(Concordia Sagittaria 1637–1692)
Christ and the Adulteress,
oil on canvas, 115.5 x 147.5 cm, framed

We are grateful to Mauro Lucco for suggesting the attribution after examination of the present painting in the original and for his help in cataloguing this lot.

Antonio Carneo’s artistic training was influenced by the Venetian tradition. In the present painting, distinctive traits of his style include, for example, the rendering of the noses of the woman and the guard pushing her before Christ and it is possible to compare the woman’s face to those in other works by the artist, such as the Veneration of the Madonna and Saint Mark, conserved in the Museo Civico di Udine, which is generally dated to after 1677. According to Mauro Lucco, however, the present work belongs to an earlier phase of Carneo’s oeuvre.

In the present painting, Carneo appears to refer stylistically to Alessandro Varotari, il Padovanino, especially in his rendering of the drapery folds. The loose handling of the brush, meanwhile, is influenced by the works of Francesco Maffei, whose paintings were widely circulated at the time. In his depiction of the groups of figures, the artist seems to have been influenced by the compositions of Johann Carl Loth, who had arrived in Venice in 1656. Lucco has suggested that the present painting is among the first of Carneo’s career, dating to about 1660 or a little later: a period of the artist’s career that has still to be fully rediscovered.