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We look slightly down at an ornate fountain in a dirt and stone courtyard surrounded by about two dozen people, many of whom look at or gesture toward the fountain in this vertical painting. Most of the people have pale, peachy skin but one man, near the lower center, has dark brown skin and short black hair. The fountain has a broad, shell-shaped base filled with glimmering, aquamarine-blue water. In the basin, and as if carved from gray stone, two muscular, nude men blow horns as they ride stylized dolphins, which spout water into the pool. Two more people wearing robes sit atop a tall, pedestal-shaped form that rises from the back of the shell base. The person to our left holds aloft a bowl and the other holds a vessel on her lap as she turns to look up and behind her at the pinnacle of the fountain. There, a person, also carved from stone, sits on a throne and points down with one hand while the other, closer to us, rests on a short column with three flame-like protrusions up each side. He leans back against a short, curving ship with an oar coming through a porthole to our right. A nude, chubby, baby-like cherub straddles the rudder like a horse to our right. The sun falls down the front of the fountain, especially highlighting the middle tier and bottom shell-shaped basin, and it illuminates the people gathered around and near its base. One man to our left kneels on the edge of the basin and dips one hand in, as several others stand around it and look up at or point toward it. Most of the people wear robes, cloaks, and tunics in mustard yellow, tomato red, peach, white, and royal or light blue. A few vignettes draw the eye, including two men wearing chains on their ankles, are sprawled in shadow in the lower left corner of the composition. In that same cluster, two men stand and gesture toward the fountain while another sits at their feet. Nearby, the man with brown skin sits in front of a light-skinned man wearing a turban, a striped tunic, and a short sword hanging from his belt. The turbaned man stands with his back to us and rests his right hand on the handle of a pointed axe, using it like a cane. To our right, a person wearing an armor breastplate under a ruby-red cloak stands next to a balding man who also points up at the fountain. A young man wearing a lemon-yellow suit sits on a fallen block in the lower right corner of the composition, holding a board on his lap and presumably sketching the fountain, as a man wearing sapphire blue looks on. More people walk toward the fountain down in front of a gate to our right of the fountain. Beyond, plants and vegetation grow among ruins with columns, a stone obelisk, and a tall narrow pyramid. Pale pink clouds float in the pastel blue sky above. The artists signed their names as if written on the face of a stone block near the lower left: “B.” and “M.” next to “RICCI Faciebant.”

Sebastiano Ricci and Marco Ricci

Memorial to Admiral Sir Clowdisley Shovell, 1725

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 31

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 222.1 x 158.8 cm (87 7/16 x 62 1/2 in.)

framed: 251.3 x 188.4 x 10.8 cm (98 15/16 x 74 3/16 x 4 1/4 in.)

Credit Line

Samuel H. Kress Collection

Accession Number

1961.9.58

Artists / Makers

Sebastiano Ricci (artist) Venetian, 1659 - 1734

Marco Ricci (artist) Venetian, 1676 - 1729

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Overview

Shortly before 1722, Owen McSwiny, a bankrupt Irishman who had settled in Italy to escape his creditors, commissioned twenty-four large canvases from prominent Venetian and Bolognese painters as a commercial venture. By profession a theater impresario, he concocted this series of allegorical monuments commemorating recently deceased British monarchs and aristocrats, hoping that their wealthy heirs might purchase the works. McSwiny's "Tombs," as they came to be called, proved to be unintelligible; no one, not even the artists who painted them, ever had a clear notion of what the pictures represented.

This ornate and fanciful memorial, for example, alludes only vaguely to the subject's naval career. The admiral himself does not appear, nor does the shield in the right foreground bear his exact coat-of-arms. Only the fountain hints at the maritime theme with its ancient ships' prows and rudders, statues of tritons riding dolphins, and a bas-relief of Neptune, god of the sea.

The Shovell canvas is a collaboration by Marco Ricci, who contributed the picturesque landscape and theatrical architecture, and his uncle Sebastiano Ricci, who painted the figures and statuary. The two Riccis' use of fluffy textures and decorative colors marks the emerging rococo style.

More information on this painting can be found in the Gallery publication Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, which is available as a free PDF https://www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/research/publications/pdfs/italian-paintings-17th-and-18th-centuries.pdf

Inscription

lower left on stone: B. / M. RICCI / Faciebant (Bastianoand Marco Ricci made it)

Provenance

Commissioned by Owen McSwiny for Charles Lennox, 2d duke of Richmond [1701-1750], Goodwood, Sussex, and Somerset House, London, by 1726; by descent to Charles Lennox, 4th duke of Richmond [1764-1819]; (his sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 26 March 1814, no. 48); bought by P. Hill.[1] Sir Richard Colthurst, Cork, Ireland. (David M. Koetser Gallery, New York, London, and Zurich);[2] purchased 1953 by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[3] gift 1961 to NGA.

