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Old Master Paintings

Tiepolo, Canaletto, Rubens and More from Master Paintings

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This January’s Evening Sale of Master Paintings will present an exciting array of European works spanning the 14th to the 19th centuries. The sale is led by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s eight-foot tall depiction of the Madonna of the Rosary with Angels, the last major altarpiece by this Venetian master remaining in private hands. Other highlights include a newly rediscovered masterwork by Sir Peter Paul Rubens, his earliest known version of The Virgin and Christ Child with Saints Elizabeth and John the Baptist dating to circa 1612, and a beautiful view of Venice by Canaletto from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Past Auction
Master Paintings Evening Sale
29 January 2020 | 5:00 PM EST | New York

Tiepolo, Canaletto, Rubens and More from Master Paintings

  • Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Madonna of the Rosary with Angels. Estimate Upon Request.
    Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, the greatest painter of the Venetian Rococo, painted this signed and dated Madonna of the Rosary in 1735, during his early mature period. The dramatic composition, grand scale, and bold coloring of this painting draw on the rich history of Italian Renaissance religious art. At the same time, the Madonna’s monumental stature and elegant pose against the imagined backdrop point toward the fantastical, theatrical elements of the Grand Manner for which Tiepolo was celebrated. Most works of this caliber by Tiepolo remain in situ or in major museums. In fact this seems to be the only large-scale altarpiece still in private hands. The legendary provenance of this painting includes influential collector Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro of Novar and South African diamond magnate Sir Joseph Benjamin Robinson and his daughter, Princess Ida Louise Labia.
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  • Master of the Bruges Legend of Saint Ursula, circa 1480-1485, Madonna and Child, Half Length, with an Extensive Landscape Seen Through Two Windows Beyond. Estimate $700,000–900,000.
    Dated to the first half of the 1480s, this sophisticated and beautifully rendered panel is among the finest examples by the Master of the Bruges Legend of Saint Ursula, one of the most accomplished anonymous Flemish masters of the late 15th century. Not to be confused with the Cologne master of a nearly identical sobriquet, he is named for a polyptych of six panels and two shutters in the Groeninge Museum in Bruges, which represents the story of Saint Ursula as told in the The Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine. The first attempt to construct a stylistically consistent oeuvre for this artist was made by Pierre Bautier, and was later further developed by Georges Marlier who in 1964 produced a complete catalogue raisonné of his paintings, which included the present work.
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  • Giovanni Antonio Canal, Called Canaletto, Venice, a View of the Grand Canal Looking East with Santa Maria Della Salute. Estimate $3,000,000–5,000,000
    This majestic bird's eye view of the landing stage in front of Santa Maria della Salute was likely painted in circa 1740, during the height of Canaletto's Venetian period. The warm sunlight and clear shadows evoke a peaceful afternoon on a clear day, as gondolas and merchant ships populate the Grand Canal and Venetians stroll in and out of the church, which is dedicated to the city's survival of the plague. Canaletto treated this recognizable view of the Salute several times: his earliest picture of the canal and the Salute from the west dates to the late 1720s, while his largest and most famous canvas of this subject dates to 1744 and is in the British Royal Collection.
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  • Workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio, Madonna and Child. Estimate $800,000–1,200,000.
    In both its composition and sculptural handling, the present Madonna and Child derives from a group of paintings traditionally associated with the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio. Though known primarily, and rightfully, as the pre-eminent sculptor in Florence during the third quarter of the 15th century, Verrocchio's contributions to the field of painting remain lesser known due to a lack of documented autograph works. What seems more certain is that there was a group of accomplished painters active in Verrocchio's bottega, producing painted variants of their master's designs. In particular, numerous devotional images of the Madonna and Child in half- or three-quarter-length exist, of which this is a recently discovered example.
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  • Giovanni Battista Moroni, The Resurrection of Christ. Estimate $200,000–300,000.
    Recently discovered, this exceptional canvas depicting the Resurrection of Christ is one of Giovanni Battista Moroni's earliest known works. Dating to circa 1545-1548, it predates his painting of the same subject today in the Chiesa di San Martino in Sovere (early 1550s) and it provides a rare glimpse into Moroni's youthful development as an artist, which unfolded primarily in Brescia under the tutelage of Alessandro Bonvicino, known as Moretto di Brescia. What is visible even at this young age is the artist's proclivity for rendering naturalistic scenes with an intense attention to detail and a palpable visual impact – characteristics that would later secure him as one of the most sought after Lombard portrait painters of the sixteenth century.
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  • Sir Peter Paul Rubens, The Virgin and Christ Child, with Saints Elizabeth and John The Baptist. Estimate $6,000,000–8,000,000.
    Recently rediscovered, this powerful depiction of The Virgin and Christ Child with Saints Elizabeth and John the Baptist is an early work by Sir Peter Paul Rubens, datable to circa 1611-1614. Upon seeing the painting in the early 1950s, a few years after it last appeared at auction, Ludwig Burchard, the great connoisseur of Rubens' art, declared it to be the prime version of this popular subject, known through many workshop versions and copies. For the last few decades, the painting remained in a private New York collection, unseen by the wider scholarly community of Flemish art. It is fortuitous that the painting should resurface now in time to be included in the multi-volume catalogue raisonné devoted to Rubens’ paintings and based on Burchard's notes and files, the Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, which is nearing completion. The present work will be discussed in the forthcoming volume IV: The Holy Trinity, The Life of the Virgin, Madonnas, The Holy Family. Fiona Healy, the author of this volume, and Arnout Balis, Chairman of the Centrum Rubenianum, have both recently studied this lot firsthand and regard it as a genuine work by Peter Paul Rubens.
