Luca Giordano, called Fa Presto

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. This painting was lined with a wax-like adhesive in the 1980s. However, it seems that the lining was the extent of the restoration, and the work was not cleaned or restored in any other way. The paint layer is very dirty, but the condition is probably very good beneath the heavy layer of dirt and dull varnish. It is painted on quite a heavy weave canvas, which shows a few lumps and bumps here and there, but there is no abrasion to the paint layer. The only visible damages are a small unrestored break in the knees of one of the child dragging his birdcage and another small repaired cut in the upper right. The upper left edge and upper right edge are uneven and slightly damaged, and will require attention. However, the condition is very good.
"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 Rest on the Flight into Egypt is a theme revisited by Giordano repeatedly during his expansive career, each version differing from the last both compositionally and stylistically, according to the demands of the patron.  Before his time in Spain, Giordano's style had a distinctly classical inclination, displayed in the present work through his slight idealisation of the figures and their placement in natural surroundings with the Roman landscape beyond.

In the numerous treatments of this subject, such as that in the Chiesa di Santa Caterina d'Alessandria, Gaeta, and another in a Lecce private collection, both dated circa 1680, Giordano populates the canvas with putti, often carrying baskets of flowers.¹  The particularly charming motif of putti weaving birdcages seen in the present picture, however, is unique in his oeuvre and is perhaps best compared to that of the putti, overseen by the infant Christ and Madonna, playfully working in Giordano's Workshop of St. Joseph, in the Canessa collection, Milan, dated 1686.²

We are grateful to Prof. Giuseppe Scavizzi and Prof. Nicola Spinosa for endorsing an attribution to Giordano on the basis of photographs.  Both Scavizzi and Spinosa affirm that the high quality of this previously unknown Neapolitan painting justifies an attribution to Luca Giordano.  While Scavizzi dates the work  to circa 1680, Spinosa places it slightly later, between the artist's return from Florence in 1685 and no later than his departure in 1692 for a ten-year sojourn in Spain.  

1.  See O. Ferrari & G. Scavizzi, Luca Giordano, L'Opera Completa, vol. I and II, Naples 1992, cat. no.  279, reproduced fig. 386, and cat. no. 280, reproduced fig. 389 respectively.
2.  Ferrari & Scavizzi, op. cit., cat. no.  A411, reproduced fig. 540.