Jacopo Amigoni

Possibly Charles Bennett, 2nd Earl of Tankerville, St. James's Square, London, circa 1730-52;
Dr. Ephram I. Schapiro, by 1951;
His deceased sale, London, Christie's, 30 March 1979, lot 13;
Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 14 December 1990, lot 29;
There purchased by the present owner.

London, Whitechapel Art Gallery; Birmingham, Museum and Art Gallery, 3 January-18 April 1951, Eighteenth Century Venice, no. 1;
Kingston upon Hull, Ferens Art Gallery, Venetian Baroque and Rococo Painting, 28 October-2 December 1967.

F.J.B. Watson, Eighteenth Century Venice, exhibition catalogue, London 1951, cat. no. 1;
E. Martini, La Pittura del Settecento Veneto, 1982, p. 484, reproduced, fig. 435;
L. Griffin Hennessey, "Jacopo Amigoni (c. 1685-1752): An Artistic Biography with a Catalogue of his Venetian Paintings", Ph.D. thesis (University of Kansas), 1983, pp. 33, 51, n.2.

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. The paint layer is slightly thin, but nonetheless if the restoration were slightly more carefully applied it would be very effective. The more notable condition issue is the lack of articulation to the prow of the boat and the figures within the boat. There are spots of restoration here and there in the sky, a handful of very small structural damages and some dots addressing thinness in the darker colors, particularly. In the right side of Helen's neck there is a c-shaped loss entering her ear and jaw. In her pink dress there is a fair amount of retouching. Within the remainder of the primary figural group and the foreground there are certainly losses and restorations and as far as they go, they are successful. A second campaign of retouches designed to further diminish some of the abrasion is recommended.
"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."

Jacopo Amigoni had spent his early career in Venice, but following the example of older Venetian painters such as Gian Antonio Pellegrini, he left the city to make a name for himself as an international artist, quickly finding an avid audience in the various courts of Europe which had developed a taste for the charm of the Venetian Rococo.  In 1730, Amigoni arrived in London fresh from a series of pictorial triumphs in Venice, Rome and at the court of the Elector of Bavaria, and soon had eager patrons amongst the English nobility and even royalty.¹  Although he appears to have been chiefly occupied with portrait commissions, his mythological paintings, such as the present picture, are amongst his most admired work from this period.  Of the few decorative pieces in this genre he executed whilst in England most are still in situ in the houses for which they were commissioned.  Perhaps the most notable example of this is the series of four canvases depicting episodes from the story of Jupiter and Io commissioned by Benjamin Hoskins Styles for his house Moor Park in Hertfordshire.²  Further extant examples from this period which have since left England include the magnificent pair of pictures, Venus and Adonis (Private Collection) and Flora and Zephyr (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, acc. no. 1985.5).

The present work appears to be the canvas which Watson describes(see Literature) as the only surviving canvas from the decorative cycle for the home of George Bennett, 2nd Earl of Tankerville. Amigoni's commission for Bennett's home in St. James Square was one of his first upon arriving in London. The entire cycle was completed with the collaboration of Gaetano Brunetti (who was responsible for painted architectural elements, trophies and festoons) on 2 March 1731, though the house was destroyed circa 1752. The majority of the comissioned works consisted of frescoed scenes related to the Trojan War, which George Vertue described as "esteemd one of the best & greatest performances of the works of Amiconi".³  Though there is no mention of an Embarkation of Helen of Troy by Vertue, according to Watson, Amigoni also executed a few works on canvas which were set into panelling of the walls, and thus may have escaped destruction when the home was torn down in 1752. Furthermore, its size relative to the aforementioned works from this period, as well as its stylistic approach corroborate a dating firmly within Amigoni's English period.

We are grateful to Annalisa Scarpa Sonino for supporting the attribution to Amigoni, based on photographs. Dott. Scarpa also supports a dating to Amigoni's early English period.

1.  See for example his portraits of Frederick, Prince of Wales in the National Gallery, London and of Queen Caroline in the National Portrait Gallery, London in A. Scarpa Sonino, Jacopo Amigoni, Soncino 1994, pp. 33-34, reproduced.
2.  See J.B. Shipley, 'Ralph, Ellys, Hogarth, and Fielding: The Cabal Against Jacopo Amigoni' in Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. I, 1968, pp. 321-4, reproduced figs. 1-4.
3. Vertue Note Books III, The Walpole Society, vol. XXII, 1933-4, pp. 45, 49, 51, 61, 72 and 162).