Alessandro Magnasco, called il Lissandrino

Benno Geiger, Venice, 1914;
Frederico Gentili di Giuseppe (1868-1940), Paris;
Forced sale of his deceased estate, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 23-24 April 1941, lot 53, for 20,000 FRF;
Private Collection Milan, by 1949;
On deposit in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, 1950-1999;
Restituted to the heirs of Frederico Gentili di Giuseppe;
By whom sold ("The Collection of Federico Gentili di Giuseppe"), New York, Christie's, 27 January 2000, lot 83;
There purchased by the present collector.

Paris, Louvre Museum, Chapelle Henri II, Présentation des Oeuvres récupérées après la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, 9 April - 5 May 1997;
Paris, Louvre Museum, 1950-1999, on loan.

G. Delogu, Pittori minori liguri, lombardi, piemontesi del Seicento e del Settecento, 1931, reproduced pl. 145;
M. Pospisil, Magnasco, Florence 1944, p. LXXX, cat. no. 87,  reproduced no. 87;
B. Geiger, Magnasco, Bergamo 1949, p. 116, reproduced fig. 158;
A. Brejon de Lavergnée and D. Thiebaut, "Italie, Espagne, Allemagne, Grande-Bretagne et divers", in Catalogue sommaire illustré des peintures du Musée du Louvre, vol. II, Paris 1981, reproduced p. 199, no. MNR 789;
L. Muti and D. De Sarno Prignano, Alessandro Magnasco, Faenza 1994, p. 245, no. 264, reproduced fig. 282.

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com , an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has not been properly restored for a number of years. The lining is old and if it were to be changed, the cracking and the surface generally would greatly improve. The paint layer is cleaner in the figure group than in the background, but the entire painting would benefit from cleaning. Under ultraviolet light there are a dozen small retouches visible, none of which are in the figure group and it is unlikely that others will become apparent when the paint layer is cleaned. There is slight thinness to the paint layer yet this is not unusual and with the right restoration, this picture will improve a good deal.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Although born in Genoa, the son of the painter Stefano Magnasco, Alessandro went to Milan to train as an artist, entering the studio of Filippo Abbiati.  He soon began to establish his own reputation, and was called in 1703 to Florence to paint for Ferdinando de' Medici.  It was in the Tuscan Granducal collections that Magnasco appears to have been exposed to the genre painters of the Dutch Seventeenth century, as well as to the work of Salvator Rosa and Jacques Callot, all of which would influence him profoundly and provide inspiration for the diverse subject matter that would make his reputation.

The present scene is typical of the themes that Magnasco favored, and for which he found a ready and enthusiastic market. Stylistically, it would appear to date to the 1720s; Franchini Guelfi has suggested a likely execution of 1720-5, while L. Muti et alia one of circa 1725 (see Literature).¹  The composition is set in a disorderly interior by a fireplace; two men wearing outlandish, black conical hats and white mantles sit opposite another man, who reaches up to a monkey which is perched at the very center of the composition.  Two of the men play cards, while the third looks over his colleague's shoulder.  The overall mood of the picture is somewhat mysterious, and indeed, the exact nature of the subject itself is somewhat elusive.  It has traditionally been thought to represent guardsmen or soldiers playing cards, but certain elements— particularly the monkey— suggest a less obvious meaning.  At its last appearance at auction, it was suggested that the men might in fact represent banditi or some other sort of villan at play between "jobs".  The rather louche nature of the interior certainly supports that theory, even if the strange clothes of two of the men would make them rather conspicuous as criminals. The life of outlaws (balanced, it must be said, by other canvases depicting the pious—monks, Quakers and Rabbis) was a theme that fascinated the artist.  In this, he appears to have been influenced by Rosa, but also by literary sources.²  It may be that Magnasco himself intended the subject of this canvas to be somewhat ambiguous, part of the fantastical world he often evoked in his paintings.

Magnasco's appeal to the modern eye is not only a product of his individual and strange world view, but also his unique and idiosyncratic style.  The present canvas is typical of the manner of painting which was regarded as unusual even in his own day.  The artist's biographer, Carlo Giuseppe Ratti, noted how Magnasco "[d]ipingeva sempre alla prima e il tutto conduceva a forza di certi tocchi dati con tale spirito che mai se è visto il compagno e la maniera sua..."³ This "modernity" appears to have effected the artist's reputation after his death, and Magnasco was largely ignored until his "rediscovery" in the first decades of the 20^th century by Benno Geiger who, in fact, owned the present painting (see Provenance).  The painting was later owned by Federico Gentili di Giuseppe, an Italian collector living in Paris, whose impressive collection of paintings was auctioned after his death in 1940.  That sale, held in the opening days of the German occupation of Paris, was in 1999 deemed to have been illegally forced by Nazi officials, and after nearly five decades in the Louvre, the present painting was returned to Gentili di Giuseppe's heirs (see Provenance).     

1.  Professoressa Franchini Guelfi was quoted in a letter (dated 10 November 1999) in the 2000 sale that the present work is "uno splendido esempio non solo dell stile pittorico, ma anche dell'iconografia originalissima del Magnasco."
2.   Writers such as Raffaele Fiavono (Il vagavondo ovvero sferza dei Bianti e Vagabondi, 1621) and Giulio Cesare Croce (L'arte della Fortanteria, 1622) seem to have been evocative for the artist.
3. Trans: "he painted always 'alla prima' and realized it all with the power of certain brushstrokes done with such bravura that one has never seen his equal or his style again...," Storia de' pittori scultori et architetti liguri e de' forestieri che in Genova operarono secondo il manoscritto nel 1762,  M. Migliorini (ed.), Genoa 1997.