Filippo Gagliardi, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione called Il Grechetto

Probably identifiable with a work in the collection of Giovan Battista Raggi (d.1657) before 1658, Genoa;
Probably thence by descent to Giulio Raggi and identifiable with the 'Bacchanale' at Palazzo Raggi, Genoa, in the late 18th and early 19th century;
With Rubinacci Galleria d'Arte, Genoa, 1975;
Anonymous sale, Milan, Semenzato-Nuova Geri, 3 May 1987, lot 27 (as Viviano Codazzi and Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione), where acquired by the present owner.

Probably C.G. Ratti, Istruzione di quanto può vedersi di più bello in Genova in pittura, scultura ed architettura, Genoa 1780, pp. 234-36;
Probably E. & F. Poleggi eds., Descrizione della città di Genova da un Anonimo del 1818, Genoa 1969, pp. 303-4;
L. Salerno, Pittori di paesaggio del Seicento a Roma, vol. I, Rome 1977, pp. 504 and 509, reproduced fig. 83.5 (as Codazzi and Castiglione);
G. Biavati, "Paesaggio con figure. Problemi di collaborazione tra paesisti e figuristi", in Bollettino dei Musei Civici Genovesi, vol. I, no. 2, 1979, pp. 94 and 109, footnote 7, reproduced fig. 1 (as Codazzi and Castiglione);
G. Briganti, L. Laureati & L. Trezzani, "Viviano Codazzi", in I Pittori Bergamaschi dal XIII al XIX secolo. Il Seicento, vol. I, Bergamo 1983, p. 704, cat. no. 127, reproduced on p. 727 (as the architecture by the same hand as those in the Pallavicini set, the figures by Castiglione);
T. Standring, Genium Io: Benedicti Castilionis Ianuen. The Paintings of Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (1609-1663/65), Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1982, p. 403, cat. no. 66 (as Procession of Drunken Silenus by Castiglione with Codazzi?, datable to the early 1650s);
P. Pagano & M. Galazzi eds., La Pittura del '600 a Genova, Milan 1988, reproduced plate 256 (as Codazzi and Castiglione);
F. Lamera, "Opere di Gio. Benedetto Castiglione nelle collezioni genovesi del XVII e del XVIII secolo", in Il Genio di Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, Il Grechetto, exhibition catalogue, Genoa, Accademia Ligustica di Belle Arti, 27 January - 1 April 1990, pp. 30 and 33, footnote 14 (where identified with the work in Giovan Battista Raggi's 1658 inventory);
D.R. Marshall, Viviano and Niccolò Codazzi, Milan 1993, p. 529, cat. no. FG 5, reproduced in colour.

The following condition report is provided by Hamish Dewar who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's. UNCONDITIONAL AND WITHOUT PREJUDICE Structural Condition The canvas has been lined onto a keyed wooden stretcher with two vertical and one horizontal stretcher-bar. This is ensuring an even and secure structural support and has successfully stabilised the overall craquelure pattern. Paint Surface The paint surface has a reasonably even varnish layer although there is some surface dust and a few surface deposits, particularly in the upper right corner of the composition. Surface cleaning and revarnishing would be beneficial to remove these deposits and ensure a more even surface coating. Inspection under ultraviolet light shows a number of retouchings across the paint surface, many of which would seem larger than is really necessary, and there is therefore the potential to reduce the amount of retouching. This would, however, be a considerable task given the size of the painting and it may well be felt that there is little benefit to be gained from removing the retouchings and inpainting more minimally as the overall appearance is good. The most extensive retouchings visible under ultraviolet light are: 1) a long horizontal area in the upper left of the sky which measures approximately 30 cm in length and a number of other retouchings in the sky and what would appear to be a thin glaze in the blue pigments, 2) retouchings in the pale clouds between the pillars and statues on the right of the composition, 3) a thin, broken horizontal line running across the centre of the composition which presumably covers a canvas join or weave, and 4) a number of retouchings in the darker pigments of the shadows. There are other scattered retouchings across the paint surface and there may well be other retouchings beneath the varnish layers which are not visible under ultraviolet light. Summary The painting would therefore appear to be in reasonably good and stable condition and I would recommend just surface cleaning and revarnishing to ensure an improved varnish layer.
"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."

This unusually large collaborative work between the architectural painter Filippo Gagliardi and Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, called il Grechetto, appears to have once been owned by the Genoese collector Giovan Battista Raggi. Castiglione was among the most important artists working in Genoa in the mid-17th century and the biographer Raffaello Soprani, writing ten years after the artist's death, noted Castiglione's popularity among contemporary Genoese collectors. Of the sixty or so collections described by the 18th-century biographer Carlo Giuseppe Ratti, approximately half contained examples of Castiglione's work.

