CARLONE GIOVANNI BATTISTA Lot n° 32

CARLONE GIOVANNI BATTISTA (1603-1684) The sermon of Jesus to the Doctors Oil on canvas 129 x 153 cm Provenance: Genoa antiquarian market now private collection The fresco in the apse of the Annunziata was initially commissioned by the Lomellini family to Ansaldo, who died in 1638, then to Benso, who worked on it from 1940 to 1947.The lower part of the frescoes was then completed by G.B. Carlone with the figures of the fresco on the left representing the presentation of Jesus at the temple. Twenty years later in 1670 - as indicated by the date on the pages of the open book on the floor on the first floor at right - Carlone painted the scene on the right with the Preaching of Jesus to the Doctors. The work has measures and formal definition such as to suggest that it was not so much a sketch or first idea of the painter to conceive the composition as rather a finished model then presented to the Lommellini to receive the final approval for the commission of the work according to a typical operational practice of Carlone: compare for example the models for San Siro preserved at the National Gallery of Palazzo Spinola or those for the Chapel of Palazzo Ducale recently exposed to the exhibition 'Genoa in the Baroque Age'. In the case of the preparatory works for the frescoes of the Ducal Chapel, the exhibition has made it possible to juxtapose two works - an almost monochrome sketch with reduced dimensions (49 x 67 5) and an otherwise defined model with larger dimensions (121 x 87) - thus clarifying the painter's approach to large-scale works. A 'transverse painting of the dispute of Our Lord with the learned men, 3 p. high and 6 p. wide by Gio. Batta Carlone' is mentioned in a document dated 17 June 1700 in occasion of the division of the goods of Pier Francesco Lomellini among his five nephews after his death on 11 April of the previous year. In publishing this document Belloni (1988 p. 246) mentions the existence of two sketches for the fresco: one in a private collection - probably ours - and one in the church of Santa Zita. The smaller size of the painting makes it difficult to identify it with the one in the collection: we are therefore faced with another trope similar to the one for the Chapel in the Ducal Palace in which the painter made several studies for the important work he was about to do . The variations with respect to the fresco are minimal and concern almost only the architecture, and the inspiration for a composition of the Ansaldo, an illustrious precedent for Carlone, is undoubted. The source of inspiration for the composition was first for Ansaldo and then for Carlone a painting by Veronese - now in the Prado - documented by sources in the Contarini house in Padua (RIDOLFI 1648). This is made explicit by a drawing found by Newcome among the anonymous and attributed by her to Carlone where there are clear references to the Veronese canvas as well as to the composition on canvas and fresco by Carlone (Cfr. NEWCOME in Firenze 1989). The scholar does not exclude that Carlone had directly seen the Venetian painting or, in any case, had become aware of it through a copy made by his son Giovanni Andrea, documented in Padua. The drawing as well as the fresco differ from the sketch especially in the 'quadratures', suggesting to Newcome the highly probable hypothesis that the architecture of the choir of the Annunziata is the work of Benso while the Carlone is responsible only for the figures. Specific bibliography: BELLONI 1988 p. 245; NEWCOME in Florence 1989 pp. 99-102 fig. 59 ; ORLANDO in Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon in c.d.s. cm. 153x129