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Provenance

(Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Rome), by 1928;[1] purchased 1930 by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[2] gift 1939 to NGA.

[1] The painting is identified as being in the collection of Count Contini in Rome by Victor Lasareff, "Studies on Giuseppe Maria Crespi. Part One," Art in America XVII, no. 1 (December 1928): 17, fig. 3.

[2] The bill of sale between Contini Bonacossi and the Kress Foundation that includes this painting is dated 30 September 1930. The painting is described as "Hunting Scene by G.B. Crespi," and notes indicate it was credited for return to Contini Bonacossi on 13 September 1931, but was bought back in 1932, when it is listed again on a bill of 4 March. Neither bill indicates any prior provenance information; see also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/634. (Copies of the bills of sale are in NGA curatorial files.)

Exhibition History

1929
Il seicento italiano, Palazzo delle Biennale, Venice, 1929, no. 3, repro.
1935
Mostra del settecento bolognese, Palazzo Comunale, Bologna, 1935, no. 39, repro.
1936
The Twentieth Anniversary Exhibition of the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Official Art Exhibit of the Great Lakes Exposition, Cleveland Museum of Art, 1936, no. 152, pl. 39.
1936
Venetian Painting of the XVIIIth Century, M. Knoedler and Company, New York, 1936, no. 7.
1938
Tiepolo and His Contemporaries, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1938, no. 4, repro., as Diana and Her Nymphs Resting.
1939
Dutch and Italian Masterpieces from the Samul H. Kress Collection, Dayton Art Institute, 1939-1940, no cat.
1939
Masterworks of Five Centuries, Golden Gate International Exhibition, San Francisco, 1939, no. 28, repro.

Technical Summary

The support is a hammered copper sheet 0.01 cm thick. It is mounted on a plywood panel with metal edge strips. Its surface was prepared with a layer of opaque green paint with large particles of white, perhaps applied over an initial priming layer. Before it was completely dry, palm or thumb prints were pressed into the green layer to produce a texture that is also apparent in the subsequent paint layers. The green ground serves as a middle tone that constitutes the lighter horizon level in the sky and serves as the basis for the darker areas. The paint is applied wet-in-wet in thin, opaque layers with semitransparent glazes in the sky, leaves, and shadowed drapery folds. Semitranslucent glazes were used for the facial details, which are not sharply delineated and thus produce a slightly blurred, sfumato effect. While there is no high impasto, drapery folds and other details are applied in thick, pastose paint more textured by the brush.

There are small scattered losses along the lower edge. Minor abrasion has occurred along the remaining edges and in the sky. Discolored varnish was removed and the painting was restored in 1931 by Stephen Pichetto. The varnish is now slightly discolored.

Bibliography

1929
Lasareff, Victor. "Studies on Giuseppe Maria Crespi." Art in America 17 (1929): 17, fig. 3.
1932
Arslan, Wart. "Appunti su Magnasco, Sebastiano e Marco Ricci." Bollettino d'Arte 26 (1932): 210.
1941
Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 48, no. 173.
1942
Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 242, repro. 91.
1944
Frankfurter, Alfred M. The Kress Collection in the National Gallery. New York, 1944: 58, repro., as Cupids with Sleeping Nymphs.
1945
Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1945 (reprinted 1947, 1949): 138, repro.
1959
Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 234, repro.
1965
Matteucci, Anna. Giuseppe Maria Crespi. (I maestri del colore 92.) Milan, 1965: no. 5, color pl. 5.
1965
Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 34..
1968
National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 27, repro.
1973
Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XVI-XVIII Century. London, 1973: 102-103, fig. 190.
1975
European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 86, repro.
1976
Liebmann, Michael. Giuseppe Maria Crespi. Dresden, 1976: 20-21, fig. 5 (revised translation of Russian edition, 1965).
1976
Merriman, Mira Pajes. "Giuseppe Maria Crespi's 'Jupiter among the Corybantes." The Burlington Magazine 118 (1976): 468, no. 12.
1977
Roli, Renato. Pittura bolognese 1650-1800. Dal Cignani ai Gandolfi. Bologna, 1977: 106, 251, fig. 159b.
1979
Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. Washington, 1979: 1:144-146; 2:pl. 102.
1980
Merriman, Mira Pajes. Giuseppe Maria Crespi. Milan, 1980: 80; 82-86; 99-100; 282, no. 172; fig. 172.
1983
Puglisi, Catherine Rose. "A Study of the Bolognese-Roman Painter Francesco Albani." Ph.D. dissertation, Institute of Fine Arts, New York, 1983: 125, fig. 44.
1985
European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 106, repro.
1986
Spike, John. Giuseppe Maria Crespi and the Emergence of Genre Painting in Italy. Exh. cat. Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, 1986: 18, 123, fig. 7.1.
1990
Giordano Viroli in Giuseppe Maria Crespi 1665-1747. Exh. cat. Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna; Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. Bologna and Stuttgart, 1990: 42, 65, 192.
1996
De Grazia, Diane, and Eric Garberson, with Edgar Peters Bowron, Peter M. Lukehart, and Mitchell Merling. Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1996: 67-71, repro. 69.

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