Carlo Maratta and workshop

Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, 30 October 1991, lot 195 (as follower of Carlo Maratta);

Thereafter acquired by the present collector.

This late work by Carlo Maratta, possibly executed with some workshop assistance, depicts one of the artist's most popular compositions: the Madonna (alternatively identified as Saint Cecilia) holding a book and accompanied by musical angels. An autograph version (Alupka State Palace and Park Museum Reserve, inv. no. 86), commissioned by Niccolò Maria Pallavicini  circa 1705 and later owned by Sir Robert Walpole, is widely known through an eighteenth-century engraving by Robert Strange.¹ The existence of numerous copies and studio replicas, many of which belong to museum collections, further testify to the success of this lyrical religious composition.²

We are grateful to Dr. Dario Beccarini for supporting the attribution to Carlo Maratta, possibly with some workshop intervention.

¹ Robert Strange after Carlo Maratta, Te Deum Laudamus. London, British Museum, inv. no. V,10.24.

² For example: Digne-les-Bains, Musée Gassendi, inv. no. 742; Dijon, Musée Magnin, inv. no. 1938 E 426.