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Lot 25: Bartolomeo Guidobono, called il Prete Savonese (Savona 1654-1709 Turin)

Est: £50,000 GBP - £70,000 GBP
Christie'sLondon, United KingdomJuly 07, 2009

Item Overview

Description

Bartolomeo Guidobono, called il Prete Savonese (Savona 1654-1709 Turin)
A sorceress
oil on canvas
60¾ x 75½ in. (154.4 x 191.7 cm.)

Artist or Maker

Notes

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 15% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.
This subject was also painted by Guidobono on another occasion, in a work now at Stanford, University Museum of Art (Alice Meyer Buck Fund, inv. 80.200). The two versions are similar in size and in the general composition, but vary considerably in colouring and in details, such as the arrangement of the instruments in the alchemical still life in the upper right, the choice and placement of the animals, and the gestures of the three figures. The muscle-bound male assistant in the Stanford version, carrying the tray of instruments in a pose reminiscent of Atlas, is replaced by an other-worldly, bearded hag in the present picture. The identification of the subject is not obvious; it is certainly a dramatic, phantasmagoric scene of sorcery, and various interpretations have been proposed: it has been suggested that the sorceress could be Medea, in the act of rejuvenating Aeson (father of Jason, recoverer of the Golden Fleece); or perhaps Homer's Circe or Ariosto's Alcina - from Orlando Furioso - both of whom had the habit, when tired of their lovers, of transforming them into stones, animals, plants or anything they fancied.

The Guidobono brothers were not unfamiliar with scenes of sorcery: another painting, attributed to Domenico and depicting an enigmatic interior with a Sorceress and her daughter is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

We are grateful to Dr. Mary Newcome Schleier for confirming the attribution on the basis of photographs, adding that in this version 'her face, the open book, fiery caldron are more developed'. Dr. Newcome suggests a date around the early 1690s, close to the four paintings that Giovanni Francesco Brignole-Sale commissioned from Bartolomeo between 1689 and 1696, and are still in the Palazzo Rosso, Genoa.

Auction Details

Old Masters & 19th Century Art Evening Sale

by
Christie's
July 07, 2009, 12:00 AM GMT

8 King Street, St. James's, London, LDN, SW1Y 6QT, UK