The Uffizi acquires a masterpiece by Pierre Subleyras

The Uffizi announced yesterday the acquisition of a work of art of primary importance for eighteenth-century painting: The Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine de’ Ricci by Pierre Subleyras (Saint Gilles, 1699 - Rome, 1749). This masterpiece was acquired during the Tefaf fair in Maastricht: the work had been presented by the Benappi Fine Art gallery in London , and from the outset it had been hoped that it would be purchased by an Italian museum, since the work was notified for its close ties to our country. Thus there is a renewal of a type of transaction we had already witnessed a few years ago, when the Uffizi bought again from Benappi and again in a fair context (at that time it was the Florence Biennale Internazionale dell’Antiquariato) the two Pannocchiesci d’Elci paintings by Daniele da Volterra.

The Subleyras work, an oil on canvas of imposing dimensions (75 x 250 cm), dated 1746, is an excellent example of the eighteenth-century Occitan painter’s talent. The canvas, considered of great value both for its artistic quality and for its prestigious patronage, will be restored and subsequently exhibited in the Gallery’s spaces dedicated to 18th-century painting.

The work was commissioned on the occasion of the canonization of Saint Catherine de’ Ricci and was in the collection of Girolamo Colonna di Sciarra in 1763. It later passed through the hands of various members of the Colonna family and between 1812 and 1935, was part of the Barberini collection in Rome (it was located in Palazzo Barberini). After being sold at auction in 1935, the painting entered the collection of Marquis Sacchetti and finally came to its current owners.

The painting reflects the purism and monumentality of figures typical of Subleyras, whose style was inspired by Poussin’s classicism and Roman Baroque models, with a touch of 18th-century chromatic delicacy. Pope Benedict XIV Lambertini, who chose Subleyras to paint this work, had already commissioned the painter to paint his own portrait, now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The work depicts the vision that Catherine de’ Ricci, a 16th-century Dominican nun, traditionally had on April 9, 1542, the Easter of that year: the Virgin, Christ, Magdalene and St. Thomas Aquinas are said to have appeared to her in a triumph of cherubs to celebrate her mystical wedding with Jesus, who slipped the ring on her left ring finger.

Subleyras, who was born in Saint-Gilles-du-Gard in 1699 and died in Rome in 1749, trained with his painter father before moving to Paris in 1726. In 1728 he won the prix de Rome, which enabled him to study at the French Academy in Rome. During his career, he produced numerous masterpieces including the famous Nude of a Woman preserved in the Barberini Gallery in Rome. The painter also worked for important ecclesiastical figures, creating works for the Church of the Olivetans in Perugia and for St. Peter’s in the Vatican.

ùThe new acquisition further strengthens the Uffizi collection and is a major addition to the understanding of 18th-century European painting. Simone Verde, director of the museum, expressed great satisfaction with this important acquisition, stressing how the work will be a protagonist in the Gallery, enriching the museum’s cultural and artistic offerings.

“The Marriage,” said Simone Verde, director of the Uffizi, “is a work of primary importance for the art of the eighteenth century; it will be a true and new protagonist in the museum’s rooms dedicated to the eighteenth century. In addition to presenting itself as a work of refined aesthetics and executive composure, it has the characteristic of expressing in the most significant way the taste of the circle of nobles and intellectuals who gravitated in the mid-eighteenth century around the Roman Curia. It is a true masterpiece, the quality of which it is rare to encounter yet on the market, which will come to enrich the 18th-century collections of the Uffizi, filling a considerable gap and representing a further piece in the completion of that gallery of the pictorial history of Italy pursued in his time by Luigi Lanzi and whose completion still constitutes an existential mission of the museum, given its centrality in collecting at the national and international level.”

The Uffizi acquires a masterpiece by Pierre Subleyras

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