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PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION ANTONIO JOLI, AND GASPARE DIZIANI BELLUNO 1689 - 1767 VENICE MODENA CIRCA 1700 - 1777 NAPLES THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS; CHRIST AT THE POOL OF BETHESDA

a pair, both oil on canvas

Quantity: 2

PROVENANCE

Taunchy collection (according to Arisi, see Literature);
The Rt. Hon. the Lord O'Hagan, by whom sold, London, Sotheby's, 25 March 1936, lot 144 (as by Sebastiano Ricci), for £58 to Croft Murray;
Edward Croft Murray, Richmond Green;
Thence by inheritance.
LITERATURE AND REFERENCES

F. Arisi, Gian Paolo Panini e i fasti della Roma del '700, Rome 1986, p. 274, cat. nos. 106 and 107, both reproduced (as by Panini).
CATALOGUE NOTE

These pictures were formerly believed to have been painted by Giovanni Paolo Panini but they are in fact tour-de-force examples of early works by Antonio Joli, shortly after he entered Panini's studio in Rome in circa 1720. Although in conception these paintings are indebted to Panini's grand architectural compositions - see, for example, his Christ Driving the Moneychangers from the Temple and The Pool of Bethesda in the Bayerischen Staatsgemälde Sammlungen, Munich, datable to the early 1720s (reproduced in Arisi, see Literature, pp. 312-3, cat. nos. 171 and 172) - the figures are painted in a more colourful palette and are given a vitality more akin to Sebastiano Ricci (to whom the pair was once attributed). Indeed the figures here are painted by Gaspare Diziani who was active in Rome between 1720 and 1727, during which time he worked for Cardinal Ottoboni, and it is therefore likely that this pair of capricci date from the first half of the 1720s when both artists were in Rome; a dating further substantiated by the coarse weave of the roman canvas. It was a collaboration that was to continue after Joli's arrival in Venice, as attested to by the existence of two large canvases, datable to 1741, today in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, in which the architectural setting is painted by Joli and the figures by Diziani (reproduced in colour in Luca Carlevarijs e la veduta veneziana del Settecento, exhibition catalogue, Padua, Palazzo della Ragione, 25 September - 26 December 1994, pp. 82-3, figs. 17 and 18).

Replicas of these pictures, of slightly squarer format and also considered by Arisi to have been painted by Panini, were sold in London, Christie's, 14 April 1978, lot 90 and 91, and one (Christ at the Pool of Bethesda) was sold more recently in these Rooms, 9 July 1998, lot 109 (see Arisi, op. cit., p. 273, cat. nos. 104 and 105). Arisi noted the confusion over attribution of works to Panini and Joli and for these paintings concludes, rather ironically, that the existence of a third replica by Joli of The Massacre of the Innocents on the New York art market (pointed out to him by Edward Croft Murray) suggests that Joli knew the composition from an engraving after Panini, without acknowledging the invention as Joli's own.