(Belluno 1659–1734 Venice)
Architectural capriccio with the pyramid of Caius Cestius and the Dolabella gateway,
gouache on paper laid down on panel, 46.5 x 58.5 cm, framed

We are grateful to Mauro Lucco for suggesting the attribution after examining the present painting in the original.

Sebastiano Ricci and his nephew, Marco, are documented as having worked together on several paintings, with the former painting the figures and the latter the landscape backgrounds or architectural features. This is revealed, for example, in a letter from Sebastiano to Ferdinando de’ Medici, Grand Prince of Tuscany, in Florence, dated May 1st, 1706, and in another from Owen McSweeny dated December 17th, 1723, in which notice is given of an initial payment to the two Ricci for the Allegorical tomb of the Duke of Devonshire, signed by both artists and dated 1725, today at the Barber Institute of Birmingham. Other collaborative projects are attested to in other sources. The fact that several artists worked on a single painting is often documented either by double signatures or by the works themselves. Going a step further, however, and taking as a fixed rule that any figure painting by Sebastiano containing architectural features or landscapes must include the hand of Marco is too bold. The elder Ricci was himself quite capable of painting architecture when required: proof of this are two canvases depicting Balthazar’s feast and Esther and Asahuerus in the Palazzo del Quirinale, Rome, commissioned for the Palazzo Reale of Turin in 1733, three years after Marco had died.

The present painting presents this type of problem. It replicates an oil painting in the Isaac Delgado Museum in New Orleans (inv. 61.85; Kress coll., 111), which is by common agreement given to Marco Ricci, with the intervention of Sebastiano in the figures; a second version of the identical image, but just slightly smaller, is conserved in the collection of Lord Barnard at Raby Castle (County Durham, England), and was attributed to the two Ricci by Anthony Blunt in 1962 (see J. Daniels, Sebastiano Ricci, Hove 1976, no. 364). In these paintings, the pyramid of Caius Cestius appears to the right in the background; with regard to the so-called gateway of Dolabella, usually recognised as another important feature of the image, it is the inscription above that is used rather than its form, although it appears differently in the two pictures. Only the version in the Raby Castle picture more or less accords with the actual gateway, apart from many minor details; the New Orleans picture includes a gateway depicted in a much more approximate fashion. The context of ruins, however, must have been real, as two other paintings in a private American collection (formerly in the Lady Benyon collection, Englefield House, Reading) show the site from the opposite side. All these works have been dated by Annalisa Scarpa Sonino (Marco Ricci, Milan 1991, pp. 129, 130), initially to approximately the middle of the second decade of the 18th century, and subsequently (Sebastiano Ricci, Milan 2006, pp. 256, 287) to around 1720, which seems a more realistic date.

In the present painting, the plaque of the arch is shown with greater accuracy than the version in Raby Castle, and corresponds exactly to the one visible in loco. From many tiny details (such as the red “Phrygian” cap of the rider in the background), it is possible to suggest that our gouache follows this one with greater accuracy than that of New Orleans, adding further branches to the tree and more detail to the ruins, but completely changing the sky, with the large grey mass of clouds that cover it completely. The figures are perfectly coherent with those in the pictures mentioned, including those in the former Reading painting, which once belonged to consul Joseph Smith (a personal friend of the two artists: see F. Vivian, Il console Smith mercante e collezionista, Vicenza 1971, p. 22) who, clearly well-informed, attributed them both to Sebastiano.

Since there is nothing in the present picture to suggest a break with the rest in terms of style or working, it is legitimate to ask whether the one artist was not responsible for the whole work; and it is therefore worth also reconsidering the context for a moment. In 1719, Sebastiano and Marco had worked together on the decoration of the bishop’s palace of Belvedere just outside Belluno, for which the oil paintings on wall were almost wholly destroyed in 1883; evidently and unlike his uncle, Marco had no familiarity with painting fresco. But he was fascinated by a new invention of his own, tempera on parchment, which he was then working on: a drawing in Windsor Castle, constituting a preparatory sketch for a painting and which bears the dedication “Per Madama Smit” on the rear, also has a date – July 27th, 1719 – and mentions a place, Valdarno, not far from Belluno. For his part, Sebastiano knew little about this type of painting and as a more “traditional” workman and one with a more robust technical training, he may have considered that paper was the best support for tempera. Indeed, the effect achieved here is very similar to the opaque sheen of paintings of that sort by Marco, albeit a little duller and muted. If we compare the figures of the present gouache with those by Marco on the parchment in Windsor, the difference leaps out, demonstrating that for the present picture, the only artist involved was Sebastiano.

There is a further possible reason for a link with Belluno which is that, despite the fact that the plaque explicitly mentions the Roman consul Publius Cornelius Dolabella, there was actually a Dolabella family in Belluno, whose most noted exponent was Tommaso, a court painter to the King of Poland, who died some 70 years earlier, in 1650 (F. Miari, Dizionario storico-artistico-letterario bellunese, Belluno 1843, p. 68). The tiny, spidery details in the figures and architectural features, described with a greater amount of detail (one need only compare the present picture’s relief in the foreground which a young artist is copying with that at Raby Castle or in New Orleans), and the large mass of grey clouds concealing the upper part of the sky, are wholly in line with the Saint Paul preaching on the Areopagus in the Toledo Museum of Art. Painted for Lord Burlington, this was mentioned by George Vertue in his diaries, written between 1736 and 1741, as being by Sebastiano alone (although a few scholars now attribute the architectural details to Marco; see A. Scarpa-Sonnino ibid., pp. 307-308).

The painting may have either been a copy or an interpretation by Sebastiano Ricci of a composition by his nephew, Marco; it was painted just as the latter became more engaged with landscape painting, returning regularly to Belluno. This gave rise to works of a more intimate and realistic manner.

We are grateful to Mauro Lucco for cataloguing the present painting.

An alternative attribution to Marco Ricci (Belluno 1676–1730) for the present painting has been suggested by Dario Succi, who has dated it to 1714–15.