BRUSAFERRO GIROLAMO (1677 - 1746) Lot n° 72

BRUSAFERRO GIROLAMO (1677 - 1746) Banquet of Antony and Cleopatra. Oil on canvas . Cm 101.20x119.50. The work is accompanied by the card edited by Enrico Lucchese, May 14, 2023. "Two were the greatest pearls of all time, both possessed by Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt [...]. Costei, while every day Antony stuffed himself with fine food, with a superb and at the same time shameless disdain, like a meretricious queen, denigrated every luxury and the apparatus of her banquets; and since he asked her what more could be added to that magnificence, she replied that she would in one dinner consume ten million sesterces. Antony wished to learn the way, but he did not believe that the thing was possible. So, having made the wager, the next day [...] he had Antony prepare a dinner that was moreover magnificent [...] but ordinary. Antonio joked and asked for a bill for the expenses. But the woman, confirming that it was a corollary, that that dinner would cost the price fixed and that she alone would eat ten million sesterces, ordered the second table to be brought. According to her instructions, the servants placed before her only a jar of vinegar, the strong acidity of which causes pearls to dissolve to the point of dissolution. She wore those most extraordinary jewels to her ears: a masterpiece truly unique in nature. Therefore while Anthony waited to see what he would ever do, he took off one of the two pearls and dipped it in the vinegar and, once it was liquefied, swallowed it. He threw his hand on the other pearl Lucius Plancus, the judge of the wager, as the woman prepared to destroy it in the same manner; and he judged that Antony was won: an omen which came true. "Pliny the Elder's account (Naturalis Historia, XI, 58) was an inspiration to many artists of the Baroque age (see A. Pigler, Barockthemen, II, Budapest 1974, pp. 396-398). In the eighteenth-century Veneto area, the one to which the work under consideration belongs, the fortune of the theme was carried on by the illustrious examples of Antonio Pellegrini, in the fresco of Villa Giovanelli in Noventa Padovana (cf. F. Magani, in "Nuovi Studi," 8, 2003, pp. 167-180), and especially by Giambattista Tiepolo in the fresco cycle of Palazzo Labia in Venice and in the paintings on canvas now in the museums of Melbourne and Arkangelskoje (cf. A. Mariuz, Le storie di Antonio e Cleopatra, Venice 2004). In all these examples, even in the present one, the homage to Paolo Veronese's Dinners is evident in the choice of light colors and especially in the layout of the composition.In the specific case, however, the reference to the sixteenth-century model appears to be influenced in the body drafting by Sebastiano Ricci's painting, modulated on drawing tones that, in Venice, were connected to the teaching of painters of a more classicist taste. It thus seems evident that this Banquet of Cleopatra is clearly the autograph of one who as a young man attended "the school of Cav. Bambini, where he learned the good rules of drawing, which, though he afterwards partly abandoned those ways, served him as good guides for art, and for being kept a learned painter. He also attempted to follow the manner of Sebastiano Rizzi; and finally he formed himself a style, which participated of both those masters; but had together something original" (A.M. Zanetti, Della Pittura Veneziana, Venice 1771, p. 431).The attribution to the Venetian Girolamo Brusaferro can be demonstrated through comparison with two works I discussed in 2021: the Last Communion of Saint Jerome (fig. 1, in Il Secolo di Nicola Grassi, p. 84), and the Chioma di Berenice (fig. 2, in Museo Costantino e Mafalda Pisani, Trieste. The Picture Gallery of the Eastern Greek Community, pp. 68-69 cat. 7). As can be seen, the stylistic features, layout and coloristic choices of the Banquet of Cleopatra are repeated in this pair of canvases: if the former seems, net of its conservation problems, to be comparable to the Morte di Sant'Avertano (1736) from the Carmini church in Venice (fig. 3: cf. A. Pietropolli, Girolamo Brusaferro, Padua 2002, p. 81 cat. 112), the second, with the companion Antiochus and Stratonice, denotes a rather congealed pictorial subject matter and some compositional inconsistencies that point to a chronology in Brusaferro's last phase, by then lagging behind the other main coeval masters of the Serenissima, attested by the 1741 altarpiece for Stabello (fig. 4), near Bergamo (cf. Pietropolli 2002, p. 83 cat. 117). To the second lustre of the 1930s it seems then appropriate to place the painting under consideration, thus following the Carmini canvas, presumably not far from the altarpiece with the Madonna and Child and Saints Foca, Martin and Peter for the Venetian church of Santo Stefano, dated 1737 (fig. 5: Pietropolli 2002, p. 83 cat. 113), placing itself, in the history of the fortune of the theme of the conquering queen of the conqueror Roman