Veronese, finding of Moses

Always the most fun, when the auction house points in the right direction but doesn't know (or give) the essentials. Here, at Deutsch, sale of 24 February 2015, lot 34, we have a work described as Painting: Italian artist 18th century. Well, it may be 18th century, it may be 16th century. What is certain is that the original of this composition is a famous work by Paolo Veronese in the Gemaldegalerie of Dresden. Now, is this a Veronese, a workshop of Veronese, a copy by someone well-known like Sebastiano Ricci (which would indeed make it 18th century) or even Tiepolo, or an inferior copy?

The original is significantly larger, the copy (if that is what it is) focuses on the essence only and drops the more anecdotical figures to the right completely.

But some elements in the one for sale are better (as far as one can see on these images) than in the Dresden version, e.g. the rushes on the blanket of Moses, or the feathers on the hat of the dwarf on the left, or the sky (the Dresden version has these rather simplistic pinky sunrays, the one for sale has much more "realistic" sky).

Veronese painted multiple versions of this subject, like this one pictured above, so it's not impossible
that another real Veronese version would appear.

So, is the one for sale an actual, and better, Veronese? Doubtful, although one never knows. Is it an inferior copy? Certainly not, it is a very high quality one. Author?  Not Tiepolo, whose copies weren't as faithful. Perhaps Ricci, perhaps someone else. But at an estimate of 3,500 Euro to 5,500 Euro, and a starting bid of only 1,700 Euro, this seems to be a so far unrecognised bargain. It's huge as well, at 165 by 147cm it is considerably larger than most copies on the market, indicating the ambition of the painter and the supposedly upper-class market. I wouldn't be surprised, if a few others recognise this, to see this pass the 10,000 Euro mark.

UPDATE: sold for 6,000 Euro, I was again too optimistic.

In 2004, at Christie's, another (complete) copy after Veronese, high quality but smaller (about 100 by 150cm) sold for $13,000.