Giovanni Domenico Ferretti

With Rudolf Richter, Dresden, 1953 (his plaque on the reverse);
Stored in the vaults of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden, 1953 until 2002 (inv. no. 53/0138);
Anonymous sale, Munich, Neumeister Kunstauktionen, 4 December 2002, lot 642 (as Circle of Eustache Le Sueur).

F. Baldassari, Giovanni Domenico Ferretti, Milan 2002, p.177, cat. no. 126, reproduced p. 178, fig. 126.

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 work is in wonderful condition. It has not been restored for many years and may have never been properly cleaned. The canvas has an old glue lining which is still serviceable to a degree, but the cracking is beginning to become quite raised and this lining could be re-examined. The painting is noticeably dirty. There are no visible restorations or damages. Under ultraviolet light, one can see a few isolated retouches in the upper part of the composition and beneath the foot in the lower left.
"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."

Giovanni Domenico Ferretti’s Christ Driving the Money Lenders from the Temple was first published in 2002 by Francesca Baldassari, having previously been hidden from public view since the early 1950s in the vaults of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden (inv. 53/138: see Provenance and Literature).  Pierre Rosenberg alerted Baldassari to the existence of the painting, having discovered it in the museum’s storage where it had languished with an erroneous attribution to Eustache Le Sueur. 

Baldassari notes stylistic affinities between this painting and a pair of pendant canvases formerly in the Gerini collection, depicting Moses and the Serpent (formerly in the Mary Jane Harris collection, New York) and The Liberation of Saint Peter (now in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, inv. no. 248).¹  The Moses and the Serpent was signed and dated on the reverse of the canvas, GIOV. DOM. FERETTI FE ANO 1736, though the inscription has since been concealed in the process of relining.  Baldassari dates the present canvas similarly to the ex-Gerini paintings, to the mid-1730s.

1.  F. Baldassari, under Literature, p. 175-176, cat. nos. 123-124, reproduced p. 177 and plates XL-XLI.