Lot 72
  • 72

Domenico Zampieri, called Domenichino

Estimate
400,000 - 600,000 USD
bidding is closed

Description

  • Domenico Zampieri, called Domenichino
  • River landsape with a boatman and fishermen, an elegant couple walking by the shore
  • oil on canvas

Provenance

Possibly Natale Rondinini (1540-1627), Rome, and by descent to his son;
Alessandro Rondinini (died 1631), by whom bequeathed to his wife;
Felice Zacchia Rondinini (1593-1667), in whose 1662 inventory the painting is listed (“Un paese largo palmi tre, alto due dicesi di mano del Domenichino’), and thence by descent to her grandson;
Alessandro Rondinini (1660-1740), Villa delle Terme di Diocleziano, Rome, (noted in his posthumous inventory of 1741: “Un Quadro in Tela di tre p.mi p. traverso rapp.te Paese con Veduta di Fiume Cornice dorata mano del Domenichino”) thence by descent to;
Giuseppe Rondinini (1725-1801);
Miss Moore, The Vicarage, Claggate, Surrey;
Sale: Christie’s London, 28 January, 1882, lot 96, as “Carracci”, sold for £1 15 s. to “J.B.”;
Anonymous sale, Bonham’s London, 5 July, 2006, lot 69 (as “Circle of Domenicio Zampieri, il Domenichino”).

Exhibited

San Francisco, California Palace of the Legion of Honor,  February 2009- December 2012.

Literature

G.P. Bellori, Nota delli musei, librerie, galerie, et ornamenti di statue e pitture ne' palazzi, nelle case, e ne' giardini di Roma, Rome 1664, p. 48 (where noted it belonged to “Felice Rondenini”, “paesi di Domenichino”);
G.P. Bellori, Le vite de’ pittori, scultori e architetti moderni, Rome 1672, pp. 356-7 (see note);
L. Salerno, Palazzo Rondinini, Rome 1965, p. 279;
R.E. Spear, Domenichino, New Haven and London 1982, vol I, no. 17, pp. 139-40 (as location unknown);
A. Sutherland Harris, review of “Domenichino by Richard E. Spear,” in The Burlington Magazine, CXXVI, no. 972, March 1984, p. 167, note 4;
R.E. Spear, “Domenichino addenda,” in The Burlington Magazine, CXXXI, January 1989, p. 15, no. 17 (as location unknown).

Condition

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting on canvas has an old glue lining. The paint layer has been more recently restored, and re-examination of the restoration does not seem necessary. There is a good deal of very accurate and focused retouching addressing thinness and losses in the sky. There are losses in the light colors of the water and in the far distance to a lesser degree. There seem to be fewer retouches in the darker colors of the town across the lake, in the trees, and in the details of the foreground. It is also harder to get a positive reading in the darker colors under ultraviolet light, and some of the profiles of the trees may have received a few retouches. However, it seems that the painting should generally be in very healthy state.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Catalogue Note

In his vita of the painter, Bellori noted the particular talent that Domenichino demonstrated for the depiction of landscape:

Domenico was highly studied in his representation of landscapes and prospects, with his choices and with the appropriateness of his views, drawing and painting them with a superior genius, and he made jokes in these [paintings] with the usual depictions of his figures."

Bellori then goes on to describe some of the artist’s best examples of such works, and begins with one in particular:

 “In the Rondenini [sic] house there is a little canvas by his hand on which is depicted a small river with a boatman who is coming to shore, where there is a woman with a basket of crabs, who is kneeling on the ground, pointing to a crying boy, bitten by one of those crabs, which is hanging from his hand.  Behind her is a fisherman holding an eel who is about ready to dangle it down her back, and with a finger raised to his mouth hushes a Lady, who with her husband, has come to stroll by the river."

