BERNARDINO CESARI | PERSEUS AND ANDROMEDA

Charles Robert Beauclerk, London;

By whose Estate sold, London, Christie's, 10 June 1872, lot 23 (as J. Arpino), to Conway;

M.D. Conway;

Eustace Conway, Allington Castle, near Maidstone, Kent;

By whom given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1928 (Inv. no. 28.181).

A. McComb, The Baroque Painters of Italy: An Introductory Historical Survey, Cambridge, MA 1934, p. 123 (as Giuseppe Cesari);

H.B. Wehle, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, A Catalogue of the Italian, Spanish and Byzantine Paintings, New York 1940, p. 255, reproduced (as Giuseppe Cesari);

W.E. Suida, A Catalogue of Paintings in the John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota 1949, p. 97, under cat. no. 108 (as Giuseppe Cesari);

J.L. Allen and E.E. Gardner, A Concise Catalogue of the European Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1954, p. 17 (as Giuseppe Cesari);

B.B. Fredericksen and F. Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Collections, Cambridge, MA 1972, pp. 52, 467, 607 (as Giuseppe Cesari);

H. Röttgen, in Il Cavaliere d'Arpino, exhibition catalogue, Rome 1973, pp. 78, 107, 110, (as Giuseppe Cesari);

I. Faldi, L'Accademia nazionale di San Luca, Rome 1974, p. 89 (as a variant);

A. Pigler, Barockthemen: Eine Auswahl von Verzeichnissen zur Ikonographie des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, 2nd ed., Budapest 1974, vol. 2, p. 22 (as Giuseppe Cesari);

P. Tomory, Catalogue of the Italian Paintings before 1800, Sarasota 1976, p. 129, under cat. no. 133 (as Giuseppe Cesari, a variant) ;

K. Baetjer, European Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, by artists born before 1865, New York 1980, vol. 1, p. 26, reproduced vol. 2, p. 98 (as Giuseppe Cesari);

E. Schleier and H. Röttgen, " 'Perseus befreit Andromeda': Ein unbekanntes Werk von Giuseppe Cesari, gen. Il Cavalier d'Arpino. Zu einer Neuerwerbung des Kaiser-Friedrich-Museums-Vereins," in Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, vol. 35, 1993, pp. 205, 208, 211-212, reproduced p. 195, fig. 3 (as Bernardino Cesari); 

K. Baetjer, European Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, by artists born before 1865, New York 1995, p. 131, reproduced (as Attributed to Bernardino Cesari);

H. Röttgen, Il Cavalier Giuseppe Cesari d'Arpino, Rome 2002, pp. 48, 256, 258, 287, 333, 334, 528, cat. no. 99, reproduced p. 334 (as Bernardino Cesari).

This painting of Perseus and Andromeda, formerly ascribed to Giuseppe Cesari, called Cavaliere d’Arpino (1568-1640), has more recently been re-attributed to his brother and frequent collaborator, Bernardino Cesari. The subject clearly appealed to Giuseppe, and was no doubt in demand from his clients, as he and his studio painted numerous variations of the subject beginning in circa 1592 through circa 1602/3. Among the autograph versions by Giuseppe Cesari are those in the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence (circa 1592/93, oil on slate); St. Louis Art Museum (circa 1593/94, oil on lapis lazuli); Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (circa 1594/95, oil on slate); Clark Art Institute, Williamstown (circa 1594/95, oil on panel); and Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (signed and dated 1602, oil on slate). The present version most closely relates to the painting in Vienna. An engraving of Perseus and Andromeda by Hendrik Goltzius (1583) likely served as inspiration for Giuseppe’s earliest iterations of the subject.