(Feldkirch 1664–1736 Milan)
The music lesson,
signed lower centre: Giacomo Franceso Cipper Tedeso,
oil on canvas, 125 x 161 cm, framed

Provenance:
possibly acquired by Sir Richard Temple, 1st Viscount Cobham (1675–1749), Stowe House, Buckinghamshire, England;
by descent to the Dukes of Buckingham and Chandos, Stowe House, Buckinghamshire, England;
their sale, Christie’s, London, 12 September 1848, lot 112 (as G. F. Cipper Tedesco);
where acquired by Thomas Walesby, Waterloo Palace, London, 1859;
Private collection, Bergamo;
sale, Sotheby’s, London, 24 February 1971, lot 134 (as Giacomo Francesco Cipper, called il Todeschini);
with Galleria Lorenzelli, Bergamo (according to Literature);
Private European collectionv

Literature:
B. Seely, Stowe: a description of the House and Gardens of His Grace the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, K.G., & C &C. at Stowe, in the County of Buckingham, London 1838, p. 65, no. 287;
H. R. Forster, The Stowe catalogue: priced and annotated, London 1848, p. 160, no. 112;
B. Geiger, Giacomo Francesco Cipper, genannt Todeschini, in: Monatshefte für Kunstwissenschaft, vol. 9, no. 8, 1916, p. 278, not illustrated;
C. Anson, The picture collection at Stowe, in: Apollo, June 1973, p. 586,;
L. Tognoli Bardin, G. F. Cipper, il Todeschini e la pittura di genere, Bergamo 1976, p. 154 cat. no. 106, illustrated p. 66 fig. 72;
A. Morandotti, in: La natura morta in Italia, vol. 1, Milan 1989, p. 288, not illustrated;
G. Gruber, Vie et oeuvre de Giacomo Francesco Cipper, in: Autour de Giacomo Francesco Cipper: gens d’Italie aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, exhibition catalogue, ed. by B. Sarrazin, Lyon 2005, pp. 30–31, footnote 17–18

The present painting is registered in the Fototeca Zeri, under no. 74091 (as Giacomo Francesco Cipper).

This work is one part of a series of four canvases, all signed by Cipper, from the collection of Stowe House. The paintings were described in Forster’s catalogue of Stowe House as having been ‘very old pictures at Stowe’. In 1848 the sale of Stowe’s contents, including the deer in the park, stretched over 40 days in August and September 1848. The four paintings were bought by the English art dealer Thomas Walesby, as reported in an anonymous note published in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts in January 1859 (p. 182).

The other paintings in the Stowe’s series include A vegetable market, which was sold at Sotheby’s in 1971 in the same sale as the present painting, Two young noblemen with a group of gypsies, now in a private collection, and Italian peasants at their repast, current location unknown (see Gruber in literature).

Stowe House was built around 1680 by Sir Richard Temple (1634–1697). Sir Richard was succeeded in 1697 by his son, also Richard (1675–1749), who in 1718 became Viscount Cobham. According to Anson (see literature), it has been claimed that Lord Cobham brought the four paintings by Cipper back with him from Flanders, after his campaigns. After Lord Cobham’s death his inheritance passed to his sister Hester Temple Greenville in 1749. Her heirs became the Marquesses of Buckingham in 1784 and the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos in 1822.

Cipper is known for his genre compositions drawn from everyday life, which frequently alluded to allegorical meanings, reflecting a typical trait of the Northern European artistic tradition by which ‘Todesco’, as he often signed himself, was deeply influenced. The repetition of familiar characters and scenes typical of genre painting, is redeemed here by the artist through his dense pictorial impasto and choice of palette, which in distinctive fashion deploys earthy colours set in contrast with passages of bright vermilion, such as in the vest of the old woman on the right. Cipper was born in Austria but lived in Lombardy and he is documented as arriving in Milan as early as 1696. Here, he was to manage a studio that attained enough success to employ assisantants. He was favoured by Milan’s intellectual circle of patrons and also received patronage from the Austrian nobility present in the Lombard capital. Cipper, il Todeschini can be considered as a significant figure in genre painting in Northern Italy linking the Danish painter Eberhard Keilau (1621–1687) and Giacomo Ceruti (1698–1767).