Sanquirico's Operatic Opus - PRESENTATION COPY TO MARIE-LOUISE, EMPRESS

PRESENTATION COPY TO MARIE-LOUISE, EMPRESS OF FRANCE & DUCHESS OF PARMA SANQUIRICO, Alessandro (1777–1849). Raccolta di varie Decorazioni Sceniche inventate e dipinte dal Pittore Alessandro Sanquirico per per l’I:R: Teatro alla Scala in Milano. [Milan: ca. 1826.] Here is what AI says it’s worth: $50,000. Oblong folio (15 7/16” x 18 7/16”, 392mm x 469mm). With a calligraphic ink manuscript title-page; graphite, ink and water-color dedication to Maria Luisa, heightened in gold; a calligraphic ink manuscript dedication to Maria Luisa; and 53 hand-colored aquatint-engraved plates. Sheets watermarked J. Whatman Turkey Mill, with dates as late as 1825; most dated 1816. Bound in contemporary cross-grained red morocco panelled gilt. On the spine, seven panels with pointillé six-pointed stars gilt. Gilt roll to the edges of the boards. Gilt inside dentelle.[1] Rubbing to the lower edges, with wear to the fore-corners. Small spots of worming to the front hinge. Starting at the head. End-papers renewed. Tanning to the water-color dedication leaf. Some tanning and foxing to the tissue guards, and quite sporadically to the plates. Bookplate of Calvin Bullock to the front paste-down. Sotheby’s ticket (26 July 1933, lot 228) to the recto of the rear binder’s blank. A superb volume. Alessandro Sanquirico (1777–1849) was the leading set-designer and scenographer for the Imperiale Reggio Teatro all Scala, which surely has claim to being the pre-eminent opera house in the world. Much of what is now thought of as grand opera is inflected by Sanquirico’s fantastical visions of exotic places and distant times, with fully built architectural elements and often a mobile back-drop. The present work is an essentially private issue of illustrations — drawn, doubtless, from Sanquirico’s own preparatory sketches — depicting scenes in productions on La Scala’s stage from 1812 through 1826. Even for the operaphile, many of the productions depicted (36 in toto) are recherché: von Winter’s 1818 Due Valdomiri (5 plates), Soliva’s 1817 Zingare d’Asturia, Mosca’s (1821) Emira Regina d’Egitto. What emerge with a thrill, however, are those operas still in popular repertoire — many in their premières: Meyerbeer’s Crociato in Egitto, Mozart’s Clemenza di Tito (2 plates), five works of Rossini (Maometto [II] (1822), Bianca [e Falliero], La Gazza Ladra, Ciro in Babilonia (2 plates) and Semiramide) and Paveri’s Gioventù di Cesare (2 plates). A further eleven of the productions depicted are “coreodramme” — danced dramas — by Salvatore Viganò, a composer and choreographer who was director of La Scala’s ballet school from 1804. The volume seems to have had no fixed number of plates; some have suggested a total of 79, but they were doubtless printed over rather a long span (some estimate 1816–1832, roughly Sanquirico’s tenure at La Scala). The present work, with its watermarks as late as 1825 and productions through 1826, was likely assembled shortly thereafter. Save a copy offered in 2022 by Aste Bolaffi, the bound copies that have come to market have all been colored. Uncolored single sheets are held in institutional libraries; they were probably sold piece-meal. Many of the plates bear the legend “A. Sanquirico inv. e dip.,” suggesting that the artist himself was the colorist. Sanquirico’s involvement becomes likelier considering the recipient of the volume: Marie Louise of Austria (Maria Luisa or Maria Luigia, 1791–1847), Empress of the French and Queen of Italy (from her marriage to Napoleon in 1810 to his abdication in 1814) and then Duchess of Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla. She was great-granddaughter of the Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa, who accepted the original plan for La Scala in 1776; she herself was the founding patron of the Teatro Regio di Parma, the opera house most closely associated with Verdi. Sanquirico must have eventually come to known her, as he designed the coronation of Marie Louise’s brother Ferdinand I as King of Lombardy-Venetia (r. 1835–1848). Between the calligraphic title-page and dedication-page is an illuminated allegorical presentation of the initials of Marie Louise executed in graphite, ink, watercolor and gold (the preparatory pricking can be seen under raking light). The central ML is coronetted and surrounded by rays of light chasing pale pink clouds to the extremities of the nearly square central panel with a yellow foliate border. Minerva is enthroned below and flanked by Greek pots: a pyx at left (with a winged putto removing a scroll) and a black-figure amphora at right (with two winged putti playing with small vessels). A pair of symmetrical panels flank this central scene, each with an elaborate tripod candelabrum with a caryatid of winged Fame holding a pair of trumpets, surmounted at the torch with the tools of art and science. The whole is surrounded with a gilt-and-red floral border. Though composed of stock elements, this is surely an original design by Sanquirico for this volume. As assured by the ticket at the rear of the volume, the volume was lot 228 in the 1933 Sotheby’s London sale of “The Library of Marie Louise, Archduchess of Austria, Empress of the French etc.,” where it was bought by Maggs. Perhaps Maggs sold it to Calvin Bullock (1867–1944), the investment banker and pioneer of mutual funds who assembled one of the greatest collections of Napoleonia. His collection (“Napoleon, Nelson and Their Time”) was put up by his heirs at Christie’s London on 8 May 1985, but the present volume was not in that sale; it was retained by his daughter, Katherine Seymour Bullock Cole (1908–1995), an Oxford graduate and débutante. Purchased at Doyle 7 May 1997, lot 195. [1] Essentially identical bindings are found on at least two other copies that have come to auction: Sotheby’s London 19 July 2022 lot 77 and Sotheby’s New York 20 April 2012 (Jacques Levy) lot 292.

Estimate:£29,895

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