Code:
36013
Framed
Expertise by Prof. Enrico Lucchese.
An important and rare work by Francesco Pittoni.
It is accompanied by an expert opinion and a study by Professor Enrico Lucchese. It was most likely painted for Count Livio Lantieri of Gorizia (1672-1738), the artist's patron, as Alessandro Quinzi clarified in the recent catalog of the 2024 exhibition "Eighteenth-Century Painters between Venice and the Empire." Lucchese writes:
"Francesco Pittoni found in Livio Lantieri a perfect patron in the fiefdoms of the Empire: this is also demonstrated by the painting under examination, which we intend to publish soon in a suitable scholarly setting."
Lucchese continues in his study of the work:
"Direct analysis absolutely confirms the authorship, attested by family tradition by the current owner, of Francesco Pittoni, as clearly attested by the comparison with Christ and the Adulteress (fig. 1) and the Raising of Lazarus (fig. 2) in Treviso, datable between the first and second decades of the eighteenth century (M. Binotto, Francesco Pittoni in the church of San Nicolò di Treviso, in "Arte Veneta", XXXIV, 1980, pp. 186-188).
This subject is well known in the work of Francesco Pittoni, having painted it, along with the
Communion of the Apostles, for the "two paintings in the main chapel" of the Venetian church of
San Giovanni Decollato (A.M. Zanetti, Della Pittura Veneziana. Libri V, Venice 1771, p. 423),
presumably of large dimensions.
This Christ and the Centurion, however, is closely connected to the ovals with the same
dimensions, such as Cimon and Pero (fig. 3), Charity (fig. 4), and Saint Sebastian (fig. 5)
from the National Gallery in Ljubljana (see K. Meke, in Barok v Sloveniji. Slikarstvo in kiparstvo, edited by M. Klemencic. K. Meke, Ljubljana 2025, pp. 426-431, nos. 106-108), formerly in the
Haasberg Castle (Hošperk, Planina pri Rakeku, Slovenia) and divided in the years following the Second
World War, together with other canvases by the same artist but with different sizes and formats, into
private and public collections in Italy and Yugoslavia in neighboring regions (see D. Gioseffi,
Venetian Painting of the Eighteenth Century, Bergamo 1965, p. 97, note 2; B. Murovec, Like Francesca
Pittonija iz dvorca Haasberg, in “Acta historiae artis Slovenica”, 7, 2002, pp. 59-69).
In that group, Seneca (fig. 5) from the Mio collection in Udine is signed and dated 1714, while
Samson and Delilah (fig. 6) from the Querini collection in Visinale (Pordenone) bears the inscription “Fr. et
J.° Bat. Pittoni,” thus documenting Giambattista Pittoni’s training with his uncle, and
the indication of the year “1718, or rather 1716” (A. Morassi, An Eighteenth-Century Exhibition in
Gorizia, in “Arte Veneta,” X, 1956, p. 254). Therefore, within the chronological terms just expressed,
the entire cycle, and consequently, Christ and the
Centurion, can plausibly be placed in Haasberg Castle.
It is ultimately up to Alessandro Quinzi (Artists, patrons, and collectors in Eighteenth-Century Gorizia. New Evidence, in Eighteenth-Century Painters between Venice and the Empire. Art across the
territories of Friuli Venezia Giulia, edited by L. Cargnelutti, V. Grasinigh, A Quinzi, Udine 2024,
pp. 272-284) to have deepened our understanding of the collecting personality of the Gorizian Livio Lantieri. (1672-1738), noting that a holographic document from 1723
counted sixty-one works by Francesco Pittoni in the castle of Rifembergo (Branik),
of which twenty-four were "ovates"; the artist is also mentioned with seventeen works in the
1753 ventilation of Livio's nephew, Giovanni Ignazio Lantieri, while in the subsequent Specification of the
command to rent in the house of the Most Illustrious Lord Ferdinando Carlo Count de Lantieri,
a with the specific inventory of movable effects, seventy-four paintings are listed as being by his hand.
Private sale