Lambert Sustris

Probably Signor Domenico Ruzzini, Venice;

Acquired in Venice by Edward Cheney, 4 Audley Square, London, by 1857;

Charles Butler;

Robert Langton Douglas, 6 Hill Street, Mayfair, according to a label on the reverse;

Probably from whom acquired by Anton Philips (1874-1951).

G.F. Waagen, Galleries and Cabinets of Art in Great Britain, London 1857, p. 171 (as Andrea Schiavone);

C. Ridolfi, Le maraviglie dell'arte, D.F. von Hadeln (ed.), Berlin 1914, vol. I, p. 252 (as Schiavone, "Nelle sesta, Mose ritrovato nel fiume dalla figliuola di Faraone, con vedute di asamenti e liete verdure");

L. Douglas, "Photographic Evidence," in Burlington Magazine 60, no. 351 (June 1932), pp. 283, 288, reproduced pl. II, C (as Schiavone).

In Le Maraviglie dell’Arte, first published in 1648, the Venetian art biographer and collector Carlo Ridolfi described a series of paintings by Andrea Schiavone adorning six chests in the collection of Signor Domenico Ruzzini, Senator of Venice. On the basis of Ridolfi's description, Robert Langton Douglas identified the present work as one of those cassone panels in his 1932 Burlington Magazine article (see Literature).¹

Considerably more is understood about early-seventeenth-century Venetian cassone panels today than in the early twentieth century when Langton Douglas first encountered the present work. Langton Douglas, who attributed the panel to Andrea Schiavone, was a discerning connoisseur, and the painting does indeed bear comparison with cassone panels published in Francis Richardson’s catalogue raisonné of Schiavone’s work (1980). However, as Professor Peter Humfrey has observed, many cassone panels formerly ascribed to Schiavone are now more accurately assigned to either Bonifazio Veronese or, as in the present case, Lambert Sustris. The looping draperies, calligraphic articulation of folds, delicate tonal range, and classical architectural settings are all characteristic of Sustris’s refined Venetian idiom, in contrast to Schiavone’s richer chromaticism, bolder light contrasts, and looser brushwork.

Anton Philips acquired a number of paintings from Langton Douglas during the 1920s and 1930s. Robert Langton Douglas was a British art critic, dealer, lecturer, author, and director of the National Gallery of Ireland. Indeed, the other Ruzzini cassone panel identified in his 1932 article is now in the National Gallery of Ireland's collection (inv. no. NGI.1128).

We are grateful to Professor Peter Humfrey for his help in cataloguing this picture.²

¹ "Nelle sesta, Mose ritrovato nel fiume dalla figliuola di Faraone, con vedute di casamenti e liete verdure."

² Email correspondence, November 12th 2025.