Important Christmas Fine Art Auction: Haute Epoque, Jewels and Colonial Treasures
Lot 560:
We thank Professor Nicola Spinosa for his collaboration on the attribution of these artworks. Very important pair of large oil paintings on canvas, together with 18th C italian giltwood period frames. Framed measurements: 165 x 243, canvas measurements: 143 x 219 cm (each). Where we see, a carpet covering a table in the left corner where rest, respectively, a globe, an oval portrait, a sculpture, various books, a planetarium, a table clock and a world map, and another in which the viewer You can see the armor of a complete knight resting on the same table covered with a carpet, and, next to it, a jug, both inside separate Caprices. Work typically associated with the artistic canons of the Italian Baroque that directly connects with similar models of the famous painter of the Roman school Francesco Noletti, called il Maltese and born in Valletta, Malta (Valletta? c. 1611-Rome, 1654) Noletti was an Italian Baroque painter, born as his nickname indicates, in Malta and specialized in still life painting. Noletti’s still lifes have been attributed to the so-called Francesco Fieravino or Fioravanti, a confused creation of the 18th century, until, in the early 2000s, his true identity was discovered from an anonymous portrait kept at the Foundation for International Studies of La Valletta, in the building of the old university. His biography shows that around 1640 or something before he settled in Rome, where he married and collaborated with Andrea Sacchi, and died there on December 4, 1654. The death certificate he called him a “famous painter”. Although his last name was soon forgotten, he was praised, always by his nickname, by Cornelis de Bie and Joachim von Sandrart and later also by Joshua Reynolds, among several others. In the absence of signed works, two engravings published in 1703 by Jacobus Coelemans on paintings by the Maltese, entitled Omnis salus in ferro est and Quaedam sensum instrumenta, have served as the basis for establishing his style, in which some elements are repeated.5 His Rich still lifes are always characterized by the presence of Turkish rugs, tapestries and curtains covering the tables and shelves on which rest pieces of crockery, flowers and fruit arranged next to some precious object, musical instruments and framed paintings or mirrors. Three still lifes by the Maltese master are preserved in the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, where they entered in the 1920s with attributions to Antonio de Pereda and Pieter Boel. Provenance: important Spanish private collection.
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