May 21, 2020 - Sale 2537

Sale 2537 - Lot 9

Price Realized: $ 4,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 5,000
ANIELLO FALCONE
(Naples 1600-1665 Naples)
The Plague.

Red chalk on paper mounted on card stock, circa 1650s. 230x175 mm; 9 1/8x7 inches.

Ex-collection Jonathan Richardson Jr., London, with his extensive inscription in ink on his original mount (Lugt 1515, verso); Robert Spencer, London (see Lugt 2305); and Alfred Normand, with his inscription in ink and ink stamp (Lugt 153c, verso).

Sold Tajan, Paris, expert Bruno de Bayser, March 29, 2000, lot 44 (as attributed to Giulio Carpioni).

Based on Nicolas Poussin's (1594-1665) oil painting The Plague of Ashdod, circa 1630, which was commissioned by Fabrizio Valguarnera, a Sicilian merchant who was put on trial for laundering money through the purchase of the painting. Poussin painted this while living in Rome, during a plague that took place in Italy from 1629 to 1631. Originally in the Palazzo Colonna, where Falcone would have seen it while he was in Rome during the early 1650s, the painting is now in the Louvre, Paris.