GENOA, Italy – Two titled topographical views by a journeyman 18th-century Venetian artist excelled at the Old Masters and 19th Century Paintings sale at Wannenes Art Auctions on March 5. Estimated at €3,000-€5,000 ($3,275-$5,460) each, panoramas of Istanbul and Corfu hammered for €150,000 ($164,000) and €65,000 ($71,000) respectively, or €202,500 ($221,150) and €87,750 ($95,835) with buyer’s premium. They were consigned from a private Italian collection. Results of the sale can be seen at LiveAuctioneers.
Both oils on canvas measured 2ft 6in by 5ft 9in (75cm by 1.73m) and were attributed to ‘a Venetian painter of the 18th or 19th century’ – the consensus emerging that they probably dated from circa 1750. They are possibly based on contemporary prints, but may have been painted by an artist who had visited both places.
Historical views of Istanbul are widely collected and often command a premium at auction. Another version of this scene taken from the Galata ridges, almost certainly by the same artist, forms part of the permanent collection of the Pera Museum in Istanbul. There, displayed alongside other views of the city, it is attributed to ‘an anonymous artist of the second half of the 18th century’.
As another settlement key to Venetian trade, the view of the fleet moored off Corfu provides a suitable pendant picture. From medieval times until well into the 17th century, the Venetian protectorate was recognized as a bulwark against Ottoman intrusion into the Adriatic – the complex fortifications of its Old Fortress shown here in great detail. The last siege of Corfu was in 1716 during the final Ottoman-Venetian War of 1714-18, which took place perhaps half a century before the picture was painted.
Leading the Genoese sale was the 3ft 5in by 5ft (1.03 by 1.49m) oil on canvas Saint Jerome by Giuseppe Ribera (1591-1652). Estimated at €40,000-€70,000 ($43,675-$76,435), it hammered for €240,000 ($262,000) and sold for €324,000 ($353,800) with buyer’s premium. The picture has a provenance to the 18th-century Portuguese nobleman Don Pedro Enrique de Bragança (1718-1761), but it was only in 2003 that it was reattributed by Gianni Papi and Nicola Spinosa, specialists in Caravaggesque painting, to Ribera. It is thought to have been created when the artist had just arrived in Rome in 1612, and was heavily influenced by Caravaggio’s French and Flemish followers.
The picture was sold as a Giuseppe Ribera at Christie’s in London in 2006 when it took £105,000 (roughly $134,260) – around half the price it made this month.
