A pair of Italian reverse painted glass pictures, one signed 'GT', Neapolitan, late 17th century,

depicting Hercules and Omphale and Aurora and Cephalus, in ebony moulded frames

Alvar González-Palacios, Il Tempio del Gusto, Roma e Il Regno delle Due Sicilie, Milano, 1984, vol. I pp. 230-232, vol. II, ill. pl.409,410.

In overall good condition. Good colour match with photograph. There are some very minor losses and speckling to painting on glass panels which are visible in the catalogue photograph especially to the horse in the lower panel and beautifully painted. Old very minor marks, chips and scratches and hairline cracks to frames.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Reverse paintings on glass with mythological, allegorical or biblical subjects are often associated with the name of the Neapolitan painter Luca Giordano (1634-1705). Although he certainly refined the technique of reverse painting on glass and he passed it on to several pupils, it is likely that this local tradition of painting started much earlier in the 17^th century.  These fragile works painted with skilled technique were always prized by the Italian and Spanish aristocracy in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, and as early as 1685 the royal Alcázar of Madrid is recorded as having glass paintings by Giordano in its inventories.

Glass paintings were often of small scale and mounted on cabinets and therefore the present lot, with its scale and fine condition, is a rare survival. Signed paintings are even rarer and although the identity of the monogramist GT remains unknown, further documentary information might come to light in the future.

Alvar González-Palacios illustrates the present lot in Il Tempio del Gusto pl. 409-410, and mentions that they should have been done by a painter in the circle of Luca Giordano, as the panels loosely use elements related to this painter’s work. The first panel with Hercules and Omphale, use elements employed in Giordano’s Mars and Venus at the Museo di Capodimonte, and also the amorino is similar to the one in the painting with the same subject in the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida. The panel with Aurora and Cephalus vaguely blends the figure of Vulcano in the same painter’s Venus and Mars at the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna and the Rinaldo and Armida in Musée de Lyon.

A set of four signed reverse paintings by a pupil of Giordano, and court painter to the King of Spain Carlos II, Carlo Garofalo (active from 1692-d.1705) sold Sotheby’s London, 10^th June 1999, lot 62, £100,500).