Lot 25: - Nicolò dell' Abate , Modena 1509/12 - 1571 Fontainebleau (?) The Taking of Carthage: Hasdrubal's Wife denouncing her husband before Scipio oil on canvas

oil on canvas

measurements note 197 by 212.7 cm.; 77 1/2 by 83 3/4 in.

Naples, Palazzo Reale, Fontainebleau e la maniera italiana, 26 July - 12 October 1952, no. 37, reproduced plate 35, as Niccolò dell'Abbate;
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, De Triomf van het Manierisme, 1July - 16 October 1955, no. 9;
New York, Wildenstein, The Painter as Historian, 15 November -31 December 1962, no. 20, reproduced p. 47;
Paris, L'Oeil Galerie d'Art, L'École de Fontainebleau, December 1963 - February 1964, no. 2, reproduced p. 7;
Modena, Foro Boario, Nicolò dell'Abate: storie dipinte nella pittura del cinquecento tra Modena e Fontainebleau, 20 March - 19 June 2005, no. 214, (as by Nicolò dell'Abbate and workshop) reproduced p. 429.

R. Rosenblum, `The Paintings of Antoine Caron,' in Marsyas, VI, 1950-1953, pp. 2-3 (as Niccolò dell'Abbate), reproduced plate I, fig 2;
J. Ehrmann, Antoine Caron, Geneva and Lille 1955, p. 46 (under rejected attributions to Caron, as by Dell'Abbate);
S. Béguin, L'École de Fontainebleau, Paris 1960, pp. 140, note 49, p. 142, note 78;
A. Pieyre de Mandiargues, "L'École de Fontainebleau," in L'Oeil, 108, December 1963, p. 10, reproduced p. 9;
P. Ms., `La Passion de Fontainebleau,' in Le Figaro Littéraire, December 19-25, 1963, p. 20;
The Connoisseur, March 1964, reproduced p. 191;
Paris, Petit Palais, Le XVIe siècle européen, peintures et dessins dans les collections publiques françaises, 1965-1966, p. 5, cited under no. 7;
M. Laskin, Jr., `The Sixteenth Century in Paris' [review of Petit Palais exhibition], in Art Bulletin, XLVIII, 2, June 1966, p. 254;
C.L. Ragghianti, `Pertinenze francesi nel cinquecento,' in Critica d'arte, XIX, March-April 1972, p. 69, note 25, reproduced p. 65, fig. 41 (as the so-called "painter of Dijon");
D. Ewing, `The Influence of Michelangelo's Bruges Madonna,' in Revue Belge d'Archéologie et d'Histoire de l'Art, XLVII, 1978, p. 100 and note 67, reproduced p. 101, fig. 17;
S. Béguin, `Abate (Abbate), Nicolò dell',' in Allgemeines Künstler-Lexikon. Die bildenden Künstler-Lexikon, vol. I, Leipzig, 1983, p. 41 (as by Niccolò dell'Abbate and workshop);
D. Cordellier, `Toussaint Dubreuil, 'singulier en son art,' in Bulletin de la Société de l'Histoire de l'Art Français, 1987, p. 29, note 45;
V. Birke and J. Kertész, Die italienischen Zeichnungen der Albertina: Generalverzeichnis, vol. II, Vienna, Cologne, and Weimar 1992, p. 1048, cited under inv. no. 1990 (as by Niccoló dell'Abate);
S. Béguin, in S. Béguin & F. Piccinini, Nicolò dell'Abate: storie dipinte nella pittura del cinquecento tra Modena e Fontainebleau, exhibition catalogue, Modena 2005, pp. 429-30, no. 214, (as by Nicolò dell'Abbate), p. 453, under no. 245, reproduced in colour p. 429.

Sestieri collection, Rome, by 1952;
With Wildenstein, New York;
Private collection, United States.

