Circle of Franz Anton Maulbertsch

With Le Claire Kunst, 1989 (as Franz Sigrist);

Anonymous sale, Berlin, Galerie Bassenge, 4 June 2010, lot 6056 (as Circle of Franz Anton Maulbertsch);

With Derek Johns, Ltd., London (as Maulbertsch);

From whom acquired by the late collector, 2010.

The composition depicts an episode from the Gospel of Matthew in which Christ heals the servant of a Roman centurion.¹ The painting is closely based on Franz Anton Maulbertsch's etching of the subject, though the painting is not a direct copy.² Instead, it selectively adapts elements of the print and alters others, such as the position of Christ's left hand. The work may replicate a now-lost preparatory drawing by Maulbertsch himself, perhaps executed in the mid-1760s by a member of his circle, which included Felix Ivo Leicher, Joseph Franz Jablonsky, and Joseph Winterhalter the Younger—the latter of whom produced ricordi after Maulbertsch's oil sketches and finished paintings.³

¹ Matthew 5:8-13.

² See K. Garas, Franz Anton Maulbertsch, 1724-1796, Graz and Budapest 1960, pp. 76, 210, cat. no. 160, reproduced fig. 157.

³ As suggested by Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann in an unpublished dossier on the present painting. On these Maulbertsch's circle, see Franz Anton Maulbertsch und sein Umkreis in Mähren, exhibition catalogue, Z. Wörgötter (ed.), Langenargen 2006.