29/5/23 - Acquisition - Washington, National Gallery of Art - At the end of January 2023, Sotheby’s New York sold several 17th century paintings, notably Italian, from the Fisch-Davidson collection (see the news item of 24/1/23). Some of them have found their way into museums: we reported here on the Rembrandt entourage acquired by Stockholm (see the news item of 24/3/23) and the Cavallino now at the National Gallery in London (see the news item of 1/2/23). Now it is the turn of the National Gallery in Washington to announce that it has bought Mattia Preti’s very fine painting of A Man Cutting Tobacco (ill. 1).
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- 1. Mattia Preti (1613-1699)
A Man Cutting Tobacco, 1660s
Oil on canvas - 103.2 x 90.5 cm
Washington, National Gallery of Art
Photo: Sotheby’s - See the image in its page
This work dates from the 1660s, i.e. from the artist’s Maltese period, when he arrived on the island in 1661, where he spent the almost forty years he still had to live. Elevated to the rank of knight "di Grazia" of the Order of Malta by Pope Alexander VII - meaning that while he remained a layman, he promised to live in accordance with the principles of this brotherhood - he had been commissioned to paint the Saint John’s Cathedral in Valletta, a project that kept him busy until 1666. He also produced many other decorations and paintings for Maltese churches and for members of the Order.
The painting purchased by Washington reappeared at public auction in 2001 in London, where it was acquired by Jean-Luc Baroni, who sold it to Mark Fisch and Rachel Davidson, before it was auctioned again in New York last January. It went to the Washington museum for $1,134,000 (including fees).
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- 2. Mattia Preti (1613-1699)
Ecce Homo, 1683
Oil on canvas - 227 x 350 cm
Malta, co-cattedrale di San Giovanni
Photo: unidentified author (public domain) - See the image in its page
The man seated cutting tobacco leaves, with a rather recognisable physiognomy due in particular to his baldness, can be found in other paintings by Mattia Preti, such as the Ecce Homo (ill. 2) in Saint John’s Cathedral, where he is holding Christ’s right arm. The National Gallery also believes to identify him in his other painting The Martyrdom of Saint Januarius (ill. 3), which also dates from the Maltese period, but this seems a little less obvious.
A late disciple of Caravaggio, Preti - born in 1613, three years after Caravaggio’s death - was undoubtedly one of his best successors, who followed much the same career, moving from Rome to Naples and then to Malta. The painting, with its naturalism very similar to that of Caravaggio, bears witness to this influence, which was undoubtedly also partly inherited from Ribera.
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- 3. Mattia Preti (1613-1699)
The Martyrdom of Saint Januarius
Oil on canvas - 156 x 205 cm
Washington, National Gallery of Art
Photo: National Gallery of Art - See the image in its page
It has been suggested that this figure is a certain Cianferlì, one of the four slaves owned by the artist and originally from the Middle East. He would have served as an assistant to Mattia Preti, who taught him painting and eventually freed him, much as Velázquez did with Juan de Pareja, to whom the Metropolitan Museum is devoting an exhibition to which we will return in the next few days.
We can only congratulate the National Gallery on this fine purchase, of a rather atypical painting - on the borderline between genre scene, still life in the foreground and perhaps portrait - in Mattia Preti’s oeuvre, and hope that its quality is the main reason for this acquisition, which we were surprised not to find was by a woman painter... The museum’s press release, which notes that the painting thus "improves the diversity of its Italian collection" and "expands the historical narratives that can be told about the slave trade in a global context", leaves little doubt as to the real motivations behind the purchase.