The Madonna and Child with Saints Dominic and Catherine of Siena

Details

CORRADO GIAQUINTO (MOLFETTA, NEAR BARI 1703-1766 NAPLES)
The Madonna and Child with Saints Dominic and Catherine of Siena
oil on canvas
25 x 19 ¼ in. (63.5 x 49 cm.)

Provenance

Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, New York, 17 June 1982, lot 139, where acquired by a private collector and by whom gifted on 24 April 2018 to the present owner.

Literature

P. & D. Colnaghi & Co., An Exhibition of Old Master Drawings, London, 1984, under no. 37, a black-chalk study of the figure of Saint Dominic.

Exhibited

South Hadley, MA, Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, on loan 1984-2020.

Sale Room Notice

We are grateful to Prof. Riccardo Lattuada for pointing out that this picture is, in fact, a bozzetto or ricordo of Giaquinto’s altarpiece in Poggiardo (Lecce), Chiesa Parrocchiale della Trasfigurazione di Cristo (see R. Lattuada, ‘Corrado Giaquinto e/o Geremia Rovari nella Parrocchiale di Nettuno e alter opera di Giaquinto inedite o poco note a Poggiardo, a Washington e altrove’, in E. Debenedetti ed., Studi sul Settecento Romano. Aspetti dell’arte del disegno: autori e collezionisti, II, Rome, 2022, pp. 11-42; this picture is mentioned on pp. 11 and 22, footnote 1).

Conditions of sale

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Lot Essay

This small devotional painting by Giaquinto is characteristically spontaneous in its brushwork and vibrant in its colors. Its modest dimensions and the fluid handling of paint might suggest that it is, in fact, a modello or presentation piece for a client, but no larger finished painting has come to light. Giaquinto clearly planned its design carefully: a preparatory drawing for the whole composition is in Barcelona, Museu Nacional d’Arte de Catalunya (fig. 1; inv. no. 027166-D), and a sketch for the figure of Saint Dominic was with P. & D. Colnaghi in 1984 (loc. cit.).

Giaquinto was born in Molfetta, near Bari, and worked in Naples, Turin and Rome, where he set up a thriving workshop. In 1753 Giaquinto was called to Madrid, where he succeeded Jacopo Amigoni as court painter to Ferdinand VI, King of Spain. This painting would appear to be a mature work by Giaquinto, almost certainly executed in Spain before his definitive return to Naples in 1762.

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