 One of only about twenty such landscape paintings by Domenichino, the River Landscape with a Boatman and Fishermen is amongst the best documented of the artist’s works in the genre.3 Not only does Bellori describe it in great detail in his biography (see above), but it was also engraved by Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi (with slight alterations, Bartsch 49). It is first recorded in 1662, when it is mentioned in the inventory of Felice Zacchia, the widow of Alessandro Rondinini.  Most of the paintings in the celebrated Rondinini collection had been acquired by Alessandro’s father, Natale, who very possibly commissioned the present painting from the artist, or bought it soon after it was painted.  The collection included a number of famous works (for example the collaborative Saint Cecilia by Gentileschi and Lanfranco, now National Gallery, Washington, DC, inv.  1961.9.73), and was comprised solely of pictures by artists who were active no later than circa 1630.  Thus, the Rondinini collection in effect represents in crystallized form Roman aristocratic taste of the early years of the seicento, and the Landscape’s inclusion in it is indicative of the respect in which the artist and his landscapes were held.4  The Landscape then enjoys an unbroken provenance until the beginning of 19th century, when the last of the Rondinini family died without issue. After that, except for a brief appearance in an 1882 sale in England (see provenance), the painting disappeared, and was only known through Grimaldi’s print and an old copy, formerly in the Bonsal collection, Albany, NY (see Spear 1982 op. cit., vol. I, under cat. no. 17, p. 139, reproduced, vol. II, plate 31). Only in 2006 did the painting reappear on the London art market, although misattributed (see provenance), and a subsequent cleaning revealed its fully autograph status, recognized as the lost Rondinini painting and accepted as such by Richard Spear (reconfirmed in a private communication to the current owner dated 27 March, 2009, see footnote 3).

The Landscape with a Boatman and Fishermen can be dated to circa 1605, soon after Domenichino’s arrival in Rome in 1602.  Once there, the artist became a close protégé of Annibale Carracci, who no doubt encouraged the younger painter’s foray into landscape painting both by example and by direct exhortation.5  Annibale’s Landscape with Fishermen of circa 1596 (Paris, Musée du Louvre), shares many of the same elements as the present canvas: elegant figures along a shore coming to inspect the day’s catch; the boatman straining at his oar; the recession of the water into the landscape, interrupted by trees, hills and fortifications.  Other touches, however, seem to be Domenichino’s own; while Annibale’s canvas in the Louvre presents an overall somber and decorous image, the present picture by Domenichino is more lively and lighthearted, not least by the inclusion of the antics of the fisherfolk which Bellori described in such detail.  Within Domenichino’s own corpus, perhaps the closest parallel is the Riverscape with a Ford in the Palazzo Doria Pamphilij, Rome (Spear 1982 op. cit., cat. no. 16) which can be dated to about the same moment and which also features many of the same compositional techniques, as well as also displaying a similar interest in narrative content.  Domenichino’s careful approach to landscape as described by Bellori is further attested to by the existence of two preliminary drawings for the painting.  One for the boy at the extreme lower right of the composition is at Windsor6; the other, working out elements of the right hand part of the composition, was formerly in the collection of Janos Scholz.7  In his final composition, Domenichino also made slight adjustments and corrections, most notably seen in a pentiment in the upraised arm of the boatman. 


1. “Fù Domenico studiosissimo nel rappresentare paesi, e vedute, con elettione scelta e proprietà de’ siti, disegnandoli e dipingendoli con sopranità di genio; e scherzava in essi con la solita espressione delle figure.” Bellori 1672 op. cit., p. 356.
2. “In casa Rondenini [sic] sopra una picciola tela di sua mano è finto un fiumicello, col Barcaiuolo, che spinge à riva, dov’ è una donna con una cestella di granchi, la quale piegata à terra, addita un fanciullo piangente, morso da uno di quei granchi, che gli pende dalla mano.  Dietro di essa un pescatore tiene un’anguilla per fargliela guizzar frà le spalle, e col ditto alla bocca, accena silentio ad una Signora, che col marito, viene à diporta al fiume.” Bellori, 1672 op. cit. pp. 356-7.
3.  In a private communication to the current owner from Richard Spear, 27 March, 2009.
4. For a description of the Rondinini collection, its formation and history, please see L. Salerno op. cit.
5. Annibale literally “put his money where his mouth is”; Bellori noted that Carracci fell so in love with one of Domenichino’s landscapes that he bought it, and felt he had a good bargain in doing so (see Bellori, 1672 op. cit., p. 357).
6. See J. Pope-Hennessy, Domenichino Drawings in the Royal Library at Windor Castle, London 1948, p. 38, cat. no 125).
7. See Italienische Meisterzeichnungen von 14. bis zum 18 Jahrhundert aus amerikanischem Besitz, Die Sammlung Janos Scholz, exhibition catalogue, Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne, 1963, cat. no. 47, pl. 46).