PROVENANCE -

(Presumably) Saverio Mottola.

The Fürsten zu Oettingen-Wallerstein, Maihingen, Bavaria, until 1999.

Private Collection, London.

LITERATURE-

R. Lattuada, ‘Un disegno e un dipinto inediti di Filippo Falciatore, ed una nuova opera di Domenico Antonio Vaccaro’, in Scritti di storia dell’arte in onore di Sylvie Béguin, Naples, 2001, pp. 531-1 and 536, notes 14-16, fig. 3 and pl. XIII (transposed with pl. XIV).

L. Marty de Cambiaire, ‘Filippo Falciatore dessinateur: trois nouvelles propositions’ in Le Dessin Napolitain. Actes du colloque international Ecole Normale Supérieure, 6-8 mars 2008, ed. F. Solinas and S. Schütze, Rome, 2010, pp. 170-2, fig. 5.

A full-size study for the panel exhibited by Matthiesen and Stair Sainty Matthiesen (Collectanea, London and New York, January - March 1999, pp. 82-3, no. 15, illustrated in colour p. 85 and with a detail on p. 81) and now in the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach (Lattuada, op. cit., fig. 2 and pl. XIV, transposed with pl. XIII). Measuring 58.2 x 71.3 cm., the painting corresponds closely with this drawing in the foreground group of figures and animals, but the putti at upper right, Juno’s peacocks and the fleeing soldiers differ widely, and the rainbow is omitted.

Lattuada describes this drawing as ‘sicuramente tra i disegni più ragguardevoli del Settecento napoletano che ci siano giunti sinora’. He also points out that, although he has been unable to trace a Saverio Mottola, the Mottola family was one of the oldest of Naples (see Mottola di Amato, Storia di casa Mottola, Naples, 1965).