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Sebastiano Ricci

A Miracle of Saint Francis of Paola, 1733

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 30

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 84.9 × 35.2 cm (33 7/16 × 13 7/8 in.)

framed: 95.4 × 46.2 × 5.4 cm (37 9/16 × 18 3/16 × 2 1/8 in.)

Credit Line

Samuel H. Kress Collection

Accession Number

1939.1.71

Artists / Makers

Sebastiano Ricci (artist) Venetian, 1659 - 1734

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Provenance

Count Grigory Stroganov [1829-1910], Rome.[1] (Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Rome, 1927); purchased 1931 by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[2] gift 1939 to NGA.

[1] According to National Gallery of Art, Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture, Washington, D.C., 1941: 169. This painting and its pendant (NGA 1939.1.72) do not appear in catalogues of Stroganov sales or in those of the collection, which include only selected works. According to Antonio Muñoz, La collezione Stroganoff, Rome, 1910, Stroganov amassed his collection c. 1880-1890 and bought many things from the sale of Cardinal Immenraet. It has not been possible to locate a catalogue of the Immenraet collection.

[2] The dates are given on the back of a photograph sent to the Frick Art Reference Library by Alessandro Contini Bonacossi at the NGA on 1 July 1969. The painting and its pendant are documented in the Kress collection in 1932 by Alfred M. Frankfurter, "Eighteenth Century Venice in a New York Collection", The Fine Arts 19 (December 1932): 30; see also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/64.

Associated Names

Contini Bonacossi, Alessandro, Count
Kress Foundation, Samuel H.
Stroganoff, Grigory Sergeievich Count

Exhibition History

1929: Il Settecento italiano, Palazzo delle Biennale, Venice, 1929, no. 19.

1932: An Exhibition of Italian Paintings Lent by Mr. Samuel H. Kress of New York to Museums, Colleges, and Art Associations, travelling exhibition, 24 venues, 1932-1935, mostly unnumbered catalogues, p. 46 or p. 52, repro.

1938: Exhibition of Venetian Painting From the Fifteenth Century through the Eighteenth Century, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, 1938, no. 50, repro., as Saint Francis of Paola Resuscitating a Boy.

1938: Special Exhibition of Venetian Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection, Seattle Art Museum; Portland Art Museum, Oregon; Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Alabama, August-October 1938, no catalogue.

1938: Tiepolo and His Contemporaries, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1938, no. 2, repro., as Saint Francis of Paolo Resuscitating a Boy.

1989: Sebastiano Ricci, Villa Manin di Passariano, Udine, 1989, no. 69 (cat. by Aldo Rizzi).

2010: Sebastiano Ricci. Il trionfo dell'invenzione nel Settecento veneziano., Exhibition Facilities, Ex Convitto, Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, 2010, no. 26, repro.

Technical Summary

The support is a medium-fine, plain-weave fabric. The warm yellow-white ground has a rough, pebbled texture and is exposed above the incised line that defines the arched top of the composition. The ground influences the overall tonality and texture of the surface design. The unfinished seraphim heads at the upper left were drawn directly on the ground with lines of semitransparent dark brown paint; it can be assumed that the entire composition was roughly blocked out in a similar manner. The thick, opaque paint was applied wet-into-wet, but without blending the individual strokes. These short, choppy strokes create a lively "brushed" surface texture without forming a heavy impasto. The shadows of the darker colors are built up with thick glazes. X-radiographs reveal that a reserve for Saint Francis' outstretched arm was left in the white robe of the turbaned figure.

The original tacking margins have been removed, but cusping is present along the left and bottom edges. Small, scattered losses are concentrated at the edges, which are partially overpainted. The varnish has darkened slightly. A file at the Frick Art Reference Library notes that the painting was relined in 1929. The Gallery's files report that Stephen Pichetto relined, removed discolored varnish, and restored the painting about 1931.

Bibliography

1932: Frankfurter, Alfred M. "Eighteenth Century Venice in a New York Collection." The Fine Arts 19 (December 1932): 30.

1941: Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 169, no. 182.

1942: Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 243, repro. 177.

1950: Pallucchini, Rodolfo. "Giunte a Sebastiano Ricci." Proporzioni 3 (1950): 214.

1952: Palluchini, Rodolfo. "Studi Ricceschi I, Contributo a Sebastiano." Arte Veneta 6 (1952): 83.

1959: Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 232, repro.

1960: Pallucchini 1960, 17, repro.

1965: Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 114.

1968: National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 102, repro.

1969: Daniels, Jeffery. "Sebastiano Ricci: The Last Phase." Apollo 90 (1969): 10, color pl. 2.

1972: Fredericksen, Burton B., and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972: 175.

1973: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XVI-XVIII Century. London, 1973: 128-129, fig. 255.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 304, repro.

1976: Daniels, Jeffery. L'opera completa di Sebastiano Ricci. Milan, 1976: 137, no. 520, color pl. 62.

1976: Daniels, Jeffery. Sebastiano Ricci. Hove, 1976: 153, no. 529-a, fig. 310.

1976: Martini, Egidio. "Due bozzetti di Sebastiano Ricci e alcune osservazioni sulla sua tecnica pittorica." In Atti del Congress internationzale di studi su Sebastiano Ricci e il suo tempo. Milan, 1976: 37.

1976: Pallucchini, Rodolfo. "Sebastiano Ricci e il rococò europeo." In Atti del Congresso internazionale di studi su Sebastiano Ricci e il suo tempo. Milan, 1976: 15-16.

1979: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. Washington, 1979: 1:398-400; 2:pl. 283.

1980: Fornari Schianchi, Lucia. In Arte e Pietà. I patrimoni culturali delle opere pie. Exh. cat. Museo Civico, Palazzo Pepoli Campogrande, and Conservatorio del Baraccano. Bologna, 1980: 328.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 351, repro.

1987: Cirillo, Giuseppe, and Giovanni Godi. La Pinacoteca Stuard di Parma. Parma, 1987: 146.

1988: Tanzi, Marco. In Bozzetti, modelli e grisailles dal XVI al XVIII secolo. Exh. cat. Fondazione Lungarotti at Museo del Vino, Torgiano. Milan, 1988: 74.

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: 224-230, color repro. 227.