Images(4)

The Triumph of Venice

Artist Pompeo Girolamo Batoni (Italian, 1708–1787)

Date1737

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions68 5/8 x 112 5/8 in. (174.3 x 286.1 cm)
Frame: 82 1/4 x 126 1/4 x 4 in. (208.9 x 320.7 x 10.2 cm)

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineGift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation

Object numberGL.60.17.60

On View

Not on view

Collections

ProvenanceCommissioned by Marco Foscarini, Venetian ambassador to Rome, 1736–1740 [2]; Girolamo Manfrin (d. 1800/02), Venice; sold in 1856 [3]; “taken to America in 1857” [4]; Julia Lorillard Butterfield (1821–1913) [5], New York and Cold Spring-on-the-Hudson; (sale, New York, New Galleries, April 3, 1916, lot 147, sold for $145); bought by Marcel Jules Rougeron [6]; Madame X…(sale, Paris, Drouot, May 4–5, 1955, lot 126); International Financing Co., Panama City, Panama [7]; Samuel H. Kress Collection, New York, by 1956; gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation to the NCMA, 1961. [1] Catalogo dei quadric esistenti nella Galleria Manfrin in Venezia, n.d., no. 10, as 2 m 89 cm x 1 m 78 cm. [2] According to Ernst Emmerling, Pompeo Batoni, sein Leben und Werk, PhD. Dissertation, University of Cologne, 1932, p. 131, no. 183. According to the Getty Provenance Index’s Public Collections database, “Foscarini was a scholar and writer, much involved with historical studies of Venice; he became doge in 1762….The latest (1992) Kress exhib. cat. entry for this picture says he still owned [it] in 1745….” [3] According to Francis Haskell, “Francesco Guardi as Vedutista and Some of His Patrons,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 23, no. 3/4 (1960), p. 260, Girolamo Manfrin was a wealthy tobacco merchant who founded his collection in 1748, advised by Pietro Edwards and Sig. Gio. Battista Mingardi. The collection consisted of over 400 paintings. According to Haskell, Patrons and Painters, London, 1980, pp. 380–81, Manfrin’s collection was “apparently designed to give a general view of the history of Italian (and to some extent Flemish) painting.” Manfrin was also known as a patron of contemporary artists. The collection was one of the chief tourist attractions in Venice. Emmerling mistakenly said Batoni’s Triumph of Venice was sold in 1850, however it is listed as no. 10 in Catalogo dei quadri esistenti nella galleria Manfrin in Venezia, Venice, [1856]. According to the Getty Provenance Index’s database for Public Collections, the “collection…was inherited by Pietro Manfrin, then by Giulia-Giovanna Manfrin-Plattis; upon her death (1848/9) [the] collection [was] divided between Antonio-Maria Plattis and Botolina Plattis, widow of Baron Sardagna; some or all of Bortolina’s portion remained in Venice….” [4] Getty Provenance Index Collections Database places Anonymous collection, Trieste and Anonymous collection Vienna between Manfrin and when the painting was taken to America. [5] The NYTimes obituary for Julia Lorillard Butterfield published 7 August 1913 noted that she was the widow of Gen. Daniel Butterfield. General Daniel Adams Butterfield (1831–1901), who was trained as a lawyer but led his New York regiment as part of the Union Army during the Civil War. Butterfield’s father was President of the Overland Stage Company in 1848. At the time of Julia Lorillard’s marriage to Butterfield, she was the widow of Frederick P. James, who had left her a half interest in a $1,000,000 estate and a house at 400 Fifth Avenue and a country home, Cragside, Cold Spring-on-the-Hudson. Another article in the NYTimes published on 16 August 1913 reported that the bulk of her estate, estimated to be worth $3,000,000, was left to the YMCA. The same article notes, “A large painting by Pompeo Bartoni [sic], the ‘Triumph of Venice’ goes to the New York Public Library….” It is not known why this painting was included in her 1916 estate sale, however, an article published by the NYTimes 18 November 1913, reported that three sets of litigants were contesting her will. [6] Rougeron was a restorer and may have been acting as a dealer. [7] Anthony M. Clark, ed. By Edgar Peters Bowron, Pompeo Batoni, New York, 1985, p. 213, no. 13, places the International Financing Co. before the 1955 sale. It is more likely, however, that the company purchased the painting at the sale. A number of paintings went from International Financing Co. to Kress in 1956/7, suggesting it may have been some kind of offshore tax shelter used by Kress, who died in 1955. It is also possible that it was the anonymous seller in 1955.