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View full screen - View 1 of Lot 111. The Death of Seneca.

Luca Giordano, called Fa Presto

The Death of Seneca

Auction Closed

March 22, 07:15 PM GMT

Estimate

20,000 - 30,000 EUR

Lot Details

Description

Luca Giordano, called Fa Presto

Naples 1634 - 1705

The Death of Seneca


oil on canvas

unframed: 82 x 75 cm.; 32¼ x 29½ in.

framed: 106 x 100 cm.; 41¾ x 39⅜ 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;
Where acquired by the present owner by 2001.
W. Prohaska in Luca Giordano 1634–1705, S. Cassani and M. Sapio (eds), exh. cat., Naples, Vienna and Los Angeles 2001, pp. 152–5, no. 38b, reproduced in colour;
O. Ferrari and G. Scavizzi, Luca Giordano. Nuove ricerche e inediti, Naples 2003, pp. 45 and 165, no. A080, reproduced;
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. 76–77, no. 15, reproduced in colour;
M. Fleischer in Lust am Schrencken. Ausdrucksformen des Grauens, exh. cat., Vienna 2014, p. 56, no. 22, reproduced in colour.

In the fifteenth book of the Annals, Tacitus relates the suicide of the Stoic philosopher and advisor to the Emperor Nero, Seneca.1 According to this account, Seneca was implicated in a conspiracy instigated by the plebeian Piso against the emperor, who subsequently gave the imperial order that he commit suicide.


Giordano depicts Seneca to the right of the composition, propped up by a figure behind him, as blood slowly drips from his severed arteries. His weakened voice draws his saddened pupils close, writing tools in hand to record his final teachings, as life slowly drains from his aged body. 


This work is a reduced replica of the celebrated work in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, dated to the mid-1660s.2 This appears to be the earliest treatment of a subject repeated by Giordano a number of times in versions datable to the 1680s onwards.3



1 For a detailed account of this episode see Tacitus, The Annals, Book XV, pp. 60–65, G.G. Ramsey (ed.), London 1904, pp. 296–301.

2 Inv. no. 516/3677; oil on canvas; 259 x 241 cm; https://www.sammlung.pinakothek.de/en/artwork/A9xlePgLWv/luca-giordano/der-sterbende-seneca

3 For a discussion about the dating of the different versions see Prohaska in Naples, Vienna and Los Angeles 2001, p. 152.


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