NEW YORK & LONDON DEALERS JOIN FORCES TO PRESENT MASTERPIECES

Tuesday, 04 September 2007 08:11

New York City & London - Masterpieces of Art: Five Centuries of Painting and Sculpture,2 East 71st Street, New York, in association with Whitfield Fine Art, London, from This collaboration between two of the world’s most respected art dealers will provide a remarkable opportunity to see and acquire a selection of superb works, seldom seen on the market and that would be prized by any major museum, by artists whose reputations have stood the test of time.

The exhibition will be presented in two parts. Firstly, there will be an exceptionally strong selection of Italian works from the 15^th, 16^th and 17^th centuries with paintings by Botticelli, Correggio, Parmigianino, Pontormo, Andrea del Sarto, Titian and Guido Reni as well as sculpture including a bronze bust by Pietro Paolo Romano. In addition there will be important works by Dutch, Flemish, French and Spanish masters including Matthias Stomer, Simon Vouet and Goya. Several of the paintings are important rediscoveries and rarely have such outstanding works been offered for sale in one gallery at one time.

The second part of the exhibition will feature Apollo the Lute player, an important work by one of the most influential Italian painters of the 17^th century Michelangelo Merisi called Caravaggio (1571-1610), on loan from a private collection . The Salander-O’Reilly Galleries are housed in an elegant neo-Italian Renaissance mansion and include the office of the legendary golf player Arnold Palmer which provides an ideal setting for a reconstruction of the studiolo or private study of Caravaggio’s first great patron Cardinal Francesco del Monte. This tiny room in his Casino on the Pincian Hill at Rome’s highest point is shown as the backdrop for at least three Caravaggio paintings of around 1599, including Apollo the Lute player. To recreate the original arrangement of the room, the theme of which revolved around the harmony of the universe, a reproduction of Caravaggio’s ceiling painting of the Elements, still in situ, will be placed above Apollo the Lute player and Shepherd Corydon with a Ram, the latter kindly loaned by the celebrated Galleria Doria Pamphilj in Rome. This is a contemporary copy of the work originally commissioned by del Monte and now in Rome’s Capitoline Gallerie. The accompanying special exhibition catalogue will for the first time reveal the philosophy behind these pictures and Cardinal del Monte’s commission.

Caravaggio’s Lute player is one of the best known images in Western art, known for so long by the second version the artist painted which is now in the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. The original Lute player, the subject now recognised as Apollo the Lute player, was purchased in Italy in 1726 by the 3^rd Duke of Beaufort and languished unrecognised at Badminton House, Somerset, for nearly 300 years. It was regarded before cleaning as a copy but has now been recognised by Sir Denis Mahon, Professor Mina Gregori and Dr Claudio Strinati as by Caravaggio. The painting was exactly described by Caravaggio’s early biographer Giovanni Baglione even down to the dewdrops scattered on the flowers and reflections of the window in the carafe of water, elements that do not appear in the Hermitage version. This powerful painting will be exhibited for the first time in the United States, having previously featured in major museum exhibitions in Florence, Naples, Munich and Dusseldorf.

Among the highlights of the paintings for sale is Saint Peter visiting Saint Agatha in Prison by the virtuoso French prodigy Simon Vouet (1590-1649), one of many artists who were influenced by Caravaggio. Recently cleaned, this dramatic three-figure composition has now been revealed as a masterpiece from the artist’s early Caravaggesque period when he was at the height of his powers. It was probably painted for Francesco Barberini in Rome around 1624 and has been in private American collections since the 19^th century. It was exhibited in the ground-breaking Caravaggio and His Followers exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1971.

The exhibition boasts two works by the Emilian master Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola, called Il Parmigianino (1503-40). Saturn Disguised as a Winged Horse Abducting Philyra with Eros as Witness, circa 1531-35, is one of the most significant discoveries in 16^th century Italian painting in recent years. The existence of this painting by the rarest and most desired artist of the Mannerist movement had long been known from preliminary drawings, but it had been considered a lost work. Its recovery represents an important and exceptionally attractive addition to the artist’s oeuvre. A great deal is known about the provenance of the picture: it is recorded in a 1561 estate inventory of Parmigianino’s friend and patron Cavaliere Francesco Baiardo. In the late 18th century it was owned by Sir Joshua Reynolds who may even have added his own touches to Parmigianino’s blue sky, as was often his practice. Parmigianino’s authorship of the painting has been confirmed by Dr David Ekserdjian and Dr Sydney Freedberg while Professor Federico Zeri considered it to be an important Parmigianino discovery, calling it “ravishingly fine, one of his most enchanting inventions”.

A Madonna and Child, circa 1500, by Sandro Filipepi called Botticelli (1444/5-1510) is a striking composition widely recognised as a product of one of the most dramatic and defining artistic personalities of the Florentine Renaissance. The dynamic composition of the Christ Child climbing on the Virgin’s knee, pressing His face to hers and gazing up at her while she protectively holds Him, is a typically tender evocation of spiritual and human love. The painting has been exhibited continuously since the mid 19^th century and comes down through the collections of the 19^th century French artist Eugène Samuel Grasset, French nobles, a state dignitary and Norton Simon, one of the most important 20^th century American collectors.

