Guido Reni is on a task. As soon as a number one inventive determine of early Seventeenth century Rome, when his patrons included the influential Borghese household, the Bolognese artist (1575-1642) was later scorned by the modernist-minded, who dismissed his upward-gazing Madonnas as near kitsch.
However Twenty first-century students have displayed renewed curiosity in his subtlety and ability, resulting in main museum exhibitions. And now he has set a world file at public sale.
On Monday afternoon (24 November) in Paris, Artcurial bought Reni’s early-Seventeenth-century, oil-on-canvas work, David and Goliath, for €12.39m (together with charges), breaking the artist’s earlier public sale file by a substantial sum. The work’s pre-sale estimate was simply €2m–€4m and its purchaser, based on the public sale home, was a non-public European collector.
Reni’s earlier file at public sale dates again to a Sotheby’s London sale in 2008, when The Martyrdom of Saint Apollonia, an oil-on-copper portray, bought for £1.8m. The identical work then bought for a mere $819,000 at a 2022 public sale at Christie’s New York.
Left: Articural’s recording-setting David and Goliath. Proper: the model of the portray held by the Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Orléans©Artcurial. © Musées d’Orléans
Reni’s David and Goliath has been the topic of debate lately. There are some six variations of the work, various in composition, execution and attribution.
“Reni cherished the pleasure of variation,” says Corentin Dury, the curator for the Outdated Masters assortment on the Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Orléans, which owns what’s now regarded by many because the earliest autographed model of the portray. Till not too long ago, a model held within the assortment of the Louvre was thought of “extra vital,” Dury says, however evaluation and comparisons with a drawing in a UK assortment has led to a change of opinion. In keeping with Drury, the record-setter was already recognized about, however was considered “only a later copy”.
Nonetheless, Eric Turquin of the France-based Outdated Masters appraisers Cupboard Eric Turquin—which helped convey the work to public sale—disagrees with Dury. He argues that his agency investigated a lead on the work earlier this 12 months, when it was hanging in a fort in western France, and was due to this fact chargeable for “the invention” of the portray.
Turquin additionally disagrees with Dury’s opinion relating to the significance of the Orléans museum’s model, during which David is seen staring straight into the enormous head of the vanquished Goliath. The Louvre’s model, and the model bought yesterday by Artcurial in the meantime, are fairly comparable, and present Goliath’s head turned the opposite means round.
Turquin, who attended Monday’s public sale, believes that the Louvre and Artcurial variations “had been most likely created collectively”. He has no doubts in regards to the significance of the recording-breaking work—which “explains the value”, he says.
