Francesco Trevisani

Painted for Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni (1667–1740) and probably sold on his death in 1740;

Thought to have been acquired by Mary Anne Shelley in Italy in the 1860s;

Thence by family descent until sold, ‘Property from a Deceased’s Estate’, London, Sotheby’s, 6 December 2007, lot 276;

Whence purchased by the present owner.

This exquisite and beautifully preserved work on copper by Francesco Trevisani was painted around the turn of the eighteenth century for Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni (1667–1740), whose protection the artist enjoyed. As with many of the paintings Trevisani executed for him, Ottoboni’s emblem, the double-headed eagle, is included; in this case on the vase of flowers centre left. In Trevisani’s portrait of the cardinal in the Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, the emblem appears twice, on the bell and on a chair in the background.¹ As Ottoboni's ‘painter-in-residence’ from the late 1690s, living under his roof at the Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome, Trevisani painted numerous pictures for him. From Pascoli, his biographer, we learn that by 1698 Ottoboni had a painting by Trevisani in his collection and probably its companion piece also.² It is likely that by this date he owned other works too. As a mark of the esteem in which he held the painter, in 1709 the cardinal sought to secure a knighthood for him, albeit unsuccessfully; Trevisani was however finally granted one in 1730 by Cardinal Coscia, along with a pension of 300 scudi.

This is one of two known versions of the composition by Trevisani, the other (also on copper and of similar dimensions) is in the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, and is dated by DiFederico to 1690–1700.³ The Uffizi version was probably painted as the right-hand pendant to the artist’s Dream of Saint Joseph, also in the Uffizi, it too executed on copper and of the same approximate dimensions.⁴ In the present painting, while the Virgin sews by the light of a window, we glimpse through the open door Saint Joseph leading a donkey, a lyrical echo of the Flight into Egypt. This scene of domesticity early in the Christ Child’s life finds an elegant parallel in the Dream of St Joseph; there the protagonists are inverted and in the room beyond the Virgin reads by candlelight beside Christ’s cot.  

The present painting is not listed in the inventory of Cardinal Ottoboni’s goods drawn up after his death on 5 March 1740.⁵ Olszewski has argued that the omission of a number of key commissions from the inventory, such as Trevisani’s Holy Family in the Cleveland Museum of Art, and indeed the overall low number of his paintings listed there (only thirty for approximately four decades of service), suggests that a substantial amount of Trevisani's paintings were disposed of before the inventory was completed. Olszewski further argues that if pictures from Ottoboni’s collection were indeed sold after his death, those by Trevisani would be the obvious choice, being both of the greatest value and not bound by the complicated primogeniture restrictions (fidecommissio) that affected so much of Ottoboni’s collection as a result of it being inherited from his uncle Pope Alexander VIII.⁶

The painting remains untraced after leaving the Ottoboni collection until the nineteenth century when it is believed to have been acquired in Italy in the 1860s by Mary Anne Shelley, a descendant of the previous owner. Mary Anne Shelley was the granddaughter of Samuel Shelley (1750–1808), a miniaturist and founder member of the Royal Watercolour Society, and cousin of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. She lived in Florence during the 1860s after the death of her husband and during this time became a close friend and supporter of Garibaldi.

 

 1. See F. R. DiFederico, Francesco Trevisani: Eighteenth-Century Painter in Rome, Washington 1977, p. 73, cat. no. P5, reproduced plate 100.

2. The Dead Christ with Angels at Stanford University Museum of Art, California, and the Three Marys in a private collection, on loan to Stanford University Museum of Art; op. cit., pp. 44–45, cat. nos. 24 and 25, reproduced plates 20 and 21.

3. See op. cit., p. 46, cat. no. 30, reproduced plate 24.

4. See op. cit.,, p. 46, cat. no. 29, reproduced plate 23.

5. E. J. Olszewski, The Inventory of Paintings of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni (1667–1740), New York/Oxford 2004.

6. See op. cit., pp. 10–11.