卡洛‧薩拉切尼

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This work is in extremely good condition. The varnish is slightly soft; if it were freshened, the work could be hung in its current state. The copper is flat, and the paint layer is stable throughout. The work has been beautifully cleaned, and the only retouches of any note are in the white gown of the angel in the upper left.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

This hitherto unknown copper by Carlo Saraceni is a welcome addition to his catalogue of paintings. Most likely painted in Rome, it probably dates to the first decade of the seventeenth century when artists from all corners of Italy and Europe descended on the Eternal City to create a flourishing artistic scene. Northern artists brought with them the use of copper as a support, a development which provided Italian painters with a novel vehicle to produce different textures and finishes to their painted surfaces. From Bologna the Carracci family and their satellites imported the horizontal bipartite structure of their designs which was to have a profound influence on the non-Caravaggesque, Classical strand of Roman painting and which can be felt in the present work.

The composition is laid out with the artist's characteristic care. In the upper section the Angel of the Lord descends towards Christ in a strong diagonal from upper left to lower right. In the lower section, in which the Garden of Gethsemene is markedly darker than the warm heavenly shaft of light above, the three sleeping disciples are arranged in a solid pyramidal shape with the upper-most figure directing our gaze towards the impending danger, embodied by the soldiers, approaching from the landscape beyond, in a diagonal which runs parallel to the one in the section above. A comparable work which displays similar care in the disposition of the figures and the layering of the composition is Saraceni's Paradise, also on copper, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.¹ Datable to the very first years of the seventeenth century, the New York painting shares several features with the present work, among them the carefully described figures which populate the design, and the similar palette employed.

1. See M. G. Aurigemma (ed.), Carlo Saraceni, un veneziano tra Roma e l'Europa, 1579-1620, Rome 2013, pp. 170-71, cat. no. 1, reproduced in color.