Pauwels Franck, called Paolo Fiammingo

Sala dell'estate, Fondaco dei Tedeschi, Venice, from 1580;
Conte Teodoro Lechi (1778-1866), Brescia, by whom acquired during the Napoleonic occupation (1805-1814);
Given to an anonymous Ferrarese collector, before 1824, in exchange for a painting of Saint Agnes (as attributed to Domenichino);
Private collection, Germany.

 

 

M. Boschini, Le Minere della Pittura, Venice 1664, p.142, as by a scholar of Giovanni Contarini;
Indice e descrizione dei quadri del sig. Generale conte Teodoro Lechi di Brescia esistenti nella sua casa in Milano, Milan 1814, no. 73, as by Giovanni Contarini (see F. Lechi (ed.), I quadri della collezione Lechi in Brescia. Storia e documenti, Florence 1968, p. 171, no. 40, with comment);
To be included in the forthcoming article by A.J. Martin, 'I rapporti con i Paesi Bassi e la Germania. Artisti, agenti e commercianti, collezionisti', in Il collezionismo a Venezia: Il Cinquecento, ed. S. Mason, M. Hochmann, and R. Lauber, Venice 2008, reproduced in colour, as by Pauwels Franck, called Paolo Fiammingo.

The actual painting is a little darker and less red in tone than the catalogue illustration suggests. The canvas has an old relining. The horizontal seam, which has been somewhat crudely retouched, can be seen running through the centre, as is clearly visible in the catalogue illustration. There is a small spot of paint loss in the centre along the right edge, and a few tiny flecks of paint loss in the centre and along the lower left edge. Repaired and retouched damages can be observed in the frieze upper centre, and along the seem to the left and right edges. A few small retouchings, probably relating to older paint losses, can be observed throughout, e.g. in the clouds lower left, in the drapery and figure lower right, and in the clouds lower right. There is a thin horizontal surface scratch of approx. 10 cm. along the left edge above the seem, and two smaller, vertical ones of approx. 3 cm. in the upper centre. Otherwise, the paint surface seems to be in very good condition. The paint surface is under a dirty and discoloured layer of varnish, and there's some surface dirt. Inspection under ultra violet light is partially impeded by the dirty varnish layer, but does confirm the retouchings as mentioned above, and reveals additional retouchings along the lower and left edges, as well as some minor strengthening in the chin and feet of the female figure. Offered in a decorative carved wood and plaster gilt frame, with a few chips. (MW)
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

This attractive, only recently discovered painting shows five mythological figures and part of the zodiac (Gemini and Virgo) in the clouds, with a view of a landscape beyond in the distance. The composition, the details and the rendering of the figures, the landscape's features and the technique are all typical of Pauwels Franck, called Paolo Fiammingo, documented as Master in his native Antwerp in 1561 and in Venice from 1573 until his death in 1596.¹ Fiammingo often showed several faces in lost or nearly lost profile in one picture, such as The Triumph of the Sea, sold, New York, Sotheby's, 25 May 2000, lot 57.  The wings of Cupid in Punishment of Love in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (inv. no. 2363) take the same characteristic shape. A similarly naked Mercury, the similar position of the Virtue's head and the same type of clouds can be found in the Trade / Mercury, exhibited in the Munich Residence (see fig. 1). The Munich picture formed part of a series of the Planets, executed for the merchant Hans Fugger in circa 1591/92 for his castle in Kirchheim, near Augsburg.² But in contrast to the little figures resting on clouds in the Fugger picture, in the present work we are confronted with monumental figures full of energy and movement. The group of Virtue and her supporters Mercury and Cupid is also strongly reminiscent of the flying figures in the works of Jacopo Tintoretto, who was very influential on Paolo Fiammingo, notably his Origin of the Milky Way, in the National Gallery, London (inv. no. NG1313), painted around 1580 for the Emperor Rudolph II.³ 


