Francesco de Mura

Otto E. Messinger, Palais Massimo, Rome, by 1910;

S. Hartveld, Antwerp, 1937;

With Thomas Agnew & Sons, London;

With David M. Koetser Gallery, New York and London;

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 Parke Bernet, 9 January 1980, lot 93;

Where acquired 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 collector.

Venice, Palazzo dell'Esposizione, XXI Esposizione Biennale Internazionale d'Arte, 1938-1939 (according to a label on the frame's verso);

New York, Finch College Museum of Art, Neapolitan Masters of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, 31 October - 15 December 1962, no. 45 (lent by Walter P. Chrysler Jr.);

Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences, Italian Renaissance and Baroque Paintings from the Collection of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., 2 December 1967 - 15 May 1968, no. 64.

P. D'Achiardi, La Collection O.E. Messinger, Rome 1910, pp. 62-63, cat. no. 26, reproduced;

R.L. Manning, Neapolitan Masters of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, exhibition catalogue, New York 1962, n.p., cat. no. 45, reproduced 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;

N. Spinosa, Pittura napoletana del Settecento: dal Barocco al Rococò, Naples 1993, p. 161, cat. no. 258, reproduced fig. 308;

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 of his large-scale altarpiece for the Basilica of Santa Chiara in Naples, which was destroyed by Allied incendiary bombs on 4 August 1943. The composition depicts an ermine-clad, crown-wearing figure—either Robert of Anjou or King Solomon—at right supervising the construction of a building, thought to be either the Church of Santa Chiara or the Temple of Jerusalem. 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.

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.”¹ 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.