Live Auction 23048A Park Avenue Collection
FRENCH SCHOOL, 18TH CENTURY
Lot 122

FRENCH SCHOOL, 18TH CENTURY

Two women and a child, a fragment

Closed17 April 2024

Price Realised

USD 3,780

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FRENCH SCHOOL, 18TH CENTURY
Two women and a child, a fragment
oil on canvas
18 3/8 x 24 in. (46.7 x 61 cm.)

Aage Fersina, Copenhagen, from whom purchased by Miss Tully on August 25, 1958 for $27,500.
Alice Tully (1902-1993), New York; [Important Old Master Paintings from the Collection of Alice Tully]; Christie's, New York, 11 January 1995, lot 29, as Studio of Paolo Caliari, Il Veronese, where acquired by the present owner.

Specialist note

This composition is a conflation of three independent compositions. The two women with their backs to the viewer are direct quotations from Paolo Veronese's The Choice between Virtue and Vice (c.1565; New York, The Frick Collection) and Unfaithfulness, one of the four canvases from Veronese's Allegories of Love (c.1575; London, National Gallery). The child is taken from Correggio's celebrated picture of Danaë, painted in circa 1581 and now in the Galleria Borghese, Rome. All three works were in the collection of Emperor Rudolph II and were among the pictures looted from Prague for the Swedish crown in 1648. They eventually entered the celebrated collection of Philippe d’Orléans (1674–1723), Duke of Orléans, in Paris, where they were likely copied by the author of the present work, before being sold in 1800.