(Venice 1603–1678 Vicenza)
Young Warrior with Lance and Shield
oil on canvas, 116.5 x 92.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
1939 Alfa collection;
European Private collection

Literature:
Collezione ‘Alfa’ Raccolta d’arte, ed. by. G. Scarpitti, 1939, Rome, p. 112-113, ill.

We are grateful to Bernard Aikema for confirming the attribution after examining the present painting in the original.

Pietro della Vecchia was able to work in an almost bewildering variety of styles and practised an equally wide scale of subjects, both sacred and profane. Within Della Vecchia’s artistic production, the present painting is of particular interest as it exemplifies the artist’s ambivalent attitude towards the art of Venice’s Golden Age, during the Cinquecento. This ambivalence manifested itself primarily in Della Vecchia’s so-called ‘Giorgionesque’ works; paintings in which the artist created an image of Giorgione as a founding father of the Venetian school of painting, which is still by and large followed in established art history.

The present picture is a case in point. It shows a young warrier holding a sword and a shield. A print by the German Prince Ruprecht of the Pfalz shows a very similar composition which is clearly based on a (probably lost) picture by Pietro della Vecchia. In Ruprecht’s print, the shield is inscribed with the words ‘Georio F ´. Giorgione was often the author of pictures showing swaggering warriors. In fact, the German historiographer Joachim von Sandrart recalled how in 1650 he saw a painting of a warrior drawing his sword which he was able to identify as a Pietro della Vecchia instead of a Giorgione only on the grounds of the quality of the canvas, so perfectly rendered was the style of Giorgione. The concept of Pietro della Vecchia as the “inventor” of Giorgione pictures sheds an interesting light not just on Giorgione historiography but on the very idea of the Castelfranco painter as the pioneer of a new painting mode in general: Nevertheless the present picture is an impressive piece of painting in its own right.

Another autograph version is conserved in the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo (see B. Aikema, Pietro della Vecchia and the Heritage of the Renaissance in Venice, Florence 1990, p. 152, cat. 227, fig. 105). Other versions were in a Milanese private collection and in the Viennese Schönborn collection, Vienna. Both the Carrara painting and the present work appear to be mature works by Della Vecchia, datable to circa 1650–1660.

We are grateful to Bernard Aikema for cataloguing the present lot.