Teodoro Filippo di Liagno, called Filippo Napoletano

With Heinrich Appenzeller Gallery, Zürich, no. 5;

Anonymous sale ('The Property of a Lady'), London, Christie's, 10 December 1993, lot 363, for £34,500;

Private collection, Germany;

With Otto Naumann, New York, by 1995;

With Whitfield Fine Art Limited, London, by 1995;

From whom acquired by a private collector, New York, by 1996;

By whom sold ('Property from a Distinguished New York Collector'), New York, Christie's, 31 January 2024, lot 169.

New York, Otto Naumann Ltd, Inaugural Exhibition of Old Master Paintings, 12 January – 1 March 1995, no. 7.

C. Whitfield, in Inaugural Exhibition of Old Master Paintings, exh. cat., New York 1995, pp. 47–48, no. 7, reproduced in colour p. 49.

Napoletano appears to have been been living in Naples from c. 1600 to 1614, before moving to Florence, via Rome, in 1617. His early artistic training came from northern artist Gottfried Wals (c. 1595–1638), a German painter who spent the majority of his career in Italy. The influence of northern artists on Napoletano, such as Jan and Esaias van den Velde, can be seen in the present painting, which likely dates to the 1620s, after his return to Rome.¹ Similarities can also be seen with his slightly earlier composition of 1619, Picnic on the Grass, in the Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence.²

¹ Whitfield 1995, p. 47.

² M. Chiarini, Filippo Napoletano, 1582–1629, Vita e opere, Florence 2007, p. 272, reproduced.