OLD MASTERS, COLONIAL ART, JEWELS & WATCHES
Lot 269:
Oil on canvas. No frame attached. Canvas measurements: 91 x 66 cm. Antonio Viladomat y Manalt (in Catalan: Antoni Viladomat i Manalt) (Barcelona, March 20, 1678 – January 22, 1755) was a Spanish baroque painter of the 18th century and one of the most famous Catalan painters of the same century. He was the son of the gilder Salvador Viladomat Ràfols and Francesca Manalt. His brother, Agustín Viladomat, continued his father’s job. According to historiography, he learned his first lessons in the workshop of Pasqual Bailon Savall, a painter from Berga like his father, author of part of the paintings in the chapel of Saint Benedict of the monastery of Sant Cugat. The early death of his first teacher (1691) led him to enter as an apprentice in the workshop of the painter Joan Baptista Perramon (1692), with whom he remained between six and nine years. Historically, the decoration of the Jesuit church in Tarragona (1698) and the paintings on the vault of the chapel of the Convalescent House of the Hospital de la Santa Cruz in Barcelona (1703) are attributed to him, but there are well-founded doubts about his more How unlikely. His extensive career allowed him to paint for almost all the convents and monasteries of Barcelona, with religious painting being the genre that he loved the most. The cycle of twenty paintings on the Life of Saint Francis of Assisi for the old Franciscan convent of Barcelona, today in the National Museum of Art of Catalonia. Bibliography: Ponz, Travel of Spain. Quílez (1993), p. 215, which questions the statement made by Mengs as well as the fact that “a local artist and a certain mediocrity” could arouse his admiration. Provenance: private collection, Madrid.
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