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Lot description
(Rome 1672 – circa 1720) A capriccio with Saint Peter baptising amidst classical ruins, oil on canvas, 74 x 99.5 cm, framed We are grateful to David Marshall for endorsing the attribution on the basis of a photograph. In a rich setting of ruins of classical temples, groups of figures are gathered. A female figure on the right points to the scene in the middle ground, where Saint Peter, recognisable by his halo, the blue and yellow robe and the golden key, is baptising kneeling people near a spring. Behind a portico in the centre, the view opens up onto a sunlit valley, bordered by hills reminiscent of the Roman Palatine and Aventine. In terms of his Roman artistic milieu, Carlieri was foremost a painter of architectural capricci from the generation which preceded Giovanni Paolo Panini. Trained in the studio of Andrea Pozzo Carlieri was assumed by eighteenth century writers to have painted Pozzos’ staffage, with ‘moving, well coloured and very delicious figurines’ (P. A. Orlandi, L’Abecedario pittorico, Naples 1733, p. 46). His oeuvre was obscured by the attributions of many of his works to Panini, until David Marshall’s work in re-discovering the master’s paintings (see D. R. Marshall, The architectural work of 1700: the paintings of Alberto Carlieri [1672–1720], pupil of Andrea Pozzo, in: Artibus et historiae, no. 50, London 2004, pp. 39–126). As can be seen in the painting offered here, his work is distinguished by the abundance of the architectural motifs, a sophisticated play of light and shadow and the luminous colour palette that derives from his teacher Pozzo. A painting of similar composition and dimensions by Carlieri was sold Christies, London, 22 March, 2017, lot 95. Another painting with the story of Saint Peter baptising in upright format is in the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore (inv. no. 37.503).