volpi 2014, n. 158, fig. p. 167), The Punishment of Prometheus by Salvator, for which this small canvas seems almost an today at the Museo Nazionale di Arte initial thought, a preparatory note or first Antica at Palazzo Corsini, is perhaps the idea that took on the form of an impressive highest point of arrival, was studied by the monumentality. painter in Naples, from the models of his In the sixteen fifties Rosa continued to master Falcone (Aniello Falcone, Head of create images of witches and unsettling a Screaming Warrior, Bremen, Kunsthalle, monstrosity, to a great extent inspired by cfr. Volpi 2014, p. 33) and of Ribera; and the models elaborated in the Florentine in Florence, at the Medici collections, home years; such as the case of Witchcraft in the of the famous sketch by Michelangelo Corsini collection in Florence from 1655 that portrays the Damned Soul, as well (Volpi 2014, no. 137, p. 166) where the as Caravaggio’s shield with the Head of screaming witch carrying a light reappears Medusa (see Volpi 2014, p. 33, 195). to the left in the background. They are Rosa returns to the theme of the speaking however more elaborate and complex – skull (or better, singing skull) in the Vanitas as the preparatory drawings show – and painted on the casing of a harpsichord portrayed in a mature style, a long way owned by the Maffei family, to whom the from the spontaneous and enigmatic artist was tied by a deep friendship and of immediacy of our small Skull. whom he was often a guest at their estate, The playful character, abbreviated style Monterufoli (today at Haddo House, cfr. and small dimensions seem to indicate that Volpi 2014, no. 227, p. 529). The work is the canvas might have been intended for most likely datable to Rosa’s last sojourn a Tuscan friend of the artist, perhaps the in Tuscany, in 1649. Nonetheless the Maffei family for whom Salvator painted Skull in question shows a style that is still the harpsichord casing as well as numerous youthful, connected to his Neapolitan small paintings briefly described as experiences, as yet not strongly influenced portraying heads and masquerades (Volpi by Tuscan drawing, the same pictorial 2014, pp. 636-637) an inventory entry ductus and the same palette as works from that may possibly include this ironic and the first half of the fifth decade. Despite the terrorising Skull of a witch. objective difficulty of establishing the exact chronological date for this grotesque piece Caterina Volpi 8 9 2-7. CARLO AMALFI Sorrento 1707–1787 Laura Serra, third Duchess of Cassano Giuseppe Serra Lady from the Serra di Cassano family Gentleman from the Serra di Cassano family Lady from the Serra di Cassano family Gentleman from the Serra di Cassano family Third quarter of 18th century Oil on canvas, each 76 × 58.5 cm Provenance: Naples, Serra di Cassano collection; Rome, private collection Bibliography: Porzio 2015. The identification of this suggestive group available iconographic record, it is no of portraits is supported by the presence, in small thing for enthusiasts of the history three of the six paintings, of the heraldic coat of the Mezzogiorno, given the importance of arms of the dukes of Serra di Cassano as and renown of this figure, founder and well as their direct provenance from an heir enlightened governor of a state (today to this important dynasty of Ligurian origin, reduced to a fraction of the Comune of whose fame is tied principally to the tragic Cassano allo Ionio in Cosenza) that bears events of the Neapolitan Republic from her name, Lauropoli, besides being mainly 1799 and the homonymous palazzo located responsible for the magnificence of the on the Pizzofalcone hill in Naples from 1725 ancestral residence of Pizzofalcone.