ATTRIBUÉ À MARIA FELICE TIBALDI (1707-1770)

Lot 47
15.06.2023 15:00UTC +01:00
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€ 23 940
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationFrance, Paris
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ID 974642
Lot 47 | ATTRIBUÉ À MARIA FELICE TIBALDI (1707-1770)
Estimate value
€ 12 000 – 18 000
ATTRIBUÉ À MARIA FELICE TIBALDI (1707-1770)

Le triomphe d'Arlequin

huile sur toile

26,2 x 50,6 cm. (10 1/3 x 19 7/8 in.)





Provenance

Collection de Jules Strauss (1861-1943) ; puis par descendance à sa fille, Francoise Hélène Juliette Sorbac (1900-1986) ; puis par descendance à l'actuel propriétaire.



Post lot text

ATTRIBUTED TO MARIA FELICE TIBALDI, THE TRIUMPH OF HARLEQUIN, OIL ON CANVAS

This joyfully colourful company grouped around a fairy-tale float brings together various figures in Harlequin garb. A couple of lovers who sit atop the float, their exaggerated gestures very much in keeping with the aesthetics of the Comedia dell'Arte, are particularly prominent in this matrimonial procession. The main figure of Harlequin in this composition is borrowed from a painting by Watteau (1684-1721) known from the engraving by Charles-Nicolas Cochin (1715-1790), Pour garder l'honneur d'une belle (British Museum, London, inv. no. 1838,0526.1.83), while the chariot itself recalls an engraving of 1735 by Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre (1714-1789), the Mascarade chinoise (Metropolitan museum of Art, New York, inv. no. 53.600.4449).

With its frieze of harlequins, the composition of the present painting is similar to a one by Pierre Subleyras (1699-1749) from the collection of Cardinal Valenti-Gonzaga (1690-1756), which was sold in 2001 (anonymous sale, Christie's London, 2 November 2001, lot 101). This latter, more densely populated and decorated with greater theatricality, was perhaps a intended as a design for an interior decoration. The idea of composition was taken up by his wife, Maria Felice Tibaldi (1707-1770), in a painting of similar format and composition to the present work kept in the Musée des Augustins (Toulouse, no. inv. 55 1 1). The hemispherical format of the Toulouse painting leaves no doubt as to its purpose: it is the design for a fan, believed to have been intended for the Spanish queen, Elisabeth Farnese (1692-1766). An actual fan based on this composition is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (inv. no. T.153-1920).

Maria Tibaldi was a brilliant miniaturist who, like her husband, was a member of the Academy of St. Luke in Rome from 1742. She was only the second woman to join the Academy after Rosalba Carriera (1673-1757). Her interpretation of Pierre Subleyras' painting seems to have been well received. It is believed that several fans were constructed after it, that the composition was repeated by the artist herself and that it inspired others. Indeed, a painting by Hubert Robert (1733-1808), once attributed to Watteau (present location unknown) repeats the composition imagined by Maria Subleyras in a walled park (see M. Roland Michel, 'Notes on a Painting by Hubert Robert Formerly Attributed to Watteau', The Burlington Magazine, November 1960, 102, 962, pp.ii-iii).
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