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  • Sir Peter Paul Rubens, The Last Supper, en grisaille. Estimate $1,500,000–2,000,000.
    This extraordinary sketch appears here at auction for the first time since it was purchased by the present owner over thirty-five years ago. Executed mainly in grisaille, it was made in preparation for an engraving by the printmaker Boëthius A. Bolswert (1580-1633), which reproduced the composition of Rubens’s altarpiece for St. Rombouts Cathedral in Mechelen. Grisaille sketches like this played a role in disseminating and protecting Rubens’ ideas for major compositions, because the wide distribution of ensuing prints would act as a de facto copyright over his designs.
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  • Artemisia Gentileschi, Portrait of a Gentleman, Probably Antoine de Ville, Full-Length, Resting His Hand on a Sword and with His Arm Akimbo. Estimate $800,000–1,200,000.
    This impressive portrait of a gentleman is a recent addition to the oeuvre of celebrated female artist Artemisia Gentileschi. She cleverly added her initials AG to the elegant Genoese lace on the sitter’s collar, a detail so subtle that it went unnoticed for many years. The sitter is likely the French military engineer Antoine de Ville, whose likeness is known through an engraving and who Artemisia may have met in Rome through the Accademia dei Desiosi. Though she is better known today for her history paintings, early sources claim her real specialty was portraiture, and the present lot, dated to circa 1626-27, adds to our understanding of this part of her career.
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  • Pietro Paolini, A Portrait of a Man Writing by Candlelight. Estimate $400,000–600,000.
    This masterpiece by Pietro Paolini, also known as il Lucchese, dates to the 1630s. Within a dimmed and quiet interior appears a gentleman in slight profile seated at a table, his distinct features and engaging gaze sharply illuminated by a single flame from a nearby candle. Wearing dark and thick fabrics adorned around his wrist and collar with delicate details, he holds a quill above a sheet of paper in his right hand. To his right lies a stack of notebooks, an inkwell, and a small plaster of the Sleeping Venus, a prop that appears in other paintings by Paolini, including his Fabbricante di liuto, formerly in the Mansi Collection. According to Dr. Nikita de Vernejoul, the painting may depict an allegory of choosing the right path in life, a theme that Paolini explored on several occasions.
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  • Nicolas Poussin, Narcissus Gazing at His Reflection and Cupid Shooting an Arrow, in a Landscape. Estimate $400,000–600,000.
    According to Ovid’s Metamorphosis (3: 339-510), Narcissus was punished for spurning the nymph Echo and made to fall in love with his own reflection. In Poussin’s intimate painting, Narcissus holds a staff and begins to gaze into a reflective pool, while Cupid prepares to shoot the arrow that will cause Narcissus to pine away for himself.
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  • Dirck van Baburen, Granida and Daifilo. Estimate $1,000,000–1,500,000.
    This monumental canvas, in which the shepherd Daifilo kneels before the Persian princess Granida, is the earliest treatment of this subject in Western art. Dirck van Baburen here fomented a surge of pastoral and literary-based works in Netherlandish painting that would continue in the ensuing decades. The subject is taken from Pieter Cornelisz. Hooft's Granida (Act 1, Scene 3), completed in manuscript in 1605 and first published in 1615, just eight years before this painting was executed.
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  • Mattia Preti, Boethius and Philosophy. Estimate $1,500,000–2,000,000.
    Unknown to scholars until its reappearance at auction a few decades ago, this monumental canvas of Boethius Consoled by Philosophy by Mattia Preti is, according to Dr. John Spike, "by any standard, one of the masterpieces of Preti's last years, and indeed of his entire career." Painted in Malta around 1680, it is imbued with the drama, theatricality and tenebrism that characterizes his output from his mature period. Its earliest known history is referenced in the 1713 inventory of the collection of Fra Andrea di Giovanni, a Knight of the Order of Malta, for whom it was likely painted.
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  • Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, Hannibal the Conqueror Viewing Italy from the Alps for the First Time. Estimate $600,000–800,000.
    The earliest known painting by Goya, this oil sketch is an extremely rare example of the young Francisco de Goya's artistic practice; its bold strokes and bright coloring show the confidence of the master at the very beginning of his career. Although Goya is not today remembered as a history painter in the traditional sense, the present oil sketch, which is also a study for the very first finished painting known by his hand, fits into this genre.
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  • Jean-Joseph-Xavier Bidauld, View of the Isola di Sora. Estimate $200,000–300,000.
    Bidauld first traveled to Italy in 1785 and was encouraged by the marine painter and landscapist Claude-Joseph Vernet to paint en plein air, completing sketches outdoors that could later be worked up into finished paintings. These Italian drawings would serve as the basis for the artist's paintings even after he returned to France in 1790, and the present painting, dated 1789, is emblematic of the Italian views which made him so famous. Bidauld exhibited regularly at the Salon in Paris from 1791 until his death, receiving a gold medal the same year the present picture was painted. In fact, Bidauld was the first artist to be elected to the Académie purely as a landscape painter. At the height of his career, Bidauld's patrons included Napoléon, Louis XVIII, and Charles IV of Spain.
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  • Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, The Town and Lake at Como. Estimate $400,000–600,000.
    A look back at Corot’s long career as the most successful landscape painter of his generation reveals many different personalities. His style changed so dramatically over the years that he could be defined as not one but several distinct artists. Yet, even among all these various styles, he is best remembered for his plein air studies executed in Italy early in his career, with the present work being among the best of such examples.
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