Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione Il Grechetto

Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, called Il Grechetto (Genoa 1609–1664 Mantua) The Departure of Abraham to Canaan, oil on canvas, 150 x 173.5 cm, framed Provenance: Duchi Durazzo Pallavicini Negrotto Cambiaso, Castello di Arenzano (from 1645-1978); with Napoleone Zecchini, Milan 1978; sale Semenzato, Florence, 11-12 November 1987, lot 119a (as Giovanni Battista Castiglione, il Grechetto); sale Finarte, Milan, 21 November 1996, lot 19 (as Giovanni Francesco Castiglione); European private collection We are grateful to Mary Newcome-Schleier for confirming the attribution. We are also grateful to Timothy Standring and Jonathan Bober for both independently confirming the attribution of the present work on the basis of a high resolution digital photograph. According to Newcome-Schleier, the present composition is related to a smaller painting of the same subject in Dresden (71.5 x 138.5 cm). In both paintings the patriarch and his wife on a horse are set in a pastoral landscape, following a young man carrying a pitcher on his shoulder. With extensions in the upper and lower area of the canvas, the present work is also related to Grechetto’’’’s painting in the Brignole-Sale collection, signed and dated 175(4?) in the Galleria di Palazzo Rossi in Genoa (186 x 282 cm). In this work, the two figures accompanying the patriarch are missing, the groups of figures and animals are arranged in a more complex manner, and framed on the right by two large vases. Newcome-Schleier notes that the buildup of pastosity of paint in the area of the still life in the foreground, and the thinner application of colour in the figures in the background may indicate that the painter began finishing the work in the foreground, possibly without completing the work as a whole. The painting is a rare example in which the underdrawing of the hands and faces of several figures, as well as several of the details executed with only a few, rapid brushstrokes, are clearly visible, as can be seen in the lustrous, vertically-held vase. The Rembrandtesque quality of the patriarch and the well-proportioned animals and figures, together with the sweeping application of colour, suggest that the painting dates to the late 1630s or early 1640s.Timothy Standring concurs with these dates. Castiglione returned to Genoa in 1637 where he remained until 1647-48. Many paintings attributed to Castiglione from this period are recorded in the inventories of important Genoese families, including the Spinola, Raggi, Balbi, Doria, Durazzo, Invrea and Lomellini, demonstrating that he was already one of the city’’’’s most renowned painters. If the painting dates from this period, then the present work is the earliest in a group of Castiglione’’’’s paintings purchased by the Durazzo Pallavicini family, and may well have also inspired the Brignole-Sale family, for whom he worked from 1641 onwards, to commission a larger painting with a similar composition. Castiglione was a pupil of Giovanni Battista Paggi and through his teacher he came into contact with the diverse range of stylistic trends in Genoa; late Mannerism, early baroque Classicism, Flemish Naturalism and local Genoese Realism. He was influenced by the works of Giovanni Andrea de‘Ferrari and Anthony van Dyck. His later interest in Sinibaldo Scorza and Jan Roos’’’’ landscapes with animals, as well as Bassano’’’’s biblical scenes, can be clearly perceived in his works. He travelled to Rome and Naples, later working in Venice and at the courts in Parma and Mantua. Most of his paintings show scenes taken from the life of the Old Testament patriarch, enriched with figures of animals and still life elements and executed with extreme technical skill, such as the present work. His son Giovanni Francesco Castiglione was also a painter, and closely followed his father’’’’s style.

LOT 39 GIOVANNI BENEDETTO CASTIGLIONE CALLED IL GRECHETTO GENOA 1609 - 1664 MANTUA RECTO: LANDSCAPE WITH HERDERS VERSO: STUDY OF A TREE Pen and brown ink and wash, heightened with white, over black chalk (recto); pen and brown ink (verso); bears numbering, in brown ink (recto): 1399 and bears two sets of numbers (verso): 72 (in brown ink) and C4 n o 60 (in black chalk) 105 by 154 mm

LOT 35 PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION FILIPPO GAGLIARDI ACTIVE IN ROME IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE 17TH CENTURY, AND GIOVANNI BENEDETTO CASTIGLIONE CALLED IL GRECHETTO GENOA 1609 - 1664 MANTUA AN ARCHITECTURAL CAPRICCIO WITH A BACCHANALIAN PROCESSION oil on canvas 167 by 247 cm.; 65 3/4 by 97 1/4 in.

Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, il Grechetto (Genoa 1609-1664Mantua) Circe changing the Companions of Ulysses into Boars oil on canvas 43½ x 63 in. (110.5 x 160 cm.) In the Odyssey (Book X), Homer recounts how Ulysses and hiscompanions came to the island retreat of the cruel sorceress Circeon their journey home from the Trojan War. It was Circe's way withtravelers to feast them on viands containing a magic potion thattransformed them into swine. Forewarned by Mercury, Ulysses ate anherbal antidote that protected him against the fate that wouldbefall his comrades. At sword point, the Greek hero forced Circe torestore the pig-men to their former state. In a brilliant display of baroque virtuosity, the present paintingby Castiglione depicts the actual moment when Circe turns one ofUlysses' men into a boar-headed hybrid, rather than the subsequentmoment when Circe reflects on the act of transformation that theartist had depicted in an etching of the early 1650s and in arelated drawing at Windsor (inv. 4067). Commentators throughoutAntiquity and the Renaissance considered the story of Circe as anallegory about sensual temptation, perhaps because they held thatUlysses distinguished himself from his bestial companions by hisrational and temperate self-control in abstaining from Circe'sseductive powers. Other interpretations of this 'hydra-headedHomeric fable'--as one scholar called it--also enjoyed currencythroughout the Renaissance and later. In one, Circe was consideredas an embodiment of whoring, and in fact, was included in awoodblock illustration by Pierre Vasse (or du Vase) in an editionof Alciati's Emblemata of 1550 under the section of Luxuria orlicentiousness with the warning Cauendum à meretricibus (Beware of[what will happen if you go to] Prostitutes) (fig. 1).Alternatively, Circe was understood as the prototype of a witch,who, associated with magic and melancholy, was understood as suchin Virgil Solis's illustration of the woman in Ovid's Metamorphosesof 1563 (fig. 2). Clearly Castiglione found inspiration from bothwoodblock illustrations for his composition, casting the lasciviousseated maiden from the former and borrowing the fleeing lad fromthe latter, a motif harking back to Caravaggio's Martyrdom of St.Matthew. Circe was a popular subject in the 1650s, when Castiglione paintedthe present work, perhaps because of the continued fame of G.B.Gelli's essay entitled Circe (1549), which still stands today as acompendium of Ancient and Renaissance notions on the nature ofanimals, humanity, and the soul. Gelli's work takes the form of adialogue between Ulysses and his transformed men which occurredshortly after he had requested to take leave from Circe's island.Ulysses had asked her if he could take with him some of hiscompanions; she agreed, but only if the men-turned-animals werewilling to leave by their own consent. While some readers may haveunderstood Gelli's essay to be a panegyric on the importance ofreason, others, perhaps even Castiglione himself, may have sensedthat Gelli intended to demonstrate that remaining human is astrenuous and demanding destiny. Themes of magical transformations were dear to the Genoese artist.In countless drawings, prints, and paintings, he found delight inrendering images inspired by Ovid's tales of Circe, Deucalion andPyrrha, Apollo and Daphne, Latona and the Frogs, as well as byApuleius's The Golden Ass which recounts Lucius's all too closeencounter of the black art of magic. Castiglione found a commonthread of meaning among the stories, suggesting--as many during histime had--that a melancholic temperament was somehow connected tomagic. Additionally, he implied by extension that earthly endeavorsvanished in the face of the inevitability of decay and death. Theexcitement of metamorphosis conveyed in a work such as this,accompanied a dark philosophical outlook on the existence of life,which might have been precipitated by the traumatic turns of theartist's life throughout the 1650s. It is not entirely by chance that Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione,called il Grechetto, (1609-1664) emerged as one of the most famousGenoese artists of Italian seventeenth-century painting. Why hereceived his strange moniker is unknown, but it may have beenrelated to his extravagant dress and bizarre personality--grechettoalluding to Greek-like, in the Hellenistic rather than classicalsense. Despite his stature as an important, if eccentric artisticpersonality by the 1650s, it appears that Castiglione's legaltroubles kept him in the courtroom as much as the studio throughoutthe first half of the decade. Some anecdotes recounted by his earlybiographers and commentary contained in trial documents suggestthat his intemperate demeanor proved little help in advancing hiscareer. He destroyed a painting in front of one of Genoa's mostpowerful patrons and stormed off to Rome dressed like an Armenianwearing a black fez to work on astrological drawings sometimebefore 1647. In a trial beginning in April 1656, documents revealthat he was accused of threatening to push his sister off arooftop, of calling one of his brothers a thief and an assassin,and of refusing to support the welfare of his niece and providefunds for her burial. His own attorney Carlo Ratto filed suitagainst the artist and his brother for insufficient payment forwork that had been ongoing since October 1650. Shortly thereafter,the two brothers fled to their native Genoa bringing nothing withthem. Despite his reckless and impulsive behavior, contemporariesrecognized that he was a great artist, and more than just an animalpainter or specialist in depictions of patriarchal journeys.Indeed, he also produced significant mythological and religiousaltarpieces and was said to have been a prolific portraitist,although few examples have been securely identified. In