Vicente Carducho

Anonymous sale, ‘The Property of a Gentleman’, London, Christie’s, 4 July 1997, lot 92 (as Juan Ribalta), for £55,000 hammer price;

Where acquired by the Apelles Collection;

From whom acquired by the present owner in May 2018.

Oviedo, Museo de Bellas Artes de Asturias, En Torno a Velázquez, Pintura Española del Siglo de Oro, The Apelles Collection, 20 May 1999 – 30 January 2000, no. 3, reproduced in colour (as Juan Ribalta).

A. Pascual Chenel and A. Rodríguez Rebollo, Vicente Carducho, Dibujos, Catálogo razonado, Madrid 2015, pp. 169–74, under no. 29, reproduced p. 174, fig. 48 (as attributed to Juan Ribalta);

F. Benito Domenech in En Torno a Velázquez, Pintura Española del Siglo de Oro, The Apelles Collection, H. Brigstocke and Z. Véliz (eds), exh. cat., Museo de Bellas Artes de Asturias, Oviedo 2000, pp. 52–61, no. 3, reproduced in colour (as Juan Ribalta).

This painting was long considered to be by the hand of the seventeenth-century Valencian master Juan Ribalta (1596/7–1628) and was published and exhibited as such when shown as part of the Apelles Collection in Oviedo in 1999–2000.

More recently however, both Dr Benito Navarrete and Prof. José Gómez Frechina have independently confirmed that they believe the work to be by the hand of Vicente Carducho, relating this painting to the artist’s preparatory drawing in the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe at the Uffizi, Florence.¹

As a young boy, Vicente Carducho departed his native Florence for Spain in the company of his elder brother Bartolomé (1560–1608) to help in the monumental project to decorate the Escorial, outside Madrid, for Philip II. Following completion of the Escorial he worked in the employ of both Philip III and Philip IV and remained in Spain until the end of his life. Perhaps his greatest work was the decoration of the Monastery of El Paular, with fifty-four canvases representing scenes from the life of Saint Bruno and various martyrs.

¹ Inv. 10201 S; black chalk, ink and wash on paper, 209 x 129 mm.; Pascual Chenel and Rodríguez Rebollo 2015, pp. 169–75, no. 29.3, reproduced; https://euploos.uffizi.it/scheda-catalogo.php?invn=10201+S