Major Painting by Pompeo Batoni to Lead Sotheby’s Old Master Paintings Sale in January 2013
Sotheby’s sale of Important Old Masters Paintings on 31 January 2013 in New York will be led by Susanna and the Elders, a major work by Pompeo Girolamo Batoni from 1751 (est. $6/9 million). Following his arrival in Rome in 1727, Batoni immersed himself in the classical traditions of Raphael, Domenichino and Annibale Carracci, and at the time he painted the present work, he was the most celebrated painter working in the city. Susanna and the Elders was commissioned by Count Ernst Guido von Harrach of Vienna, one of the most important collectors of the day known for acquiring works by the best modern masters working in Rome, and this painting remained in the Harrach family collection for nearly 250 years until it was purchased by the present owner in 1992. The monumental canvas has not be exhibited publicly in over 40 years and is on view in Sotheby’s London galleries through 6 December 2012, before it returns to New York for exhibition early next year.
Inspired by Domenichino’s two well-known interpretations of the subject, Batoni executed a far more daring and sensual depiction of the story, creating what is arguably one of his finest history pictures and one of his very few treatments of an Old Testament subject. In it, Batoni employed the full range of artistic talents at his disposal: his mastery of drawing; his lush and precious use of color; his simultaneously controlled but free application of pigment; his complete mastery of composition. All of these remarkable artistic achievements, however, are used in the Susanna to serve Batoni’s keen sense of dramatic narrative, allowing him to create in the painting an image not only of great beauty, but of astounding visual impact.
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