Giuseppe Cesari, called Cavaliere d'Arpino

The following condition report is provided by Rebecca Gregg who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's. The original panel appears sound; there is a slight convex curve. There is a label on the reverse of the panel and red wax stamp. The paint layers appear in good condition. There are two small losses in the centre of the upper edge. Apart from this there are no recent damages or loss, and the adhesion between the paint and ground layers and the support appears good. There are obvious small areas of over-paint remaining from old restoration campaigns. These have discoloured and have become visually apparent; however, in some areas these appear unnecessarily applied and in some areas appear to cover original material. The over-paint appears heavily applied with large brush strokes with little reference to specific damages. It possibly covers areas of thinness, especially in the flesh tones, and has also been used to strengthen the contours of the drapery. There is a patchy and discoloured varnish layer that fluoresces strongly in ultra violet examination. This layer has been selectively removed from the lighter areas of the composition. The painting was examined in the frame.
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This hitherto unrecorded and unpublished panel is a late work by Arpino, probably painted around the years 1630-1635. The charming and intimate design includes certain elements which can be paralleled in other works of this date. The figure of the Virgin Mary, for example, is very similar to that employed by Arpino in a smaller panel depicting the Madonna and Child today in the Abbey of Montecassino in Italy.¹  The youthful figures of the young Christ and Saint John, with their long flowing blond hair falling in ringlets, are also echoed in another canvas of this date, formerly in the Salerno collection in Rome but now lost.²  In all these paintings Arpino employs the distinguishing features of his mannerist style, such as the long tapering fngers, the ovoid facial features and the attenuated graceful limbs,all of which had served him so well at the peak of his reputation, but which by this date must have seemed increasingly old-fashioned to his contemporaries. Arpino's long career is testament to his enduring popularity as an artist, for only a short while earlier in 1629, he had been elected president of the Accademia di San Luca for the third time. At the height of his reputation Arpino had been among the most important painters in Rome in the late 16th century. He was principal painter to Pope Clement VII, elected in 1592, for whom he painted the frescoes in the Olgati chapel in San Prassede in Rome. At this date he also enjoyed the patronage of the Pope's extended family, most notably his nephew Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini and his uncle Pietro Aldobrandini (d. 1587) for whom he painted the fresco decoration of the Palazzo dei Conservatori on the Capitoline Hill. The colour and exuberance of these commissions undoubtedly presaged the coming of the full-blown Baroque style, but left little mark on his most famous pupil, Caravaggio, who probably worked in his studio and two of whose works he owned. Arpino's collection, which numbered over a hundred paintings, was indeed of some significance, for it still hangs in the Galleria Borghese in Rome, where it was transferred in 1605 by Cardinal Scipione Borghese, then the villa of the nephew of the new Pope Paul V, who had imprisoned Arpino and confiscated all his pictures. Although his legacy and his most famous works were large-scale decorations, Arpino seems to have enjoyed considerable success with his works on a small scale, chiefly mythological and devotional works, many on rare supports such as slate or semi-precious stone and no doubt intended for private patrons, of which this is a particularly well-preserved example.

 

1. Reproduced in H. Röttgen, Il Cavalier Giuseppe Cesari D'Arpino. Un grande pittore nello splendore della fama e nell' inconstanza della fortuna, Rome 2002, p. 466, no. 246. A closely related variant including the additional figure of Saint Joseph, was offered New York, Sotheby's, 26 January 2012, lot 156.
2. Röttgen, op. cit., p. 476, no. 261, reproduced.