CARLO FRANCESCO NUVOLONE | THE DEATH OF DIDO, QUEEN OF CARTHAGE

Anonymous sale, Monaco, Sotheby's, 17 June 1988, lot 828;

Anonymous sale, New York, 5 April 1990, lot 273;

With Galerie Alain Tarica, Paris;

Where acquired by Yves-Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé, Paris, 1999;

Their sale, Paris, Christie's, 23-25 February 2009, lot 74;

Anonymous sale ("Property from a Private Collection"), London, 8 December 2010, lot 210;

There acquired by David Benrimon, New York;

By whom sold in 2011 to a private collection, Texas, until 2018.

F.M. Ferro, I Nuvolone: una famiglia di pittori nella Milano del '600, Soncino 2003, pp. 190-91, cat. no. cf 87, reproduced, p. 357, no. 39b;

F.M. Ferro, "Carlo Francesco Nuvolone e la ferita d’amore,” in Studi di Storia dell'arte, Cinisello Balsamo 1994, p. 200, no. 3.

Carlo Francesco Nuvolone painted on several occasions this subject from Virgil’s Aeneid IV. Although Filippo Maria Ferro does not propose a date of execution for these works, he notes that the success of Francesco Cavalli’s 1640 opera, La Didone, may have influenced Nuvolone (see Literature). It is then likely that this work was painted between 1640 and 1660.