The Ascension of Virtue is one of the few surviving works from a pictorial decoration, once in the German Warehouse in Venice, the famous Fondaco dei Tedeschi. Together with canvases by Paolo Veronese, Jacopo Tintoretto and Jacopo Palma il Giovane, Fiammingo's painting formed a cycle, that from 1580 on hung in the Sala dell'estate, a representative corner room on the first floor facing the Canal Grande and the Rialto Bridge. The room, illuminated by windows on two sides and with a central column is on a nearly quadratic ground-plan, measuring about 100 square metres. The ceiling once was decorated by a soffitto with 48 inlaid paintings depicting virtues, gods and idols by Battista Franco and Alvise Donato. Of these works, finished in 1556/57, only six have survived,  all now in the Museo Correr in Venice.⁴ The lower section of the walls was covered with gilded leather tapestries with little mythological paintings, according to Carlo Ridolfi and later authors by Paolo Veronese and his brother Benedetto.⁵

But the real sensation of the Sala dell'estate  was a cycle of  seven large canvas paintings on the upper section of the four walls - perhaps hung a slight angle - showing ancient gods and the planets with the twelve signs of the zodiac referring to them. In 1664 Marco Boschini described this cycle, then already mixed with two other paintings:

Inside that warehouse, in the room where the Germans eat during summer, are many exceptional paintings [...]. In the upper freeze there are several pictures. In particular, having entered the hall, on the left side there are two paintings by the same author [Paolo Veronese]; they show various gods and in their middle there is a painting of Christ our Saviour, from the hand of Titian. Further, on the wall versus the Rialto Bridge two other pictures with other gods from the same Paolo [Veronese] can be seen. On the wall versus the Grand Canal there is a picture by [Jacopo] Palma [il Giovane], with Venus on the chariot, pulled by doves, with other nude women. The pendant shows Mercury, who supports Virtue in the air, and underneath Envy, who is eaten up with anger, a work by the school of Giovanni Contarini. Further there is the wall facing the one versus the Rialto Bridge where you see Cynthia on her chariot, followed by the Hours:  that is one of the exceptional works of the great [Jacopo] Tintoretto. Another painting is to be seen near to that one, with a nude woman at a fountain, and another one with a vase on her head, in the manner of and by the school of [Giovanni] Contarini.⁶

Boschini obviously had difficulties in naming an author for the Ascension of Virtue and it seems that nobody in the Fondaco could give him precise information about this picture and the one with "a nude woman at a fountain". Therefore it may have been the writer himself  who noticed some similarities with paintings attributed to Giovanni Contarini, an artist who had worked for Rudolph II in Prague.⁷

The Ascension of Virtue probably entered the Lechi collection in 1805 or shortly afterwards, during the second phase of  the French occupation of Venice. Apart from Boschini's untenable attribution to Contarini,  the entry in the first catalogue of the Lechi collection (1814) gives a detailed description that leaves no doubt about the identification with Paolo Fiammingo's painting:

The nude Virtue  [...] is carried to heaven by Mercury who seems to swim in the air. Virtue looks up to a Genius wearing a garland of  laurels who is about to put a crown on her head. Cupid accompanies her. And down there Envy tries in vain to grab her feet to throw her into the abyss. A long passage of clouds leaves an opening through which one observes houses and mountains.

The Conte Teodoro Lechi (1778-1866), a General in the army of Napoleon and close friend of Eugène de Beauharnais, the Viceroy of Italy, had bought all the wall paintings from the Sala dell'estate (except the Redeemer, a work by Titian's workshop, which is preserved in the German Protestant Church in Venice) and included them in his collection. Like The Ascension of Virtue, its pendant Venus and the Graces by Palma il Giovane was given away before the catalogue from 1824 was written. The Lechi catalogue from 1814 gives the same measurements for both of them ("piedi 4, pollici 6 x piedi 5, pollici 6") and we may assume for reasons of symmetry that Palma's lost Venus picture showed its part of the zodiac on the left  side. The remaining five paintings of the cycle of the planets were bought in 1842 by Gustav Friedrich Waagen for the Berlin Museum but were burnt only a few days after the end of the war in Europe in May 1945 in a bunker in Berlin-Friedrichshain.⁸ These compositions are however documented through black and white photographs. The four paintings by Veronese were obviously planned as pendants for another two walls of the room: Saturn, Religion and Heresy (?) (144 by 242 cm., see fig. 2) and Jove, Fortune and Germany (?) (145 by 245 cm., see fig. 3); Mars and Minerva (144 by 146 cm., see fig. 4) and Juno and Apollo (147 by 135 cm., see fig. 5). The last painting, Luna and the Hours (148 by 253 cm., see fig. 6) by Jacopo Tintoretto, shows its part of the zodiac with Cancer over the figures. This must originally have hung alone, perhaps already on the entrance wall, where Boschini still saw it, but in its centre.

