CAGNACCI, GUIDO

Provenance: English private collection.

With a written report by Prof. Wolfgang Prohaska, 13.1.2014, who has studied the painting in the orginal.

Guido Cagnacci, who is listed in historical sources as an eccentric and unconventional artist, is known for his sensual depictions of the female body. The hitherto unpublished painting offered here is a characteristic example of his Venetian period, as described by Wolfgang Prohaska, shortly before the artist was appointed in 1650 to the Viennese court of Leopold I. Prohaska writes that for Cagnacci "the painterly dialectic between extreme naturalism in the portrayal of details of physical surfaces and seated or standing compositions resolved in the classical manner is characteristic. (...) The subject of the two daughters of old Lot, who feared for the survival of their progeny and therefore determined to commit incest with their father (Genesis 19: 30-38), gave rise to an ambiguity - between lasciviousness, fear of discovery or nocturnal promiscuity - through various visualisations, in which the ancient theme of the sexual desires of youth and age was stood on its head through the reversal of the active and passive roles. The image presented here places Lot in such a manner between his daughters as if he were drinking alone. The sinister atmosphere is suggested by a wary glance concealed by the daughter seated at left - of a character influenced by Cagnacci's "favorite enemy" Pietro Liberi - and her oppressively massive naked back; while the second daughter, evidently engaged in supplying him with wine, leans over a still life arrangement with a cask and watches her drinking father over his shoulder. Both stylistically and compositionally - and this is characteristic of Cagnacci in one phase of his development, as he had not yet integrated his various influences thoroughly - juxtaposition is noticeable here: a Caravaggesque old Lot, the second daughter drawn from Cagnacci's already quite distinct reservoir of types (cf. Madonna Reading in the Roman Ducrot collection) and the massive figure of the other daughter viewed from behind. Added to this is yet another source of influence, which has perhaps not been given sufficient attention in the research. Both in the composition and the soft chiaroscuro enveloping the scene, Florentine painting of the first half of the 17th century seems to be significant: notable are Furini's two versions of the Lot theme, also showing Lot in the centre flanked by his two daughters; especially that now in the Prado, Madrid, which was originally conceived for Emperor Ferdinand III and then landed very appropriately as a wedding gift in the collection of Philip IV, and was kept in the anteroom of Mariana d'Austria, niece and child bride of Philip IV." Wolfgang Prohaska positions this painting chronologically among Cagnacci's late work at the end of his residence in Venice, just before he moved to Vienna, where he died in 1663. He draws stylistic comparisons with the "Lucretia" in the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna, and the "Madonna Reading" in the Ducrot collection, Rome, which are generally dated to the 1650s. Prof. Daniele Benati, who has studied the painting from a photograph, believes that it originated in the immediate circle of Guido Cagnacci in Venice.