The Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence
Giovanni Battista Pittoni the younger (Venice 1687 - Venice 1767)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1700 - 1767
Materials
Oil on canvas (arched top) (grisaille)
Measurements
381 x 254 mm (15 x 10 in)
Place of origin
Italy
Order this imageCollection
Hinton Ampner, Hampshire
NT 1530081
Caption
Saint Lawrence was a Christian martyr. He was ordained by Pope Sixtus II but when the Pope himself was arrested in Rome in 258, he ordered Lawrence, his deacon, to give the church’s treasures to the poor. The city’s prefect demanded Lawrence give them up but he refused, so he was condemned to a roasting on a gridiron. According to the story he is said to have declared: “See, I am done enough on one side, now turn me over and cook the other.”! He has since also become patron saint of cooks. This is a black and white sketch in oils from the altarpiece at San Sisto, Piacenza, probably made for an engraver to copy.
Summary
Oil painting on canvas (grisaille) (arched top), The Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence by Giovanni Battista Pittoni the younger (Venice 1687 - Venice 1767). The fact that this sketch is in grisaille, monchrome colouring, and is shaped exactly like the finished altarpiece suggests that it was not a bozzetto or modello for it, but a ricordo after it, done as a black-and-white model for the engraver, for the altarpiece of San Sisto at Piacenza, Italy.
Provenance
Purchased by Ralph Stawell Dutton (1898-1985), 8th and last Lord Sherborne, from Ettore Viancini (art dealer), Venice, (14 January 1964 for 850.000 lire); bequeathed to the National Trust by Ralph Stawell Dutton, with the rest of the collections, house, gardens and estate of Hinton Ampner.
Credit line
Hinton Ampner, The Ralph Dutton Collection (National Trust)
Makers and roles
Giovanni Battista Pittoni the younger (Venice 1687 - Venice 1767) , artist