fact, by the mid-1650s when he painted the present Circe,Castiglione had long before abandoned his compositions stocked withanimals--scenes of transhumance, patriarchal journey scenes, Noah'sentrance and exit from the ark, Orpheus performing before theanimals, and so forth. Instead, he preferred to producemythological and religious works, often in the media of etchings ormonotypes, the latter of which he was the first to have practiced.He responded to a wide variety of stylistic and iconographicmaterial from such diverse cinquecento artists as Michelangelo,Correggio, Parmagianino, the Bassano, and Titian, as well as fromhis contemporaries including Poussin, Rembrandt, Lanfranco, Reni,and Bernini. While this might suggest that he was working withinthe normal conventions of the early seicento, it is more likelythat he followed his own path either by disregarding or conformingto traditions as he wished. It seems clear that he considered theworks, motifs, and styles of others as stock items from which toborrow to meet his own needs. Although he assimilated one of thebroadest ranges of stylistic and iconographic sources imaginablefor an artist working in the seventeenth century, he nonethelessmanaged to achieve a highly original style that gained himinternational fame. Castiglione rendered the present composition as if it were apolychrome bas-relief -- whereby virtually all of the figures,animals and still life are shown close to the picture plane therebyoffering us the opportunity to marvel at his brilliant handling ofpaint. By so doing, he demonstrates his consummate technicalflourishes of the brush, varying the handling and the viscosity ofthe paint itself with bravura. His contemporaries would havemarveled at such virtuosity, hallmarks of his works of themid-to-late 1650s. It is, in fact, the brilliance of his handlingand coloring, and the elegant maniera of the figures, that clearlydistinguishes the present painting from the many other versions ofthe subject that he painted throughout his career. The artist's preference for placing a variety of musicalinstruments, military armor, weapons, animals, figures, all beforea rich landscape setting is found in a number of documented worksof the early to mid-1650s such as two signed and dated versions ofDeucalion and Pyrrha, one in Denver, the other in Berlin, as wellas works datable on stylistic grounds to the same period such asthe Temporalis Aeternitas at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angelesand its pendant in a private collection in Genoa and the Offeringto Pan at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Circe changingthe companions of Ulysses into Boars shares numerous details withother works from this period, such as the use of gold and crimsonin the embroidered fabric of Circe's skirt (most likely inspired byGenoese liturgical chasubles); the striped tunic of the boar-headedfigure (suggestive of an outcast following medieval traditions) andthe inclusion of the Hellenistic antique bust of a Satyr placedatop a marble drum with bas-reliefs of writhing cherubs, amongother motifs. Castiglione would have intended his dry brush drawings of oil onpaper to serve as studio templates for his workshop to follow inthe subsequent versions of Circe made by Giovanni Benedettohimself, or by his brother Salvatore Castiglione (1620-1676) orGiovanni Benedetto's son Giovanni Francesco (1641-1710). Surelythis explains the plethora of both paintings and drawings of thissubject, the present version of which can be considered the finestpainted version of the subject, and a brush drawing with a slightvariation on the theme at Windsor (inv. 4067) its equal in therealm of the master's drawings. Two brush drawings, one in theUffizi (no. 7054 S, fig. 3), and another by a studio hand atWindsor (inv. 3849), exhibit the transfixed boar-headed man in thestriped tunic prominent in the present painting as well as a clutchof other fantastic figures metamorphosized such as the dog-man andfrog-man. As with many of Castiglione's paintings the provenance of this workis scant at best. It appeared on the London market by the late1970s, and then to the current owner by 1982. Although recordedversions of other paintings of this subject reveal the popularityof the theme with Castiglione, they provide insufficientinformation with which to connect to the present work. A number ofworks are cited among Genoese collections throughout the 17thcentury. For example, in 1649, a painting described as 'sopra portadi Circe con ulisse, che parla a'diversi transformati in pesci delGreghetto', was listed in the inventory of the effects left byGerolamo Balbi in Genoa. Similarly, in 1652, Ansaldo Pallavicinipaid for six pictures by Castiglione, one of which included a Circe(now in sitù at the Galleria Nationale di Palazzo Spinola). OutsideGenoa, the first two paintings forming a trio as part of a ceilingensamble, described as a Zirze, an Orpheo and an Andromeda wereascribed to Benitto Casteleon' in the Carpio collection, Madrid in1689; in Mantua, 'Un quadro di larghezza braccia 1 1/2, altezzabraccia 1. Favola di una maga con animali, vasi et armaturi ferro.Vale doppie 30' was cited in a 1705 Gonzaga inventory, and again in1707 and 1708; and in Rome, a 'Favola di Circe, da testa pertraverse' is cited as among the works exhibited at S. GiovanniDecollato in 1736. Timothy J. Standring Gates Foundation Curator of Paintings & Sculpture Denver Art Museum

Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (Italian, 1609-1664) Entry into Noah's Ark (Bartsch 1) Etching, a delicate impression of the first state of two, on laid, with partial watermark, 137 x 95mm (5 3/8 x 3 3/4in)(PL), together with two others, 'The Angel Awakening Joseph in the Presence of the Virgin and Child'(B.10) and 'The Philospher Diogenes Searching for an Honest Man' (B.21) (3) (umframed)