Madonna and Child with St John by Andrea del Sarto (1486-1530) is one of the most important rediscoveries in Italian High Renaissance scholarship in recent years. Fully authenticated by the late Professor John Shearman, cleaning and the presence of underdrawing revealed through infrared reflectography have established this work as the lost 1513 Madonna and Child with St John known in Del Sarto’s oeuvre only through copies.

There are two major works by the Florentine Mannerist artist Jacopo Carucci called Pontormo (1494-1556) one of which, Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist circa 1517-18, was only recently rediscovered as a work by Pontormo shortly after its emergence on the art market from a Boston private collection where it had been since the 19^th century . This provenance gives it the distinction of being the first autograph Pontormo to arrive in the United States. From the beginning of his career, Pontormo worked closely with some of the most successful artists of the day. He studied with Leonardo da Vinci and Piero di Cosimo and his first surviving works date to the second decade of the 16^th century, when he was an assistant to Andrea del Sarto. This panel was probably painted at the end of this decade, when del Sarto’s influence was still strong and before Pontormo had fully developed his Mannerist style. It was exhibited at the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence in the 1996 exhibition L’officina della maniera.

The second Pontormo is Portrait of Francesca Capponi, as Saint Mary Magdalen, circa 1525-28 . It has recently been cleaned, removing an opaque varnish to reveal the artist’s characteristic vibrant brushstrokes. In his life of Pontormo of 1568, Giorgio Vasari describes this portrait of the young Francesca Capponi (b.1511) in the guise of Mary Magdalen. It was a small, domestic work painted for the bedroom of her father, the banker Ludovico di Gino Capponi, for whom Pontormo decorated the chapel in Santa Felicita between 1525-28. This portrait was exhibited for the first time in the Museo Capodimonte in Naples in 2006, and both Professor Janet Cox-Rearick and Dr Philippe Costamagna have confirmed this attribution.

Capricho with Five Heads, circa 1821-23, by the Spanish master Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) was in the Spanish Royal Collection from the time of King Fernando VII before 1833 and by descent until 1935 when it was sold by the Infante Alfonso de Orléans y Borbón. The combination of radiant atmospheric effects in the sky with the loosely painted yet perfectly rendered heads in the foreground, each a study of intense feeling and pathos, make this a superb canvas by one of the greatest painters who ever lived.

This extraordinary exhibition also includes a dramatic and beautiful Deposition from the Cross by one of the masters of Venetian 16^th century painting, Jacopo Tintoretto (?1518-1594); a self portrait by the one of the greatest of all Venetian artists, Titian (c.1485-1576); a Head of Christ of superb quality by Correggio; Holy Family with St Catherine, an early work by Ludovico Carracci as well as a painting by his cousin Annibale Carracci; a virtuoso sketch by Sir Peter Paul Rubens; and Sir Anthony Van Dyck’s Venus disarming Mars. Works by El Greco, Paolo Veronese, Jacopo Bassano, Orazio Gentileschi, Antiveduto Gramatica, Matthias Stomer and Giovanni Lanfranco are also guaranteed to set the enthusiast’s pulse racing.

The exhibition will be accompanied by two lavish, scholarly and fully illustrated catalogues, with contributions from Professor Mina Gregori and Dr Claudio Strinati, Soprintendente al Polo Museale Romano among others.

SALANDER-O’REILLY GALLERIES
Salander-O’Reilly Galleries was established in 1976. Over the past thirty years the gallery has grown to encompass one of the world’s finest collections of Renaissance art as well as showcasing major European and American works of art from the 17^th through the 20^th centuries. The gallery is located in an elegant neo-Italian Renaissance mansion built in 1922 for the wool merchant Julius Forstmann by Charles P. H. Gilbert (1861-1952), a leading architect of the day.

Salander-O’Reilly Galleries has a longstanding tradition of hosting shows in collaboration with some of the world’s finest museums. Among past museum collaborations are Rembrandt and the Venetian Influence with masterpieces borrowed from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, and The Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Salander-O’Reilly Galleries is a member of the Art and Antique Dealers League of America (CINOA). Lawrence B. Salander is the first private art dealer to sit on the board of the National Indemnity Project of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

WHITFIELD FINE ART
Whitfield Fine Art was established in 1979 by Clovis Whitfield who has been one of the world’s leading art dealers for the last 35 years and has sold paintings to many of world’s most prestigious museums and collectors. Educated at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and later the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, he was visiting Professor, Indiana University, 1967-68 and since 1970 has worked at three of the major London art dealers, Thomas Agnew & Sons Ltd, 1970-77; Colnaghi, London and New York 1978-84; and Walpole Gallery, 1987-91, before moving Whitfield Fine Art Ltd to 180 New Bond Street in 1989. He is an expert in Italian 17^th century art and has published extensively on the subject. He has helped organise major exhibitions such as Painting in Naples 1606-1705: From Caravaggio to Giordano (Royal Academy of Arts, London, and National Gallery of Art, Washington 1982), Classicismo e Natura: La Lezione di Domenichino Rome (Gallerie Capitoline, Rome, 1996-97) [jointly with Sir Denis Mahon] and more recently The Genius of Rome (Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2001).

Whitfield Fine Art is a member of the Society of London Art Dealers (SLAD) and exhibits regularly at fairs around the world including The European Fine Art Fair, (TEFAF) Maastricht, Palm Beach International Fine Art & Antique Fair and Collezionismo Internazionale at Palazzo Venezia, Rome.