Antonio Joli

Louis Pessard, (1774–1855) and his wife Maria Domenica Anna Erba (1793–1876);

Thence by descent to his son, Hector Albert Louis Pessard (1815–1890);

Thence by descent to his son, Hector Louis François Pessard (1836–1895);

Thence by descent to his son, Roger André Pessard (1873–1961);

Thence by inheritance to his widow, Charlotte Françoise Léonie Hilaire (1896–1961);

Thence by inheritance to her brother, Léon François Hilaire (1906–1978);

Thence by descent to private European collectors, 1978;

By whom anonymously sold ("Property from a European private collection"), London, Sotheby's, 5 December 2018, lot 42;

Where acquired by the present owner.  

This recently- rediscovered view of the Croatian city of Pula is one of only three views of that city by Antonio Joli, surely the best-travelled artist of the eighteenth century. The painting has belonged to the same family for seven generations and once hung on the walls of Hector Louis François Pessard, the French intellectual and journalist who counted Victor Hugo and Emile Zola among his friends. In the family inventory of 1879 the work is listed as a view of Arles, the French coastal town which also boasts a Roman amphitheater. 

Born in Modena, Joli would spend most of his life travelling around Italy and further afield to Germany, Spain, Croatia and to England, where he would gain a fine reputation as a set-designer and vedutista. As a young man he travelled to Rome, where he studied the vedute and capricci of Giovanni Paolo Panini, under whom he almost certainly trained, and of Gaspar van Wittel. By 1718 he must have established himself in the Città Eterna for he was granted the important commission to decorate the Villa Patrizi in Rome, and by 20 April 1719 he had become a member of the Accademia di San Luca. He is first documented in Venice in the Spring of 1732 and here, once again, he would study and assimilate the style of the leading vedutisti, namely Canaletto, Marieschi and Carlevarijs.

The city of Pula on the Istrian peninsula, is immediately recognizable by its spectacularly well preserved Roman amphitheatre, built between 27 BC and 68 AD. The artist's two other known views of Pula are that formerly in the collection of the Earls of Winchelsea and Nottingham, sold in London, Sotheby's, 9 December 1987, and that in the collection of the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry.¹

Following first-hand inspection, the attribution has been endorsed by Charles Beddington, to whom we are grateful.

1. See R. Toledano, Antonio Joli, Turin 2006, pp. 264–65, cat. nos V.V.III.1 and 2 respectively, both reproduced.