On 26 February 1580 it had been decided to renovate and redecorate the Sala dell'estate.⁹ We may assume that the large canvases were begun and completed in the same year or soon afterwards. Like Tintoretto, Veronese and Palma il Giovane, Paolo Fiammingo had also participated in the new pictorial decoration of the Sala del Maggior Consiglio of the Ducal Palace executed at nearly the same time as the cycle for the Sala dell'estate in the German warehouse.¹⁰ The painter's figure of Mercury could have been interpreted as protector of the commercial relations between Venice and Germany and the effectual composition might have attracted the attention of Hieronymus and Cristoph Ott, wealthy merchants from a family of German origin that watched the Venetian art market for several business partners.¹¹ The two brothers had just taken responsibility for the family's enterprise after the death of their father David in 1579, who in his function as one of the two consuls of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi might have been responsible for the preliminary decisions concerning the redecoration of the Sala delle pitture. As the commission was a great honour and carried with it the opportunity to meet German patrons, Paolo Fiammingo would have delivered his painting as soon as possible.  Therefore it may be no mere coincidence that from July 1580 on, the painter, with the help of the Otts, received various commissions from Hans Fugger, who would then become his most important patron. 

We are indebted to Dr. Andrew John Martin for the cataloguing of this lot.

1. For his life and work see S. Mason Rinaldi, 'Paolo Fiammingo', in Saggi e memorie di Storia dell'Arte, vol. XI, 1978, pp. 46-80 and 163-188; A.J. Martin, 'Franck, Pauwels', in Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon, vol. XLIII, Munich/Leipzig 2004, pp. 455-7.
2. S. Mason Rinaldi, 'Un nuovo ciclo di Paolo Fiammingo', in Arte Veneta, vol. XXII, 1968, pp. 72-9.
3. For the reconstruction of Tintoretto's cut composition see J. Dunkerton, S. Foister and Nicholas Penny, Dürer to Veronese. Sixteenth-century painting in the National Gallery, London, New Haven/Conn. and London 1999, pp. 104-6.
4. W.R. Rearick,  'Battista Franco and the Grimani Chapel', in Saggi e memorie di Storia dell'Arte, vol. II, 1958-9, pp. 105-39, there 118-9 and 120, fig. 8.
5. C. Ridolfi, Le Meraviglie dell'arte ovvero le vite degli illustri pittori veneti e dello stato [Venice 1648], D. von Hadeln (ed.), Berlin 1914-1924, vol. I, p. 357.
6. See Boschini under Literature, pp. 141-3.
7. For the artist see A. Bristot, 'Un artista nella Venezia del secondo Cinquecento: Giovanni Contarini', in Saggi e memorie di Storia dell'arte, vol.XII, 1980, pp. 31-77. The influence of Paolo Fiammingo on Contarini is discussed by A.J. Martin, 'Augsburg, Prague and Venice at the End of the Century', in Renaissance Venice and the North. Crosscurrents in the Time of Bellini, Dürer, and Titian, exhibition catalogue, Venice, Palazzo Grassi, 5 September 1999 - 9 January 2000, B. Aikema and B.L. Brown (eds), Milan 1999, pp. 614-59, there pp. 630-1, cat. no. 196. - If the last painting described by Boschini was really similar in style to The Ascension of Virtue also that might have been a work by Paolo Fiammingo.
8. For Waagen's correspondence see Lechi under Literature, pp. 112-4.
9. B. Milesio, 'Fabrica del Palazzo del Fontico de' Tedeschi e sua prima origine in Venezia dell' Illustrissima Nazione Alemana' (manuscript, 1715/18-1724), in G.M. Thomas (ed.), G.B. Milesio's Beschreibung des Deutschen Hauses in Venedig. Aus einer Handschrift in Venedig, (Abhandlungen der königlich bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, I. class, vol. XVI/2), Munich 1881, p. 42.
10. See Mason Rinaldi, 1978, op. cit., p. 68, cat. no. 35.
11. See A.J. Martin, 'Quellen zum Kunsthandel um 1550-1600. Die Firma Ott in Venedig', in  Kunstchronik, vol. XLVIII, 1995, pp. 535-9.