Lot 162
  • 162

Johannes Lingelbach

Estimate
40,000 - 60,000 USD
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Description

  • Johannes Lingelbach
  • A Mediterranean port with an elegant couple, travelers and merchants resting by the quay
  • signed and dated lower right: I:LINGELBACH / 1665
  • oil on canvas

Provenance

Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, 5 April 1995, lot 91;
With Frye & Sohn, Münster, by 2001;
With Robert Noortman, Maastricht, 2001.
From whom acquired by the present collector. 

Condition

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 work has been restored and could be hung in its current state. It does not seem to be dirty. Under ultraviolet light, one can see concise and careful retouches in the darker colors of the foreground addressing small losses. The condition is good in the middle distance of the picture, showing only a few retouches in the bridge on the far left and in the stern of the boat in the harbor. The sky shows retouches in the upper left and lower right.
"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

Johannes Lingelbach was born in Frankfurt-am-Main and settled in Amsterdam with his family by 1634.  Following in the footsteps of other Dutch Italianate painters, he spent a lengthy sojourn in Italy, recorded by 1644 in Rome, where he lived in the Strada Paolina delli Greci and later in the Horto di Napoli.  Here, he joined a community of Northern artists and was exposed to the bamboccianti scenes first made popular by the Dutch artist Pieter van Laer, who had left Italy a few years earlier.  Upon returning to Amsterdam around 1653, his Italianate paintings were warmly welcomed by Dutch connoisseurs, and his prolific output remained distinctly Italianate throughout the remainder of his career. 

During the 1660s, Lingelbach produced a number of port scenes, including the present work, which is dated 1665.  In this painting, as with many others of the period, a cool grey tonality defines a tranquil and hazy horizon.  The bustling foreground is filled with merchants, sailors, a Turk wearing a turban, and an aristocratic family at the left, while the background is shaped by a rocky precipice, various stone structures, and ships.  The cylindrical tower, which appears in a number of his paintings from the period, is reminiscent of the tower of the Fortezza Vecchia, a sixteenth century fortress that still stands in Livorno today.  Additionally, the fountain with the boy seated on a goose appears in Lingelbach’s 1661 painting of Livorno, now in a private collection.

1.  See L. Harwood, Inspired by Italy: Dutch landscape painting 1600-1700, London 2002, pp. 184-185, cat. no. 49, reproduced.