Venetian school from the end of the 17th century,... Lot 56

Venetian school from the end of the 17th century, beginning of the 18th century. "The Bonaventure. Oil on canvas. Re-coloured. Size: 115 x 90 cm; 138 x 113 cm (frame). The theme of the good fortune has been continuously represented in the art throughout the different epochs. The one we present here is a fully eighteenth-century work, which shows the Venetian tradition in the joy, the costumes and the palette used, tending towards red tones, already used by artists such as Pietro Longhi. The theme of good fortune was common from the 17th century onwards, when the naturalistic depiction of all strata of society became popular and was thus linked to picaresque literature. The painting shows a young Venetian woman of high birth wearing a low-cut dress with lace and velvet. Her hairstyle, typical of Venetian fashion at the time, is decorated with feathers, and she holds a carnival mask in her right hand. The young lady, innocent and devoted, trusts the girl with gypsy features who reads her hand, not realising that a boy puts his nimble hand into the sack of coins hanging from her ostentatious dress. Thus, this scene requires a reading on several levels: it contains moralising connotations, as far as false prophecies are concerned. It is thus a kind of allegorical genre scene about fraud and naivety, close to contemporary literature and theatre. The lightness of the Venetian lady's skin contrasts with the dark complexion of the seer and the boy.