The subject of this work is a rarely depicted episode from the taking of Carthage, 146 BC, during the third Punic War. As Appian recorded in his Libyca, VIII, 131, when the city of Carthage was besieged by the Roman general Scipio Africanus, the rebel general Hasdrubal hid himself with his family and his troops of Roman deserters in the Temple of Aesculapius. He left surreptitiously however and threw himself at the feet of Scipio, pleading for leniency. Outraged at this ignoble act of cowardice, Hasdrubal's wife appeared with her children and denounced him before Scipio, whom she calls the rightful conqueror and a just instrument of vengeance of the Carthaginian gods. She then set fire to the temple, slew her children and with them plunged into the flames. Here we see them in the right distance, in the flames of the Temple, while the figures in the middle-ground have come bearing olive wreaths to beg Scipio to spare the lives of those citizens who wish to flee the city. In the foreground Hasdrubal cowers beneath Scipio's throne, while his wife, accompanied by two of her children, points disdainfully at him. After a successful career as a painter of large-scale decorative schemes (and portraits) in his native Modena and in Bologna, Dell'Abate was summoned to France in 1552 to assist Francesco Primaticcio at the Court of Henri II. There he worked extensively at Fontainebleau, and much of the rest of his life was taken up with large decorative schemes there and at other chateaux. Apart from a number of very beautiful drawings, remarkably little painted work survives from Dell'Abate's French period, and the present work, first recognised as Dell'Abate by Federico Zeri, is thus something of a rarity. It was probably made in connection with a larger decorative scheme, not only because of its size, but also because its subject is more likely to have been seen in conjunction with other pictures from the life of Scipio or the Punic Wars than in isolation. In this regard it inevitably invites comparison his Continence of Scipio of circa 1555 in the Louvre, which was also exhibited at Modena in 2005.υ1 It has been observed that the Louvre picture reflects to the influence of the Florentine Francesco Salviati, who was in France at the time, and the present work too has something of the elegance of forms and the softness of treatment that are characteristic of Salviati.υ2 In both works however the principal figure are seen as if on a single plane and the figures display a reticulated elegance so characteristic of the School of Fontainebleau, and already at quite a remove from Dell'Abate's Italian roots. Although it is tempting to speculate if both canvases belong to the same decorative scheme, the scale of the figures in the Louvre canvas is much larger (notwithstanding the fact that it has been cut down), and they are seen without any setting whatsoever, in stark contrast to the architectural and landscape setting of the present picture which is filled with subsidiary figures, and it is hard to imagine them as part of a homogeneous whole. A drawing of the present rare subject by Dell'Abate in Vienna, Albertina, was recognised by F. Bologna as a preparatory drawing for this painting (see fig. 1).υ3 The Vienna drawing also includes to the right an additional crowd of fleeing Carthaginians (nearer the viewer than the ones emerging from the archway), omitted by Dell'Abate in the present picture, perhaps to avoid over-crowding the composition. The figure of Scipio, and several members of his entourage, as well as the three foremost soldiers in the left foreground, recur in a painting in Beauvais depicting The Massacre of the Triumvirs in Beauvais, which like the present picture has in the past been attributed to Antoine Caron, but is now thought to be by another pupil of Dell'Abate: his own son Giulio Camillo dell'Abate.υ4 although compared with the present work by Béguin, the Beauvais painting is entirely different in character, being composed solely of many tiny figures in a formal perspectival architectural setting. A note on spelling
Although his first name has more usually been spelt Niccolò in the past, and his surname Dell'Abbate, the spelling used here is now universally used.

1. See Béguin, 2005, pp. 428-9, no. 213, reproduced.
2. See D. Caldwell, in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, London 1996, vol. 1, p. 19.
3. Pen and brown ink heightened with white over black chalk on brown paper, 363 by 446 mm.; see Birke & Kertész, 1992, p. 1048, no. 1990, reproduced p. 1049. Notwithstanding the differences, Sylvie Béguin described the drawing as more likely to be una bella copia; see Béguin, 2005, p. 430.
4. Beauvais, Musée Départemental de l'Oise, inv. No. 45-6 ; see Béguin, 2005, pp. 452-3, no. 245, reproduced in colour p. 429. the subject commemorates a lamentable moment - that of April 1561 - in the French wars of religion.