18th Century Rococò Style Antonio Balestra Nativity Oil on Canvas

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Antonio Balestra
18th Century Rococò Style Antonio Balestra Nativity Oil on Canvas
Early 18th century

Name: 18th Century Rococò Style Antonio Balestra Nativity Oil on Canvas
Brand: Antonio Balestra
Rating: 3 (1 reviews)

About the Item

Oil painting on canvas depicting Nativity, Antonio Balestra (Verona, 1666 - 1740). The work (oil on canvas, cm 46 x 64), originally belonged to Pope Clement XII Corsini, recently comes from the Roman collection of Falcone Lucifero (1898-1997), Marquis of Aprigliano and Minister of the Royal House of Savoy from 1944 to 1946. The ancient Corsini provenance of the work is evidenced, in the reverse, by two old printed labels with pen additions (hereafter in italics). "IX - Prop. B. PANDOLFINI - Prov. CASA CORSINI - Inv. N. 306 Note N. 25". In the first (nineteenth century) we read: "CORSINI ROMA/ Number 157" and, below, other indecipherable writing for lacuna in the paper; in the second (late nineteenth, early twentieth century): From the first label it is clear that the canvas in question was originally in the Roman collection of the princes Corsini, founded in Rome, between 1737 and 1749, by Cardinal Neri Corsini with the advice of his bitechnician Giovanni Gaetano Bottari, which also included the paintings of Clement XII, pope from 1730 to 1940. On the death of Prince Neri Tommaso, in 1856, the Corsini moved to Florence and, in 1883, the palace (formerly Riario alla Lungara), seat of the collection, was sold to the State by his son and heir, Thomas. Together with the property was sold a large part of the works of art kept there, then intended to constitute the main museum of the National Gallery in Rome. Our painting, however, was not included in this assignment, but was brought to Florence, where it is found in the Catalogue of the Galleria dei principi Corsini, compiled by the sculptor Ulderico Medici, and here printed in 18861. The second label, datable, for the printing and graphological characteristics, between the end of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the following century, testifies to the participation of the painting in an auction, on behalf of a "B. Pandolfini" property, with indication of origin: from "Casa Corsini". The "B" above goes then, with evidence, to indicate Beatrice Pandolfini, daughter of that Tommaso Corsini (1835- 1919), prince and senator of the Kingdom of Italy, protagonist of the transfer to the State of the Roman property of the family, in 1883. Beatrice Corsini (1868-1955) had married in Florence (1889) Count Roberto Pandolfini, a career military officer, later a Member of the Chamber of Deputies from 1904 to 1909. She probably came into possession, due to hereditary partitions, of many paintings of the Florentine collection of the father; paintings successively, all or in part, from the same places to the auction. Finally, it is unknown how the work in question arrived in the collection of the last owners, the Marquises of Aprigliano, from the above-mentioned period. Going back to the above mentioned catalogue of the collection Corsini, in Florence, of 1886, the author, the sculptor Medici, attributes this Madonna with the Child and Saint Giuseppe to the painter Sebastiano Conca, without however bringing back, about, any endorsement or documentation; authorship, however, on which disagree the oldest inventories of the original Roman collection. In an Inventory of 1750 we read in fact, at no. 66, in the Gallery of Mrs. Duchess: "Gift of the Archbishop of Salzburg to the Pope... A Madonna perhaps by Cignani" and, below, a clarification by the curator of the collection, Abbot Giovanni Bottari : "It is p. traverso, and there is the Child and St. Joseph". Otherwise, the Note of the existing paintings in the apartments of the Palazzo Longara... of 1808: in the "Camera towards the Secret Garden... A Madonna and Child Jesus, and S. Giuseppe, original of the Lanfranco School". The judges on the painting were therefore discordant, but understandable if taken to knowledge and cultural skills of times not supported by the extraordinary possibilities of comparison of the photo graphics: the luministic effects radiant from the divine Child could in fact recall, to the memory of the Medici, the basin of certain Nativity, proposed, already late, in an advanced eighteenth century; or the robust chiaroscuro, Emilian taste and still seventeenth century, To the author of the 1808 Note, recall certain things of Lanfranco or Badalocchio. Otherwise the opinion of Bottari, advancing with some doubt the name of the Bolognese Carlo Cignani, was closer to the truth, at least for a certain approximation stylistic and cronological. In fact the making and culture of the Madonna with the Child and Saint Joseph in object appear with evidence fruit of that particular phase of stylistic updating on the sources of Correggio (much similar to that of the contemporary Carlo Cignani) conducted, in the first years of the eighteenth century, by the Venetian Antonio Balestra (Verona, 1666 - 1740). He is a very versatile