Il Semolei (Venice ca. 1510-1561), Giovanni Battista... Lot 19

Il Semolei (Venice ca. 1510-1561), Giovanni Battista Franco, known as Christ before Caiaphas. On the back on the frame a label: "P.&D. Colnaghi & Co. Ltd 14 Old Bond Street London". A number on the frame in chalk: "E5862". Height 121,5 Width 150 cm. Provenance: - sale in London, Sotheby's, April 19, 1972, n°119, - Colnaghi gallery in London in 1982, - acquired from this gallery by David Ogilvy, château de Touffou, Poitou. A 16th century portrait of Jesus Christ before Caiaphas by Giovanni Battista Franco, aka Il Semolei. Oil on canvas. Bibliography : - catalog of the exhibition "Discoveries from the Cinquecento", London, Colnaghi &Co, 17 June - 7 August 1982, pp. 36-37 (repr.), no. 17 (notice by Clovis Whitfield), - Gert Jan van der Sman, "Battista Franco: studi di figura per dipinti e incisioni", Prospettiva, January 2000, no. 97, pp. 69-70, fig. 12, - Luciano Bellosi, "Per Battista Franco", Prospettiva, April-July 2002, no. 106/107, pp. 180-181, fig. 8. Although born in Venice, Battista Franco spent most of his career in Rome and Urbino. Arriving in the city of the popes in 1530, he discovered the works of Michelangelo, which had a lasting influence on his work. He contributed to the decorations accompanying the triumphal entry of Charles V in 1536. The same year in Florence, he collaborated with Vasari for the preparations of the wedding of Alexander de Medici and Margaret of Austria, then three years later to that of Cosimo I with Eleanor of Toledo. He went back to Rome, where he painted frescoes for the oratory of San Giovanni Decollato. He stayed briefly in Urbino, returned to Venice, where the reputation he had acquired outside his native city earned him prestigious commissions, both public, for the Doge's Palace and the St. Mark's Library (Libreria Vecchia), and from important patrons, among them the Grimani family. He died in 1561 before he could complete the decoration of the Villa Foscari, built by Andrea Palladio. He was also an important etcher; his prints of "The Flagellation of Christ" and "The Resurrection of Lazarus" include compact groups of figures very similar to our painting. Vasari, who dedicates one of his Lives to him, mentions several subjects illustrating the Life of Christ as well as contracts from Germanic clients for the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. According to him, the latter's taste explains the Nordic accents of some of the Semolei's late paintings. Our painting testifies to an important moment in the evolution of Venetian painting, when Venice was confronted with the influence of the "maniera" of central Italy, which it integrated into its own tradition. In our painting, painted around 1552-1553, Franco brilliantly combines a sense of monumental Roman composition with a typically Venetian mannerism, close to that of Andrea Schiavone or Giuseppe Salviati Porta. For example, the very vivid coloring, the vibrant luminism, the theatrical lighting are subtly mixed. "And in a painting like the "Christ before Caiaphas", passed at Sotheby's in 1972 with the correct attribution to our painter, shows him ready to receive impulses even from the young Paolo Veronese, with whom, moreover, he also presents some affinities in the range of light and silver colors" (Luciano Bellosi, op. cit.).