Lot 330
  • 330

Andrea Locatelli

Estimate
25,000 - 35,000 GBP
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Description

  • Andrea Locatelli
  • A landscape with peasants dancing and merrymaking
  • signed with monogram lower left on a rock: AL
  • oil on canvas

Provenance

Collection of Cardinal Valenti Gonzaga (1690-1756);
With Faustus Galleries, London, 1976;
Where purchased by the present owner.

Condition

"The following condition report has been provided by Henry Gentle, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. The original canvas is lined and the paint layer is raised but stable. A scattering of retouchings can be seen in the sky above the horizon, to the foliage, to parts of the thinly painted foreground and to some of the shadows. In some areas the paint surface has broken up leading to a loss of definition and subsequent strengthening. The majority of the painting is in an untouched condition. The varnish is slightly discoloured. Offered in a carved 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."

Catalogue Note

This is a particularly good example of the limited number of genre scenes of peasants dancing and feasting that Locatelli painted alongside his more famous idealised landscapes of the Roman Campagna. Another similar scene depicting a dancing couple watched by musicians and other figures is in the Galleria Pallavicini in Rome1. In works such as these Locatelli gave a fresh eighteenth century idiom to the works painted the previous century in Rome by the Bamboccianti such as Johannes Lingelbach and Jan Miel. Though very few of Locatelli's works are signed and even fewer dated, their dates range from a pair from 1723, formerly in the British Rail Pension Fund and sold in These Rooms 3 July 1996, lot 77, to another pair of very late ovals of 1741 in the National Gallery in Prague2.  Inscriptions on the reverse of the ex British Rail pair record that, like the present work, they too belonged to the eminent collector Cardinal Silvio Valenti Gonzaga (1690-1756) in Rome.

 

 

 

1. Reproduced in A. Busiri Vici, Andrea Locatelli, Rome 1976, cat. no. 244.
2. Busiri Vici, op. cit., , pp. 158-59, cat. nos. 252 and 253, reproduced in colour.