Master Paintings

Master Paintings

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 40. Robert of Anjou Witnessing the Construction of the Church of Santa Chiara, Naples.

Property of a Distinguished Private Collector

Francesco de Mura

Robert of Anjou Witnessing the Construction of the Church of Santa Chiara, Naples

Auction Closed

May 25, 03:13 PM GMT

Estimate

60,000 - 80,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Property of a Distinguished Private Collector

Francesco de Mura

Naples 1696 - 1782

Robert of Anjou Witnessing the Construction of the Church of Santa Chiara, Naples


oil on canvas

canvas: 59¼ by 38⅝ in.; 150.5 by 98.1 cm.

framed: 75 by 49 in.; 190.5 by 124.5 cm.

With Thomas Agnew and Sons, London;
With David M. Koetser Gallery, New York and London (no. 9);
From whom acquired by Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. (1909-1988), New York, by 1962;
With Colnaghi, London, after 1968;
Dr. Claus Virch (1927-2012), New York;
By whom sold, New York, Sotheby's, 9 January 1980, lot 93;
Where purchased by Alexander Gallery, New York;
Anonymous sale, New York, Christie's, 15 January 1985, lot 80;
Where acquired by a private collector;
By whom sold ("Property of a Private Collector"), New York, Sotheby's, 15 January 1987, lot 79;
Thereafter acquired by the present owner.
R.L. Manning, Neapolitan Masters of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, exhibition catalogue, New York 1962, unpaginated, cat. no. 45, illustrated on the cover;
R.L. Manning, Italian Renaissance and Baroque Paintings from the Collection of Walter P. Chrysler Jr., exhibition catalogue, Norfolk 1967, p. 71, cat. no. 64;
N. Spinosa, Pittura napoletana del Settecento: dal Barocco al Rococò, Naples 1986, p. 161, cat. no. 258, reproduced fig. 308 (as in Chrysler Museum);
N. Spinosa, Pittura napoletana del Settecento: dal Barocco al Rococò, Naples 1993, p. 161, cat. no. 258, reproduced fig. 308 (as in Chrysler Museum);
E.M. Zafran, "Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., and His Collection of Italian Baroque Paintings," in Buying Baroque: Italian Seventeenth-Century Paintings Come to America, E.P. Bowron (ed.), University Park 2017, p. 126.

This painting is an autography copy by Francesco de Mura, the greatest painter of the Golden Age of Naples, of his large-scale altarpiece that was destroyed by Allied incendiary bombs on 4 August 1943. The refined and elegant composition depicts either Robert of Anjou or King Solomon overseeing construction of either the Neapolitan Church of Santa Chiara or the Temple of Jerusalem, respectively. De Mura completed the original painting in 1754 and received 1,112 ducats for the work, a princely sum at the time, which underscores his preeminence among eighteenth-century Neapolitan painters.


Structured around vertical scaffolding and partially-constructed architectural elements, the composition uses an airy color palette to depict a hive of activity. The ermine-clad, crowned figure at right (Robert of Anjou or King Solomon) oversees a bevy of workmen involved in laborious tasks of construction.


Founded in 1310 by the newly crowned Robert of Anjou and his wife, Sancia of Mallorca, the massive Church of Santa Chiara, which was larger than the city’s Cathedral, occupied an important position within Naples. In 1895, Giovanni di Montemayor had likened the sumptuous Baroque interior “to a veil of snow [that] covered every surface.”The entire structure was destroyed during World War II.

We are grateful to Nicola Spinosa for his assistance cataloguing this lot.


1. “Come un velo di neve sovr’ogni cosa.” Quoted in C. Bruzelius, The Stones of Naples: Church Building in Angevin Italy, 1266-1334, New Haven and London 2004, p. 236 note 11.