Estimate

10.000 - 15.000

Session 2

10 December 2020

Hammer Price

Description

Oil on canvas
C. 1760

114,5x140 cm

Category

Paintings

Additional Information

Provenance:
Colecção D. Manuel de Souza e Holstein-Beck, Conde da Póvoa.

Catalogue Essay

The Art Historian Nuno Saldanha states categorically that the painter Francisco Vieira de Matos, known as “O Lusitano” (The Lusitanian) “was effectively the best, as well as the most important artist” of D. João V’s age.
Indeed, in his 84 years, Vieira Lusitano achieved not only considerable production in Portugal but also international acclaim, having travelled throughout Europe and leaving behind a much admired and valued body of work.
In response to a growing number of commissions, “the Lusitanian” organised his studio according to the Roman academic practice of staggered production stages. For that purpose, he relied on numerous assistants, namely his sister Catarina Vieira (also known as “the Lusitanian” in mimicry of her brother’s nickname) and his brother João Vieira, both also artists, albeit the latter early death aged 20 (in relation to this painful event, the Lusitanian produced a famous allegory from which an engraved plate would be produced).
His sojourns in Rome, a city that he visited at least twice, aged 12 while participating in the Marquess of Fontes Embassy to the Papal court, and again between 1721 and 1728, were critical to Vieira de Matos artistic development. The second stay consecrated him, ensuring his acceptance at the Saint Luke painters’ academy, and making him thereafter known both in the city and throughout Italy.
The academic system, both in the learning process and in the pictorial practice, implied three tiers: the first tier focused on the sketching of the “idea” on paper, the second on the model’s drawing in finished form and finally the third tier, corresponding to the transferring to the dimension requested by the client and only then painted.
This work process, followed in Italy since the Renaissance, encouraged artists - such as Leonardo da Vinci who stated that painting was a “mental thing” - to focus more actively on the drawing and on the production of models, than to painting itself. That was indeed the modus operandi of the Lusitanian who would create numerous drawings and models that would be repeated and reused in his studio. These drawn models by Vieira de Matos were in great demand, even in his lifetime, either by his fellow artists or by collectors. This practice was sometimes criticised by some of his peers, such as Cyrillo Volkmar Machado who declared that it made him “…fall into a certain “manner”, repeating many times the same postures of hands, the same physiognomies, and even the same figures” (Cyrillo, 1797, p.28). In truth it is admissible that Cyrillo did not fully understand this legitimate practice, recommended and praised by transalpine artists, as he never visited Italy and was therefore, in all probability, unaware of this reality.
It is the summing up of this Italian learning that is reflected in this Adoration of the Magi, a masterly composition resulting from the contribution of various models that compose a pleasant work, most certainly praiseworthy to the client for whom it was produced.
Considering the size and proportions of this painting, it is likely that the painting was conceived to be sold into some collector’s gallery rather than for displaying in a chapel or oratory. Its landscape format, the distribution and the proportion of the figures forming a compact scene and the brushstroke’s elegance and minutiae, suggest that it was meant to be admired at close range rather than high up in an altar. For such contexts the Lusitanian created monumental figures and triangular compositions that require observation from below.
In this Adoration the artist used not only models selected from his own works but also from well-known and much earlier paintings. In the first instance, for their role in the harmonisation of the events, both in and out of the scene, the Saint Joseph standing in the background holding the flowering lily staff and the figures clustered on the scene’s far right, find analogies in the large painting of the enthroning of King Joseph I and Queen Mariana Victoria. In the second instance the traditional placing of the seated Virgin Mary with the Child on her lap, in profiled view to the left of the composition, and the centrally placed and side viewed kneeling Magi, one kissing the Saviour’s feet.
In pictorial terms it is noticeable that there are obvious variables in the figures execution: rigorous and careful on the main composition characters and less well defined in the case of the secondary figures that appear outside the stable building that harboured the Child’s birth. This dichotomy is certainly related to the above referred work practice that was common to Vieira Lusitano’s works.
These differences do not, by any means, diminish the quality of the painting, since secondary figures must tendentially disappear and are of minor importance in the appreciation of a work, a concept that is accentuated by the painting’s light source focused on the Virgin Mary and Her Son. The light treatment is actually one of the singular distinctive factors of this Adoration that is absent from most of Vieira’s production.
It is fair to assume that this painting was probably commissioned by a patron attempting to complete his collection. It therefore might have closely followed an existing work from one of Lisbon’s private paintings galleries, and one most certainly known to Vieira, who had himself cooperated in the compilation of inventories, such as that of the Marquess of Penalva’s palace in 1758.

Anísio Franco
Art Historian