Antonio Joli

Probably anonymous sale, Paris, Ader Picard Tajan, 23 February 1978, no. B (as attributed to Gaspar van Wittel, called Vanvitelli, Vue présumée de la ville de Trente);

Huberto Poletti (1954–2019), Milan;

From whom acquired by the present owner on 15 March 1996.

This painting is a rare example of a view of a Lombard city in Antonio Joli's corpus. The artist is known to have spent some time in the region in the first half of the 1740s, before his trips to London and Germany of 1744. On the left of the composition, Joli has delineated the peaks of the Campo dei Fiori mountain, located in northern Varese. The Holy Road, comprised of 14 chapels, and the Sanctuary can be noted winding up the mountain face.

Note on Provenance

This picture was previously owned by Huberto Poletti, whose collection focused on Lombard art of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Among other works, the collection included two still lifes by Giacomo Ceruti (1698–1767), which hang today in the Getty Museum, Los Angeles.¹ A monumental canvas by Paolo Pagani (1655–1716), depicting the Fall of the rebel angels, was loaned by Guglielmo and Marianna Poletti, Huberto's children, to the Pinacoteca Civica di Como in 2021.

We are grateful to Ralph Toledano for endorsing the attribution to Joli on the basis of digital images.

¹ Object no. 2021.38.1; oil on paper laid on canvas, 32 x 45 cm. (framed); https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/10A1RG; Object no. 2021.38.2; oil on paper laid on canvas, 32 x 45 cm. (framed); https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/10A1RD.