Lot 1107. Giovanni Battista Piazzetta (1682 Venice - 1754 Venice), Saint Francis of Paola. Oil on canvas. 44.5 x 36 cm. Estimate: € 80,000 - € 90,000. © Lempertz

Certificate.

Provenance: Belgium private collection.

Literature: Quoted literature: A. Mariuz: L'opera completa del Piazzetta, 1982. - MA Chiari Moretto Wiel (ed.): Exhibition catalog: L'ereditá di Piazzetta. Volti e figure nell'incisione del Settecento, Venice Palazzo Ducale 1996.

Note: Venetian painting of the 18th century unfolds between two great and very different artistic personalities: Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and Giovanni Battista Piazzettta. Bright, virtuoso and extremely productive one, dark and slow working the other. Piazzetta's traditional complete oeuvre counts scarcely 165 oil paintings, among them many rather small-format paintings, the so-called "tests", that is heads of apostles or saints, which were also spread as stitches throughout Europe. Even Goethe mentions them in "Poetry and Truth."

Our picture belongs to this genus. It depicts Saint Francis of Paola, whom Piazzetta painted several times in comparable formats. Most similar to this newly discovered image is a representation of the saint in the Pinacoteca dell'Accademia in Rovigo of the same dimensions (A. Mariuz, op. Cit., No. 118).

Piazzetta had a productive workshop. His paintings, however, differ from those of the students by the dense and lively representation of matter, which also distinguishes the painting presented here.