Marco Ricci

Oil on canvas

W.A. Holliday, London;
Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, 25th November 1970, lot 59 (with pendant), £4,000 to Patch;
Anonymous sale, Milan, Finarte, 6th May 1971, lot 36, when acquired.

E. Croft Murray and A. Blunt, Venetian Drawings of the XVII and XVIIIth Centuries in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, London, 1957, pp. 142-44, figs. 7 and 8;
E.W. White, 'The rehearsal of an opera', in Theatre Notebook, xiv, 1960, p. 79;
G.M. Pilo, catalogue of the exhibition, Marco Ricci, Venice, 1963, pp. 44-47.
A. Scarpa Sonino, Marco Ricci, Milan, 1991, pp. 128-9, nos. 67 and 68, reproduced fig. 70;

The canvas has been relined. The painting itself is now dirty and the varnish discoloured. Overall the paint surface is in very good condition. Inspection under ultra-violet light reveals only limited local retouchings to minor details of costume and setting, for example to the dress of the singer wearing black, the robes of the priest on the extreme left and the hats of the gentlemen next to him. These old retouchings have now lightly discoloured but are not obtrusive to the naked eye. This lot is offered with a plain giltwood frame in good condition.
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This painting originally formed part of a series of some ten musical pieces or opera rehearsals which were painted by Marco Ricci in the years immediately following his arrival in England in 1708 in the train of the 1st Duke of Manchester. Ricci's particular interest in opera found form in a series of famous musical pieces, depicting real or imagined chamber concerts or opera rehearsals, which were most probably painted  while he was in London between 1708 and 1711. Another, much larger (53cm by 102cm) version of this composition is recorded by Scarpa Sonino as formerly in the collection of the Marchese Tempi in the Villa Tempi in Montemurlo (Prato), and now in a Florentine private collection.¹  Another version, very slightly larger in size (49.3 by 62.8 cm.) was formerly in the collection of Mrs. Leonard Messel in England and is now in the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven.²  The design and also the English provenances for two of the versions of this composition would certainly seem to support the assumption that they originally may have formed part of this group of works painted in London, although Scarpa Sonino draws attention to the long standing Florentine provenance for the Tempi version as possibly indicative of an Italian rather than English origin. These musical conversation pieces contain a strong element of caricature, and in at least two instances can be shown to depict actual characters from the period. The scene is clearly closely related, for example, to Ricci's depiction of rehearsals for Alessandro Scarlatti's opera Pirro e Demetrio, arranged by Nicolas Haym for a performance in the Queen's theatre Haymarket, London, in April 1709, for which he had helped design and paint the sets. Although known in several related versions (undoubtedly painted for the various members of the cast), much the best known of these is that formerly in the collection of Horace Walpole and sold in these Rooms 13 December 2001, lot 73 (fig.1).³ Certainly the female singer dressed in black in this picture bears a resemblance to  the English soprano Catherine Tofts (c.1685-1756), who took the role of Climene, and who is depicted in the ex-Walpole picture. The costumes are, however, a little more Italian in character, and perhaps more closely reflect Ricci's circle of Italian friends in the London theatrical world, or a commission from one of their number. The background arrangement of a large landscape, no doubt by Ricci, flanked by  a pair of oval portraits, flower pieces or other landscapes as here, is, however, consistent throughout the group and suggestive of a common origin. Although some of the characters portrayed in the present work are clearly intended as likenesses, even if in a caricatural sense, their identities remain unknown. Old labels on the reverse of the larger version formerly in the Villa Tempi suggest that some of the characters portrayed are members of the Tempi family - that holding the ventaglio  in his hand, for example being Benedetto Tempi - but the family are not known as patrons or musical enthusiasts. It may be that Ricci did not intend his characters to be specific likenesses but rather caricature 'types', perhaps representing a musical gathering in a rich man's house, as opposed to the rather more humble concert shown in this picture's erstwhile companion work (see lot 75), but whether the two paintings ever had such an explict relationship is unknown.

 

1. Scarpa Sonino, op. cit., p. 123, no. 39, reproduced fig. 69
2. Ibid., p. 129, no. 70.
3. Other variants are to be found, for example, at Castle Howard, the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven and in private collections, for which see A. Delneri, 'Il soggiorno inglese', in the catalogue of the exhibition, Marco Ricci e il paesaggio veneto del Settecento, Belluno, Palazzo Crepadona, 1993, p. 102-3, figs. 3-6 and p. 190, cat. no. 9, all reproduced.