Rutilio Manetti

The catalogue illustration is reasonably representative. The canvas has recently been relined and restretched. The lining is a little rigid but not unduly so and the paint surface not too pressed. There is a vertical seam in the canvas running down through the centre of the canvas in line with Christ's head. The edges of the canvas also appear to have been extended in the past, as a 15 cm margin of canvas of different weave can be clearly discerned. Overall the painting is in quite good condition. There appear to be no major damages and the paint surface has not suffered too much from wear, although the hair of Christ and the right hand pilgrim have both suffered in this respect. . There has been a deal of restoration in the past, which has now visibly discoloured. This may be seen along the length of the seam, and is particularly concentrated in the background around the head of Christ and His hand raised in benediction, where there seem to have been losses or damages in the past and where the paint and glazes are worn. Other areas of repair include the tablecloth, especially around the lower edge, and also the head and drapes of the pilgrim to the left, the area between Christ and the pilgrim to the right, his staff and to the draperies and their shadows in general and to the background and the margins in particular. Recent intervention seems to be limited to scattered retouchings on the left hand side. The varnish is new and glossy but rather unevenly applied. This lot is offered with a good contemporary Italian parcel gilt cassetta frame, in good condition.
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This impressive caravaggesque painting is a newly discovered work by the Sienese painter Rutilio Manetti. It dates from the artist's late maturity - Bagnoli suggests a date in the early 1630s - by which time Manetti's paintings had moved away from the mannerist style of his youth towards the naturalism exemplified by Caravaggio and his followers. Manetti received his early training in Siena under Francesco Vanni but his style underwent a dramatic change towards the end of the 1610s, indicating that he must have travelled to Rome and Bologna some time in the middle of that decade. There he saw the works of Guercino and Caravaggio and, although Manetti was already in his mid-forties by the time he undertook these trips, both artists had a profound effect on his art. Much of Manetti's output from the 1620s onwards is characterised by a greater naturalism and the chiaroscuro lighting which typifies what we define as the 'caravaggesque school'.

One cannot help but compare this Supper at Emmaus with Caravaggio's own treatment of the subject in the National Gallery, London. Painted in 1601, Caravaggio's powerful and innovative work must have been known to Manetti for his figures are arranged in a similar manner: Christ is placed centrally, with the pilgrims seated either side of Him, and the dimly-lit interior imbued with a supernatural light. The bread and wine, so emphatically placed in Christ's hand and in the small glass cup on the white tablecloth, are clear allusions to the Eucharist, thus representing Christ's body and blood.

The sharp use of chiaroscuro characterises many of Manetti's late works, as does his interest in still life elements: compare, for example, his Temptation of Saint Anthony in the Church of Sant'Agostino, Siena, where the pose and illumination of Anthony's raised right hand is almost identical to that of Christ here.¹  The naturalism and characterisation of the two pilgrims find parallels in other late works by Manetti, namely the Blind beggar in the Chigi Saraceni collection and the large Parable of the blind leading the blind in a private collection.²  The realism in all these works prefigures that of the Spanish painters Diego Velázquez and Francisco de Zurbarán: one is particularly reminded of the latter in the remarkable still life elements present in the Supper at Emmaus.

We are grateful to Prof. Alessandro Bagnoli for endorsing the attribution to Rutilio Manetti on the basis of photographs.

1.  See A. Bagnoli, Rutilio Manetti 1571-1639, exhibition catalogue, Siena, Palazzo Pubblico, 15 June - 15 October 1978, pp. 128-29, cat. no. 63, reproduced. Here Bagnoli notes that Manetti repeats the same hand in his painting of God the Father in Forlì, San Mercuriale.
2.  See Bagnoli, op. cit., pp. 129-130, cat. nos. 63 and 64, both reproduced.