Lot 204: FRANCESCO GONIN

VITTORIO EMANUELE II, KING OF ITALY & MARIA ADELAIDE OF AUSTRIA, QUEEN OF ITALY; A PAIR
signed, dated and inscribed F Gonin 1860 / Turin lower right; signed, dated and inscribed F Gonin 1860 / Turin lower left

321.5 by 164cm.; 126½ by 64½in. (2)

oil on canvas

Commissioned by King Vittorio Emanuele II for the wedding of his daughter Maria Clotilde with Prince Girolamo Bonaparte in 1859.
La Principessa Reale M.B.de Savoia (her sale: Christie's, London, 22 April 2005, lot 1169)

Vittorio Emanuele II (1820-1878) was the King of Piedmont, Savoy and Sardinia from 1849 to 1861. These grand portraits of the King and his wife, Maria Adelaide of Habsburg, were painted by one of the most popular and respected artists in Turin in the middle of the nineteenth century, Francesco Gonin, just before the Vittorio Emanuele II assumed the title King of Italy and Padre de Patria ('Father of the Fatherland'). He was to be the first king of a united Italy, a title he held until his death in 1878.

Francesco Gonin (1808-1889) was an Italian painter, printmaker, illustrator and stage designer. Born in Turin, he studied at the Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti in that city under Giovan Batista Biscarra (1790-1851) and Luigi Vacca (1778-1854). Gonin found fame as the major illustrator of I promessi sposi, the most famous and widely read novel of the Italian language, and the Storia della colonna infame by Alessandro Manzoni (published together in 1840); Gonin was one of the first Italians to specialise in lithography and wood-engraving. An extremely versatile artist, he painted historical, religious and genre subjects, and after collaborating with Vacca in the 1830s, received royal commissions for frescoes. By the time Gonin painted the present work, he had collaborated on the ballroom of the Palazzo Reale and Palazzo Carignano in Turin and the Sala delle Verne in the Castello di Racconigi, as well as succeeding Vacca as stage designer at the Teatro Regio in Turin.