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Lot description
(Genoa 1667–1749) Nuns playing musical instruments, oil on canvas, 52.5 x 38.5 cm, framed Provenance: sale, Dorotheum, Vienna, 18 April 2012, lot 539 (as Alessandro Magnasco); where acquired by the present owner We are grateful to Faustina Franchini Guelfi for confirming the attribution of the present painting and for her help in cataloguing this lot. The present composition displays the influence of the dramatic artistic style prevalent in seventeenth century Lombardy on Alessandro Magnasco’s oeuvre. His work is characterised by swift, loaded brush strokes and the dramatic contrast of light and dark with earthy tones, far removed from the bright, glowing colours of contemporary Genoese painting. From about 1703 to 1709, Magnasco was in Florence where he worked for Grand Duke Ferdinand de’ Medici and his highly cultured court. He was influenced by the ironic genre paintings by Dutch and Flemish artists, of which there were many in the Medici collections, and the lively court of Ferdinand encouraged an interest in burlesque art. After returning to Milan in 1709, Magnasco worked for the Lombard aristocracy and began experimenting with completely new subject-matter, as in the Capuchin Friars’ Refectory, the Capuchin Friars Studying and the Catechism in Church (all Seitenstetten Abbey, Austria), painted between 1719 and 1725 for Conte Gerolamo Colloredo, the Austrian Governor of Milan. These works, and others completed during the succeeding period, suggest the artist’s active participation in the intellectual debates of advanced aristocratic circles.