If this bacchanalian scene was indeed that owned by Raggi, a terminus ante quem is provided by the collector's death in 1657. This dating is also plausible from a stylistic point of view for the painting is clearly connected to a set of four collaborative works, also given to Gagliardi and Castiglione, in the Galleria Pallavicini, Rome, generally dated to the first half of the 1650s.¹  These were traditionally believed to have been painted by Viviano Codazzi, with figures by Castiglione, as was the case with the present painting (see Literature). As Marshall points out, the association of Codazzi's name with paintings of this type is long-standing and dates back to Ratti's 18th-century Genoese guidebook, in which he refers to paintings by 'Viviano' and Castiglione in the Palazzo Raggi in Genoa. However 18th-century inventories and guidebooks use the name 'Viviano' in a loose way and it is likely that the architectural painter to whom most of them refer is, in fact, Filippo Gagliardi.²  The architecture in both this and the four Pallavicini paintings is inspired by classical ruins but few of the buildings are identifiable with famous monuments in Rome. The Arch of Constantine in the left background is placed next to a building reminiscent of the Pantheon but in no way topographically accurate, and the imaginary temple with arch and paired columns in the foreground is entirely fantastical. The bacchanalian procession consists of nymphs and satyrs carrying gifts to a statue of Pan, whilst the drunken Silenus lies asleep on the ground: a very similar figure occurs in the foreground of one of the Pallavicini set.³  The fact that the figures in these collaborative works are not entirely typical of Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione has led some scholars recently to suppose that they may be by his son, Giovanni Francesco. This does not seem plausible, however, since Giovanni Francesco never reaches this level of quality in his paintings and the staffage here has always been considered the work of Grechetto and has been published as such (see Literature). The paintings would either date from 1647-51 when both Gagliardi and Castiglione were in Rome or, more likely, from the following decade when Gagliardi's pictures would have been shipped to Genoa for the figures to be added there.

Giovan Battista Raggi's picture gallery greatly expanded in the sixth decade of the 17th century, prior to his untimely death of the plague in 1657. Raggi was not an avid collector of works by Genoese artists but Castiglione seems to have been an exception: a posthumous inventory of Raggi's collection, drawn up on 4 November 1658, lists no less than nineteen paintings by the artist.⁴  Lamera supposes that this connection is due to a direct association between the two men and a document of 1646 certainly points to Raggi and Castiglione being very close: the former is named as godfather to one of the artist's daughters.⁵  In Ratti's 1768 edition of Raffaello Soprani's Vite de' Pittori, Scultori ed Architetti Genovesi we learn that Raggi commissioned portraits of himself and his brother, Cardinal Lorenzo, from Castiglione and these were hanging in Palazzo Raggi at the time of writing ('che si conservano nel loro palazzo').⁶  Although paintings are described simply in the inventory their dimensions and values are given, thus making identification easier. It is extremely likely, therefore, that the painting of exceptionally large dimensions described as 'Una di sette e dieci, Prospettiva di Tempio con satiri offerenti, del Grechetto', is to be identified with the present work.⁷  Raggi's own family connections with the influential Barberini in Rome would also suggest an admiration on his part for pictures of this type.⁸  Raggi's collection was largely dispersed after his death: a number of works, including some of Castiglione's paintings, were sent to Rome two days after the inventory was completed whilst others were sold on 22 January 1659. Since a painting fitting the description of this work was noted by Ratti in 1780 as hanging in the palazzo of Giulio Raggi, in the via del Campo, it is unlikely to have been the 'prospettiva' with 'Bacco e satiri' sold to Giovanni Luca Durazzo in 1659.⁹  In his Istruzione Ratti noted three architectural pieces with figures by Castiglione: their descriptions are too vague for specific identification but they are are also listed in an anonymous mansucript guidebook of 1818 where one - of bacchanalian subject - is described as much larger than the others: 'tre Architetture di Viviani, una delli più grande il doppio offer un Bacchanale'.¹⁰

As already discussed, the present painting is evidently connected to the set of four Pallavicini canvases as well as to other associated works. The identity of the figure-painter in the paintings belonging to this group has been much debated but given that this particular picture was likely owned (and indeed probably commissioned) by Giovan Battista Raggi, a keen collector and personal friend of the artist, it seems extremely likely that the figures are indeed by Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, rather than by his son Giovanni Francesco.


1.  See Marshall, under Literature, pp. 524-28, cat. nos. FG 1-4, all reproduced.
2.  This is suggested by a letter of 1661 from Castiglione's brother to Carlo II Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, in which he refers to a 'Filippo delle Prospettive' in whose paintings Giovanni Benedetto will paint the figures: see Marshall, op. cit., p. 519 ff..
3.  See Marshall, ibid., p. 526, cat. no. FG 2, reproduced.
4.  The inventory is published in part by V. Belloni, "1658 - La quadreria di Gio Batta Raggi", in Scritti e cose d'Arte Genovese, Genoa 1988, pp. 149-151.
5.  See Lameri, under Literature, p. 30.
6.  R. Soprani - C.G. Ratti, Vite de' Pittori, Scultori ed Architetti Genovesi, 1768, Part I, Bologna 1969 ed., p. 311.
7.  Lameri, op. cit., pp. 30 and 33, footnote 14.
8.  For Raggi's Roman connections, particularly with the Barberini, see Lameri, op. cit., p. 33, footnote 13.
9.  See Marshall, ibid., pp. 529, 555 (no. 12. Raggi 1-4), and p. 598, Appendix 4 (Works attributed to Viviano and Niccolò Codazzi in old inventories, no. 225 Raggi 1-3).
10.  Ibid., p. 598.