Giulio Rosati

Sale: Christie's, London, March 30, 1990, lot 447, illustrated
Mathaf Gallery, London
Private Collection (acquired from the above and sold: Christie's, New York, October 27, 2004, lot 55, illustrated)
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This painting has been lined using waxing and adhesive. The paint layer is stable and has been cleaned and varnished. In its current frame it could be hung as is. A few tiny retouches are visible under ultraviolet light beneath the right arm of the dancer, yet almost all of the remainder of the picture is in beautiful and undamaged and un-retouched condition.
"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."

The geographical wanderings of Giulio Rosati - purely metaphoric, as he never ventured far - are evident throughout this painting, one of the finest in his oeuvre. Cream-colored burnouses, worn by several of the seated Arab figures, suggest a North African setting, while a sixteenth-century "double-ended" Ushak carpet, underneath the dancer's feet, once had Turkey for a home. (This style of carpet, imported into Europe since the fifteenth century, was also called a "Holbein carpet," due to its prevalence in that artist's paintings.)  Conversely, carved plasterwork and a scalloped arch seem vaguely Moorish in design.  In the hands of a lesser artist, such disparity of place would cause chaos and confusion; in Rosati's, it compels an interactive game. 

Ensconced in his fashionably located studio in Rome, Rosati consulted photographs, prints, and others' souvenirs to create collage-like images of a fantastic Middle Eastern world. While it is not known which specific sources informed the present work, credible comparisons can be made.  A well-known engraving by Edward William Lane (1801-1876), for example, bears a marked resemblance to Rosati's dancing girl, in posture if not in dress (fig. 1).  Similarly, the row of Arab figures in the background, seated against a blue-and-white tiled wall, seems a distant echo of Jean-Léon Gérôme's trademark style (see, for example, Le Barde Noir, lot 168).   Piece by piece, Rosati's composition can be thus deciphered.  In turn, his world - where he looked, what he owned, who he borrowed from – can be put together.

The symmetries between Rosati's pictures and others of their day support, rather than overwhelm, the narratives at hand.  Indeed, there is always in Rosati's art that element of originality, or moment of surprise, that is uniquely the artist's own.  In The Dance, those moments are many.  There is the curious disinterest of the seated Arab men; not even the strength of black tea, it seems, can raise their nodding heads.  There is the unexpected presence of a spellbound child, lost in the percussive sounds of drums and castanets, and a little silk purse, lying crumpled on the floor.  Such details are novel additions to an all-too-common theme. (By the close of the nineteenth century, nearly every Orientalist painter had added a dancing girl to his repertoire of subjects.)  Both prosaic and provocative, they lift The Dance from a clever copy to something with which no photograph, engraving, or other studied source could effectively compare. 

This catalogue note was written by Dr. Emily M. Weeks.