Herbette, from France, sells on 17 June 2018 a "French School, 18th century" portrait of a lady, estimated at 1,300 to 1,800 Euro.
At first I tweeted about it, as I thought it looked better and older than the description and estimate indicated, but I couldn't immediately find the right artist or period. But looking further and further first led me to the 16th century, then to Italy, and finally to Alessandro Allori (1535-1607).
I was first searching for French paintings of princesses or noble ladies, but I couldn't match the striking (and truly beautiful) fashion displayed in this painting with any works I encountered. A brief excursion to Elizabethan works confirmed that the work was probably from that period, but again the fashion didn't really match. Which led me to Italy, and a painting of Isabella de' Medici (1542-1576) from the Uffizi was the first match, both in clothing and by sheer luck also in style of painting.
This lead me to look further at Allori paintings, which share the same dress style, same way of painting faces (the eyes especially, but also the pale skin, the small mouth, the eyebrows, ...). Most of them are slightly turned sideways, but a few look directly at the viewer, and these are to me the best. The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna houses this portrait (either Maria de' Medici or Eleonora di Toledo).
And ultimately I came across an Allori portrait from the
Fogg Museum (or Harvard Art Museum). It is slightly larger than the current work (64 by 47 cm instead of 56 by 43 cm), and depicts the same woman, in the same dress and necklace, but with a different posture and a different hair jewel. And, most importantly, the work for sale is a lot better than this one (the reverse of what I usually have to say in my blog posts).
Comparing the head and the collar clearly shows the much more refined finish of the work for sale, the attention to detail in the lace (or whatever the cloth is), the much more realistic look of the face (no matter how much it still resembles a porcelain doll), ... The yellowing of the Fogg version is partly to blame for it, but even ignoring this you get in their version a lifeless, flat cloth, painted with skill but without real vigour, real splendour. It is a very good depiction of somptuous clothing, but it is not life-like.
The Fogg version is given as by Allori on ther website, but the
Fondazione Zeri (a catalogie of Italian painting comparable to the RKD website for Dutch and Flemish painting) has catalogued it as "School of Allori", which may be correct as the quality is not there compared to the best of his own works.
While I can't give any guarantees, being a generalist art historian who has based the above on images from the Internet, not on handling the actual painting or on a thorough knowledge of the works of Allori, to me this is almost certainl to be a real work by Alessandro Allori. Herbette indicates that it has been relined and has some repainted areas, and gives no provenance on their website.
So what's it worth then? At least 50,000 Euro. And sometimes these good sleepers in unsuspecting auctions go way beyond that, surpassing what the same painting would fetch in a major auction house even, so who knows?
What a good find of yours! This is perhaps a rather silly question; but the work looks as if it has been cleaned quite recently, and it looks so fascinating, so how could the auction house have recognized this as the work of a very accomplished painter? Kind regards, An intrigued collector
ReplyDeleteBasically (for me) there are two methods (for works without signature or earlier attribution); either you recognise the style (artist, region, period), and then you can look further if you can match it with a name or school; or (and this is the hardest part to explain), you look at a painting and think "wow!" (rare), "hmmm, interesting or unusual" (regularly), or "next!" (most works at normal auctions).
ReplyDeleteWhether that is "gut feeling", an "eye for quality", "taste", "being a connoisseur", ... is open for debate (and it takes more to be a connoisseur than just saying "wow" at good works), but it is something you develop when looking at lots and lots of works, reading about them, trying to find out what makes one work boring and the other one you keep staring at.
But no matter how well you develop this skill, you will have specialties and blind spots. I'm no good wih abstract art (I usually can spot a poor fake, but a somewhat decent fake is for me the same as a real work), but I'm e.g. also not very good in keeping apart Dutch portrait painters.
A crucial element in spotting good works is taking into account a lot of elements. Composition, colouring, detail, material, subject, ... A work with a very good composition but poor colouring or lack of detail (or harsh contour lines) often is a copy after an older work (or even more often after an engraving of such a work). On the other hand, a work with good composition and colouring but which looks rushed, unfinished, may either be a study or sketch for a work, or a swift copy after the work by a good artist. This is often very hard to determine.
So how did the auction house miss this one (assuming that I and apparently a lot of others are right)? The condition makes it look much more recent than 1550 or so, and a French auction house will be more familiar with French art than Italian. The fashion in these Allorui paintings, and the way the faces are painted, are also quite modern, quite unusual for their period.
And sometimes people go for the "if it looks too good to be true" rule even when it actually doesn't look "too" good, but just very good.
This https://auctionaugur.blogspot.com/2015/08/circle-of-palma-vecchio-or-much-later.html is the most extreme example I have seen from an auction house which should have known better. But the occasional error is inevitable, see e.g. the Met selling a "copy after Rubens" which is now generally considered a real work.
Thank you very much for your long and highly interesting reply. It's always a pleasure to read your blog.
DeleteAny idea what it sold for? The Herbette website is rather minimalist and does not show results.
ReplyDeleteOh, I replied to a post about the result on Twitter and forgot to post it here! I believe it was only 11,000€, apparently not everyone was convinced enough that it was a real Allori to immediately splash out the full value, but enough people saw that it was a lot more (or better) than the auction house estimated it for.
ReplyDeletenow it's in Dorotheum, lot n 496
ReplyDelete