Filippo d'Angeli or de Liagno, called Filippo Napoletano

Francesco Maria Niccoló Gabburi, his inscription in pen and brown ink, attached to the backing;
probably purchased by William Kent in 1758;
With P. & D. Colnaghi, London,
purchased by Paul Oppé, in 1934 (£14)

London, Royal Academy, The Paul Oppé Collection, 1958, no. 411 (as Balthazar Lauri);
Naples, Museo di Capodimonte and Museo Pignatelli, Civiltà del Seicento a Napoli, 1984, II, no. 3.15, reproduced

M. Roethlisberger, 'Around Filippo Napoletano', Master Drawings, vol. XIII, no. 1, 1975, pp. 23-4, pl. 5 (the related painting reproduced fig. 1);
M. Chiarini, Teodoro Filippo di Liagno detto Filippo Napoletano, Florence 2007, p. 460, reproduced fig. 384

Laid down on an old mount. Overall in very good condition. A few small stains, the more prominent two located under the arch to the left and in the sky upper right. Some light staining around the edges of the sheet. There is some staining around the edges of the mount where it was previously glued/attached to another mount. Otherwise pen and ink and wash remain vibrant and fresh and overall image is strong.
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An extremely rare example of a drawing by Filippo Napoletano relating to one of his painted works, this splendid, finished sheet is a full-size preparatory study, with differences, for the artist’s small painting on copper, now in the Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti (fig. 1).¹  This beautiful, enclosed view must depict a real location, which was also the inspiration for another, slightly larger, painting on copper by the artist.² 

The attribution to Filippo Napoletano and the association with the Pitti painting were first recognised by Marcel Roethlisberger, and published by him in 1975 (see Literature).  Roethlisberger also noted that the painting must have been made during the artist’s Florentine sojourn, between 1617 and 1621, when he worked in the service of Cosimo II de’Medici.  As Marco Chiarini wrote in his monograph on the artist, the painting was in fact delivered to the Guardaroba of Palazzo Pitti on 11 September 1618, and this is the terminus ante quem for the dating of the present sheet.  The small copper is recorded in the Medici inventories from 1638 to 1666, and in 1695 it was transferred to the Villa of Poggio a Caiano, to become part of a cabinet of ‘opere in piccolo’ put together by Ferdinando de’Medici, son of Cosimo III.³ 

The painting was still in situ at Poggio a Caiano in 1733⁴, as is noted in an extensive inscription on the backing of the sheet (fig. 2), written by the great collector Francesco Maria Niccoló Gaburri (1676-1742), who owned the drawing.  Gaburri believed, however, that both the drawing and the painting were by Filippo Lauri, but as Roethlisberger pointed out, the Spanish form of Filippo Napoletano’s name was Filippo de Llaño, Italianized as di Liagno, which could easily gave rise to confusion with the name of Filippo Lauri.  In more recent times, an attribution to Lauri’s father, Balthazar Lauri, was also suggested, before the correct solution was established by Roethlisberger.

The great importance and rarity of the Oppé drawing lie in the fact that it is the only drawing by Filippo Napoletano that can be connected with a securely attributed painting by the artist, a painting which, furthermore, is fundamental to the reconstruction of Filippo Napoletano’s painted oeuvre.⁵  The drawing corresponds very closely to the final painting, although the latter incorporates a number of added details and embellishments, especially in the foreground, where an extra boat and some more figures fill the entire lower section.  There is also more focus in the painting on certain decorative elements, such as the laundry (according to Roethlisberger almost a signature of the artist), which is moved and expanded in the lower window, or the pot with flowers that the artist has added at the top of the building, just behind the ruined arch.  Perhaps the main difference, though, is in the contrast of light and shadow, used in the painted work to create a strong and dramatic effect, but only suggested in the drawing by a delicately applied wash, which balances and enlivens the composition with a soft shade of light brown.  Extremely subtly drawn, the present sheet conveys with minute and detailed precision the texture of the walls and the differentiation of the bricks, as well as the shrubs and foliage growing randomly on the walls.  The lines in pen and ink are neat and controlled, but animated by the use of a fluid wash to indicate the areas of light and shadow.  The drawing is structured by simple and clear architectural forms, and it is easy to understand why Roethlisberger summed up the related painting as ‘an authentic piece of realism, his only closed architectural view, and his smallest picture’. 

The very personal style of Filippo Napoletano has, like so much Italian landscape art of the early 17^th century, a decidedly northern quality, which ultimately derives from the influence of Paul Bril (c. 1554-1626) and his short-lived but ultimately more innovative elder brother Matthijs (1550-1583), the real fathers of the landscape genre in Italy. There are also some parallels with the styles of Filippo’s contemporaries among the Dutch Italianates, notably Cornelis van Poelenburgh (1594/5-1667) and Bartholomeus Breenbergh (1598/1600-1657), and it seems likely that he in turn influenced certain artists of the next generation, notably Thomas Wyck (1621-1677), whose picturesque enclosed views with arches became a favourite and very popular subject. 

It is fascinating that the Oppé drawing was owned by the Florentine nobleman, painter and collector Francesco Maria Niccoló Gaburri (1676-1742), a pupil of Onorio Marinari (1617-1715), and the author of an important Vite dei Pittori, which was never published but survives in a manuscript in the Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence.  It appears that the majority of Gaburri’s collection of drawings made their way to England, having been acquired in 1758 by the dealer William Kent.⁶

^1. Florence, Galleria Palatina, inv. 1890 n. 1214

^2. Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi, inv. 1890 n. 7903; see M. Chiarini, op. cit., p. 263, n. 33, reproduced

^3. Ibid., p. 262

^4. Not 1773, as Roethlisberger wrote in his article; by that date the painting was already in the Uffizi.

^5. See M. Chiarini, loc. cit.

^6. For more information on Gaburri, see N. Turner, 'The Gaburri/Rogers series of drawn self-portraits and portraits of artists', Journal of the History of Collections, vol. 5, no. 2, 1993