(Venice 1707–1769)
Saint Joseph,
oil on canvas, 46.7 x 38.5 cm, framed

Frame from the Wedells Collection (transfer stamp on both the frame and the stretcher).

Provenance:
Collection of Siegfried Wedells (1848–1919), Hamburg;
by inheritance to the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg (1919);
Stiftung Haus Wedells, Hamburg (1922);
Kunsthalle, Hamburg;
sale, Sotheby’s, London, 8 July 1959, lot 62 (as G. B. Piazzetta);
English private collection

Literature:
Dirksen, Die Sammlung Wedells in Hamburg, in: Kunstchronik und Kunstmarkt, XXXIII, 1922 (about the collection);
Rohde, Die Galerie Wedells in Hamburg, in: Der Cicerone, XIV, no. 12, 1922 (about the collection);
R. van Marle, La Collezione del Haus Wedells di Amburgo, in: Dedalo, XIII, 1933, p. 256, ill. p. 255 (as G. B. Piazzetta);
E. Martini, La Pittura Veneziana del Settecento, Venice 1964 (as F. Fontebasso); R. Pallucchini, A. Mariuz, L’Opera Completa di Piazzetta, Milan 1982; cat. no. A4 (as F. Fontebasso);
M. Magrini, Francesco Fontebasso, Vicenza 1988, cat. no. 1 (as F. Fontebasso)

Exhibited:
Probably in the exhibition Die Sammlung Wedells, Kunsthalle, Hamburg 1935

We are grateful to Professor Bernard Aikema for confirming the present painting to be an autograph work by Fontebasso on the basis of a photograph. We also thank Professor Marina Magrini, who has confirmed the attribution of the present painting, which she published in 1988. Moreover, we are grateful to Dr. Ute Haug, Kunsthalle Hamburg, for supplying information about the painting’s provenance. Before the painting was published by E. Martini (1964), A. Mariuz (1982), and M. Magrini (1988) as a work by Fontebasso, it had been attributed to Giovanni Battista Piazzetta.

Francesco Fontebasso was Sebastiano Ricci’s most talented student and is regarded as one of the last exponents of the monumental Venetian style of the 18th century. After a short stay in Rome, Fontebasso returned to his native town via Bologna in 1728. An influence from the Bolognese school betrays itself in his earliest independent works, such as in the Adoration of the Shepherds from 1732 in the church of San Martino in Burano. Around 1730, the artist was in Udine, where he studied Tiepolo’s frescoes in the Duomo and the Palazzo Partriacale. In Venice he made personal contact with Tiepolo. Yet Ricci’s influence remained dominant. In 1731 Fontebasso engraved for Ricci the Altar of Saint Gregory painted by the latter for Sant’Alessandro della Croce in Bergamo. Later Fontebasso adopted Tiepolo’s handling of light and his palette, which becomes also evident in the present painting, which Magrini dates to the period around 1740. In 1761 the painter received an invitation from Empress Catherine II and travelled to St. Petersburg, where he stayed for two years. He painted numerous fresco decorations for the imperial palaces, as well as portraits and genre scenes. In spite of his honourable appointment as professor of the Imperial Art Academy, he chose to return to Venice, where he was appointed president of the Academy in 1768. The present work by Fontebasso comes from the illustrious collection of the Hamburg merchant Siegfried Wedells and after his death passed into the possession of the City of Hamburg. Following the closure of the Wedells Foundation in 1936 due to financial reasons, the paintings were transferred to the Hamburg Kunsthalle, and several of them were sold. A painting by Bernardo Daddi that recently appeared on the art market and which had also been sold by the City of Hamburg in the 1950s conveys an impression of the high quality of the Italian paintings in the collection.