PROVENANCE -

Private Collection, France.

LITERATURE -

N. Spinosa, Pittura del seicento a Napoli: da Mattia Preti a Luca Giordano. Natura in posa, Naples, 2011, pp. 226-7, no. 199, illustrated.

N. Spinosa, Francesco Solimena (1657-1747) e le Arti a Napoli, Rome, 2018, I,

pp. 264-5, no. 89, illustrated in colour.

Francesco Solimena was the most important Neapolitan painter of his day. After receiving early training from his father, Angelo Solimena, with whom he executed a Paradise for the cathedral of Nocera, he settled in 1674 in Naples, where he worked in the studio of Francesco di Maria and later Giacomo del Po. Solimena painted many frescoes in Naples, altarpieces, mythological subjects, characteristically chosen for their theatrical drama, and portraits. His settings are suggested with few elements – steps, archways, balustrades, columns – in order to concentrate attention on the figures and their draperies, caught in pools and shafts of light. He and his active studio dominated Neapolitan painting from the 1690s through the first four decades of the 18th century. He acquired great wealth, became a baron, and was in constant demand by eminent, even royal patrons, including Prince Eugene of Savoy and Louis XIV of France.

Initially influenced by Luca Giordano, his style became modified by the classicism of Pietro da Cortona. The brownish shadows that are such an identifiable element of Solimena's style are indebted to Giovanni Lanfranco and Mattia Preti. Flickering patterning of light and shade, clarity of line, and theatricality are equally characteristic of Solimena's art.

Solimena’s large, efficiently structured atelier became a virtual academy at the heart of cultural life in Naples. Among his many pupils were Francesco de Mura (1696-1784), Giuseppe Bonito (1707-89), Pietro Capelli (d. 1734) Gaspare Traversi (c. 1722–1770) and most notably Corrado Giaquinto (1703-1765) and Sebastiano Conca (c. 1680-1764). The Scottish portraitist Allan Ramsay (1713-1784), spent three years in Solimena's studio. Despite working his whole life in Naples, Solimena was one of the most influential artists in Europe.

The attribution has been confirmed by Professor Riccardo Lattuada, who dates the painting to the 1680s,[i] and by Professor Nicola Spinosa, loc. cit., who dates it to 1687-90.

A smaller, derivative, version, in which Justice’s eyes are covered by her veil, is in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon.[ii] Another smaller version of weaker quality, and omitting the putto on the right, was offered at Sotheby’s, London, 4 December 2008, lot 253, and at Finarte, Rome, 28 May 2009, lot 80, and was subsequently with Corbelli Arte, Cortina, on all occasions as by Solimena.[iii] The provenance of the latter is confused by Spinosa, loc. cit., 2018, with that of our painting.

[i] Report dated 24 February 2010.

[ii] Oil on paper, 19 ¼ x 13 ¾ in. (49 x 35 cm.); N. Spinosa, ‘Pietro Bardellino. Un pittore poco noto del Settecento Napoletano’, Pantheon, July-August-September 1973, p. 283, note 36, as Pietro Bardellino? or Giacinto Diana?; N. Spinosa, ‘A propos d’un tableau de Francesco de Mura au Louvre’, La Revue du Louvre et des Musées de France, 1975, nos. 5-6, p. 374, as a late work by Giacinto Diana; M. Guillaume, Catalogue raisonné du Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon: Peintures italiennes, Dijon, 1980, p. 114, no. 204, illustrated, as ‘Ecole italienne (napolitaine), XVIIIe siècle’; Spinosa, op. cit., 2011, illustrated p. 40, as Solimena.

[iii] Ibid., illustrated p. 40, as Solimena.