From 4-11 November, the Viennese auction house Dorotheum are presenting the finest in classic art and antiques, sure to delight art lovers and collectors alike.
The sale features paintings by Old Masters from the various European schools. The spotlight is especially on The Holy Family with Saint Anne, John the Baptist and a Dove by Peter Paul Ruben and his workshop. Two other versions of this composition are known: one of about the same size in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and a larger one that is exhibited in the Los Angeles County Museum.
Rubens painted the work around 1609-10, shortly after his return to Antwerp from Italy. It was an important time in the life of the baroque painter as his workshop was filled with young apprentices. Rubens was also appointed court painter to the governor of the Spanish Netherlands and found happiness privately when he married Isabella Brandt, who came from a respected family.
While we encounter Christ as a small child in Rubens' work, Jusepe de Ribera painted him as a grown man, namely in the episode of the Gospel of Matthew in which Jesus was tempted by the devil in the desert. It is one of the few examples of his taking up this motif in the early 17th century.
The Italian Old Masters are particularly well represented among the top lots. One of them, Evaristo Baschenis, was a still-life painter who specialised in the representation of stringed instruments. He was also an enthusiastic musician himself, so his painting indulged in more than one of his passions.
Orazio Gentileschi's Portrait of a young woman as a Sibyl, a work that Caravaggio's successor probably painted before 1627, should also be emphasised. That year, a painting by Gentileschi with the same theme is mentioned in the collection of Giovanni Battista Bolognetti, Apostolic Secretary of Pope Paul V. It is likely that this is the present work and not the other version that is now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, since it was not completed.
Here is a masterpiece of portrait art: Giovanni Battista Moroni's Portrait of a Man with a Red Beard. The excellent use of colour and light for such a high-quality work as this is all the more astonishing when you consider that Moroni worked without preliminary studies, and only drew directly on the canvas.
The works of Venetian painters form a special focus of the Old Masters offer. One of the most important among them is by Jacopo Robuste, known as Tintoretto, who was a major exponent of Mannerism and furnished a large number of buildings in the lagoon city with his works of art. The present painting with Venus, Mars and Cupid was created in the 1550s and can be compared to other works on the same subject that are in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich and the Palazzo Pitti in Florence.
Venetian painting is most closely associated with numerous vedutas (detailed cityscapes) that have been painted over the centuries of the picturesque city. One of the artists who mastered vedute painting was Francesco Guardi, who is represented here with an impressionistic view of the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore.
Another of the top lots of the offer was made of Venice, but in the 19th century, at a time when its power as an independent republic was already was long in the past. Luigi Querena, however, brings the old days back to life in the present painting, which depicts an event from 1693: the departure of Doge Francesco Morosini, who went into the Great Turkish War on the side of the Holy League. Querena not only succeeded in providing an impressive representation of the events of that time, but also a detailed representation of the buildings and the many people who flocked to witness the spectacle.
Eugène Boudin chose a much more modest urban setting in 1892 as the motif for this painting from his later life. Instead of pomp and bustle, the open-air painter sought peace under a wide sky. Boudin, who was actually from Normandy, spent the summers in southern France, due to his health, where the present work was also created.
With Alfred von Wierusz-Kowalsi, one of the most important Polish painters of the 19th century is represented in the auction. He spent his childhood in the country, where carriage and sleigh rides were frequent. He processed these memories in numerous works, which he executed in the style of the Munich School, to which he had belonged since 1873.
The portrait of a young woman by Friedrich von Amerling from 1837, which has been in the same family for a long time, is a delightful rediscovery. The mournful expression on the face of the stranger suggests that the content of the letter she is holding is not very pleasant. The portrait was created during the artist's most creative and productive period.
The antiques auction of Classic Week opens on 4 November and features furniture, antiques, metalwork, glass and porcelain. The latter is excellently represented with this impressive pair of snowball flower vases from the Meissen manufactory.