artist who has an extraordinary success, both in Italy and abroad, among his contemporaries. The varied and prestigious production of the Crossbow was undoubtedly stimulated by the many experiences derived from study trips and stays in various places of the peninsula: just over twenty years old he left his native Verona to go to Venice, where he remains three years at the school of Antonio Bellucci; around the 1690 is in Rome near Carlo Maratta not that in contact with the Roman antiquities and the more recent classicism of Raphael and the Bolognese Carracceschi. After an episode in Naples, interested almost exclusively in the works of Lanfranco, he obtained, in Rome, the first prize for the drawing of the Accademia di San Luca (1694), but soon after, with a short stop in Bologna, he returned to settle between Verona and Venice. Very important, and he himself notes it in his autobiography, was then the journey of study, made in 1700, through Lombardy and Emilia, touching Bologna, Modena, Parma, Piacenza and Milan. In that occasion, he writes, in the third person, "much pleased with the works of Carracci but individually by Correggio on which he did some little study"; and in Modena, in fact, he had to be exceedingly struck by the straight vision of the famous "Night" Allegri, still the jewel in the crown of the Ducal Galleria Estense. Deep suggestion to which will not be extraneous the numerous experiments, with "fake Nativity at night", with the Crossbow in the years immediately following this artistic exhibition. Among the best known works of these times, and of this subject, we recall the important painting (1702) currently at the Scuola di San Teodoro in Venice (but coming from the Scuola Grande della Carità), the analogous version of the church of St. Simon in Borca di Cadore, the great telero (1704 ca.) in S. Zaccaria of Venice or the Adorazione dei pastori (1708) of the Cathedral of Padua. Very close to our canvas for chiaroscuro solutions, measures and intense devotional force is then the Madonna and Child of the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, both seduced by the old and lucky correct idea of a darkness conquered by the radiance of light emanated from the Child; both refined, among other things, by the similar gestures of the Virgin who with his left hand raises a strip of white linen on which lies the divine newborn. The all too recognizable references to Allegri should not, however, imply an understanding of the personal poetic contribution of Antonio Balestra, committed to reconciling elements of varied culture, including, in the first place, the Roman Maratta. The painting in question is in fact very far from the softness materic of Correggio: here, as well as in another similar work of the artist, perhaps later, the Adoration of the shepherds, recently appeared on the market, the lines are drawn with precision, the volumes are solid, the composting closed in an articulated plasticity of forms. These results of classicizing painting, we grant it to the erudite opinion of the Bottari, bring therefore, in some ways, the Crossbow to the ways of the Cignani countryman, well-suited to the aspirations of his time, detergents for the transition of taste from the seventeenth to Eighteenth century; ways that, thanks to the artist Veronese had the merit to introduce in Veneto, now forced in traditional forms, the contemporary Roman culture, with undoubted effects also on the Piazzetta and the young Tiepolo. The work is accompanied by an expertise by Prof. Massimo Pirondini Provenance : Leopoldo Antonio Eleuterio Firmian, Bishop of Salzburg (as indicated by the inventory of Cardinal Neri Maria Corsini, 1750, "Inventory of all the paintings you donated, that you bought, that you find in Ecc'ma Casa Corsini the present with the names of those, from which they are donated. The postille and the additions are by hand of Monsignor Bottari. T. C. [Tommaso Corsini]. Made The Year 1750", Rome, Palazzo Riario alla Lungara,); Rome, Pope Clement XII Corsini. Rome, Corsini Collection (1730, as Cignani and in 1808 referred to Giovanni Lanfranco). Florence, Galleria Corsini (1856 ?; according to the label on the back). Florence, Beatrice Corsini Pandolfini Collection (second label on the back: "IX - Prop. B. PANDOLFINI - Prov. CASA CORSINI - Inv. N. 306 Note N. 25".) Florence, Rome, Falcone Lucifero Collection (1898-1997), Marquis of Aprigliano and Prime Minister of the Royal House of Savoy Rome, Private collection Bibliography : U. Medici, Catalogue of the Galleria dei principi Corsini, Florence 1886, n. 456 (as Sebastiano Conca) G.Magnanimi, Inventories of the Roman collection of the Corsini princes, Bulletin of Art, n.7, 1980 (I parte) n.8, 1980 (II parte). Dimensions : 46 x 64 unframed

Creator:
Antonio Balestra (1666 - 1740)
Creation Year:
Early 18th century
Dimensions:
Height: 18.12 in (46 cm)Width: 25.2 in (64 cm)Depth: 1.97 in (5 cm)
Medium:
Canvas,Oil
Movement & Style:
Rococo
Period:
Early 18th Century
Condition:
Gallery Location:
roma, IT
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU148827622102

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