Giovanni Pratesi: The Florentine Eye

Luca Giordano, called Fa Presto

Aurora

Auction Closed

March 22, 07:15 PM GMT

Estimate

30,000 - 40,000 EUR

Lot Details

Description

Luca Giordano, called Fa Presto

Naples 1634 - 1705

Aurora

oil on canvas

unframed: 76 x 102 cm.; 29⅞ x 40⅛ in.

framed: 88.5 x 115 cm.; 34⅞ x 45¼ in.

This lot has an artistic export license. Please refer to the specialist department for further information about export procedures and shipping costs.

Private collection, Florence;
Where acquired by the present owner by 2003.

N. Spinosa in Luca Giordano, la imagen como ilusión / l’immagine come illusione, N. Spinosa and A.E. Perez Sanchez (eds), exh. cat., Mexico City 2004, pp. 96–97, no. 24, reproduced in colour.

This work is characteristic of Luca Giordano's later, more exuberant style, moving away from a darker Caravaggist tenebrism (exemplified in The Death of Seneca, lot 112) in favour of a brighter palette which embraced color and dynamic Baroque movement. It is the second iteration of a larger work of the same subject, originally commissioned by Marie Louise d'Orléans (1662–1689) as part of a mythologically themed cycle of at least 20 paintings, executed between 1687 and 1689.¹ The other version of Aurora is on loan from the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid to the Spanish Embassy in The Hague.²

¹ For a discussion about the cycle of paintings commissioned by Marie Louise d'Orléans see O. Ferrari and G. Scavizzi, Luca Giordano, Naples 1992, vol. I, pp. 110–11.

² Ferrari and Scavizzi 1992, vol. I, p. 324, no. A455b, vol. II, reproduced fig. 586.

This lot has an artistic export license. Please refer to the specialist department for further information about export procedures and shipping costs.