Estimate

10.000 - 15.000

Session 3

21 March 2023

Hammer Price

Description

Oil on canvas

227x132 cm

Category

Paintings

Note:

The painting we are now offering for auction is based on a lost fresco by Guido Reni (1575-1642) for the Church of San Michele in Bosco in Bologna.
When speaking of Guido Reni life in his work “Felsina Pittrice: vite de' pittori bolognesi”, the art historian Carlo Cesare Malvasia (1616–1693) describes this fresco with the following words:
“In this painting Guido represented Saint Benedict at the top of a mountain, stepping out of a grotto with a certain affability that does non diminish his gravitas, receiving the various gifts brought to him by the rustic inhabitants of different genders, ages, and complexions, and diverse in proportion, attitudes, and costumes. A graceful young girl, girdled with the finest veils and carrying a basket of eggs, is in the style of Raphael; in the style of Correggio, an older girl, her companion, with a smiling face rests a hand upon her shoulder. Both look out toward the viewers with so much liveliness and spirit they seem to breathe. In the style of Titian there is a little sheperd playing a flute with hands of a living and tender flesh; another sheperd, of not inferior beauty, listens intently to his music. In the style of Annibale is a woman with a nursing baby at her breast, and another older child whom she prods with her right hand into offering a basket of apples on which he fixes greedy eyes. Passing over many other figures, I shall mention a full-length nude in the foreground who pulls forcefully at a donkey's reins, and who is so vigorously and furiously drawn that it would seem that Michelangelo himself had traced his contours, leaving to the school of Lombardy the task of covering his body with living flesh in a more tender manner”.
Currently on that place, we find a copy of this representation made by the painter Giovanni Maria Viani (1636-1700).
Giacomo Maria Giovannini (1667–1717), engraved it and we find examples in the most diverse private and public collections, such as the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art with inventory number 1985-52-22095, and that of Victoria and Albert Museum with inventory number DYCE.1528.