Pietro della Vecchia

Eduard Safarik Collection;
Acquired by the present owner in September 2002.

Salzburg, The Melancholy of Venice. 17th-century paintings from the Luigi Koelliker collection, Milan, previously the Eduard Safarik collection, 21 November 2003 - 1 February 2004, cat. no. 28, pp. 135-138.

B. Aikema,  Pietro della Vecchia and the heritage of the Renaissance in Venice, Florence 1990, p. 133, cat. no. 135, reproduced plate 72 ; B. Aikema, Pietro della Vecchia and the heritage of the Renaissance in Venice, 1984, p. 95, cat. no. 199, reproduced plate 61;
E.A. Safarik, The Melancholy of Venice. 17th-century paintings from the Luigi Koelliker collection, Milan, previously the Eduard Safarik collection, Salzburg 2003, pp. 135-138, cat. no. 28.

"The following condition report has been provided by Henry Gentle, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. The canvas is unlined but has been impregnated in order to reinforce it and has had canvas strips added to strengthen the tacking edge. The horizontal canvas seam at the bottom of the picture has been reinforced as have some minor damages. The paint layer is secure and flat and the impasto is well preserved. The paint to the drapery of Semele is thin but un-restored and minor paint losses can be detected here and there; otherwise , in a good original condition with a slight discoloured varnish covering the surface. Offered in a gilt wood frame in good 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."

Pietro della Vecchia, long and erroneously called Pietro Muttoni, was the son of Gasparo, a minor painter registered with the Guild in Venice, with whom Pietro almost certainly started his initial training, before (probably) studying with Carlo Saraceni or Jean Leclerc. It was however Alessandro Varotari, called Il Padovanino (1580-1648), in whose studio he is thought to have worked circa 1625, who was to provide the most long lasting influence on Pietro. Padovanino, whose style was so rooted in the early cinquecento, would have instilled in the young artist a reverence for the past Venetian masters. Indeed he and his father-in-law, the famous Caravaggesque painter Nicolas Regnier (1591-1667), were soon to be considered the leading connoisseurs of Old Master paintings in Venice and were frequently courted by collectors and agents such as Paolo del Sera working on behalf of Leopold de'Medici.

A common misconception has long held Della Vecchia's style as purely retrospective; it should however be seen as a synthesis of the traditional Venetian style dating back to Titian, and the rigourous baroque style that arrived in Venice through Jan Liss, Bernardo Strozzi and, in particular, Domenico Fetti. Della Vecchia was at the very centre of the Venetian art world and would have been familiar with the works of the other two leading native artists in Venice at the time, Pietro Liberi and Francesco Maffei. Often motifs were interchanged between the three artists, and indeed an interesting comparision can be drawn between the present picture and a handful of works by Pietro Liberi, particularly his Urania in the Pushkin Museum and the Rape of Lucretia listed by Ruggieri as in a private collection, which were executed at a similar date.¹

Aikema dates this painting to circa 1660-70, and speculates that the picture was originally part of the 'portego' in a Venetian Palazzo. He compares it on stylistic grounds to the series of seven canvases painted for the Monasterio di Gesuiti, Venice, which were executed between 1664-74 and which were considered the masterpieces of his mature period.²  Only two of the seven are thought to have survived: the Conversion of Francesco Borgia, Musée Muncipàl, Brest, and the Marco Gussoni S.J. in Ferrara during the Plague of 1630, listed by Aikema as location unknown.³

 

1.  U. Ruggeri, Marco e Pietro Liberi, Rimini 1996, p. 154-5, cat. nos. P91 and P89, both reproduced.
2.  B. Aikema, under Literature, Florence 1990, p. 31-2. 
3.  B. Aikema, op. cit., p. 133, cat. 10, reproduced fig. 69.