[1] The circumstances of commission and the painting's sale are discussed in the NGA systematic catalogue entry (Diane De Grazia and Eric Garberson, Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, Washington, D.C., 1996: 237-242). Martha Hepworth of the Getty Provenance Index provided an annotated copy of the 1814 Goodwood sale catalogue and has identified P. Hill "almost certainly" as the London dealer Philip Hill, about whom little is known (letter of 8 June 1990, NGA curatorial files).

[2] Fern Rusk Shapley, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools XVI-XVIII Century, London, 1973: 132, and Fern Rusk Shapley, Catalogue of Italian Paintings, 2 vols., Washington, D.C., 1979: 1:404. According to a typed notation in the NGA curatorial files of a letter from David Koetser of 23 October 1954, Koetser acquired the painting through an agent working for an old English family whose name he would not divulge to Koetser.

[3] See The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/1474.

Associated Names

Christie, Manson & Woods, Ltd.
Colthurst, Richard, Sir
Hill, Philip
Koetser Gallery, David M.
Kress Foundation, Samuel H.
Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond, Charles
Lennox, 4th Duke of Richmond, Charles
McSwiny, Owen

Exhibition History

1994: The Glory of Venice: Art in the Eighteenth Century, Royal Academy of Arts, London; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Museo del Settecento Veneziano - Ca'Rezzonico, Venice, 1994-1995, no. 37 (London and Washington), no. 7 (Venice), repro.

2019: Canaletto and Venice, Palazzo Ducale, Venice, 2019, no. IV.06, repro.

Technical Summary

The support is a gauzelike fabric. The reddish brown ground shows through in areas of abrasion and in passages where it was used as shading. Over the uniform ground layer are additional layers, toned to conform with the related paint layer. For example, a light-toned layer is under the sky, a darker tone is under the foreground, and a yellow layer is under the shield. First the background was painted, using dark brown washes; next the sky, architecture, and foreground were added, leaving reserves for the subsequent execution of the sculptural and "live" figures. The exactness of these reserves suggests that the placement and poses of the figures had been established in advance. The tonal layers, contour strokes, and highlights were added last. The consistency of paint in the nonfigural sections varies from thin in the foreground to low impasto in the sky and architecture, and tends to be applied with blended strokes. The figures are painted with thick, fluid, unblended strokes. Pentimenti appear throughout the architecture, the sculptures, and in the trees. X-radiographs and infrared photographs reveal three figures in the foreground, at the bottom of the fountain, which were brought to a finished state and then painted out by the artist.

The original tacking margins have been opened and incorporated into the painted surface. Cusping appears along all but the top edge. The paint surface at the upper corners has darkened due to an optical effect of the dark ground showing through. The painting has extensive traction cracks, overall abrasion, and scattered losses. The painting was relined in 1955 by Mario Modestini. Discolored varnish was removed and the painting was restored during the 1955 treatment and, most recently, in 1994 by Ann Hoenigswald.

Bibliography

1926: Voss, Hermann. "Studien zur venezianischen Vedutenmalerei des 18. Jahrhunderts." Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft (1926): 37.

1932: Arslan, Wart. "Appunti su Magnasco, Sebastiano e Marco Ricci." Bollettino d'Arte 26 (1932): 217-218.

1955: Pallucchini, Rodolfo. "Studi Ricceschi (II) Contributo a Marco." Arte Veneta 9 (1955): 192, 194-196, fig. 225.

1956: Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection Acquired by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation 1951-56. Introduction by John Walker, text by William E. Suida and Fern Rusk Shapley. National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1956: 148-151, no. 58, repro.

1957: Blunt, Anthony, and Edward Croft-Murray. Venetian Drawings of the XVII & XVIII Centuries at Windsor Castle. London, 1957: 31.

1959: Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 231, repro.

1960: Pallucchini 1960, 40, fig. 100.

1961: Walker, John, Guy Emerson, and Charles Seymour. Art Treasures for America: An Anthology of Paintings & Sculpture in the Samuel H. Kress Collection. London, 1961: 158, repro. pl. 150, color repro. pl. 151.

1962: Boyce, Benjamin. "Baroque into Satire: Pope's Frontispiece for the 'Essay on Man'." Criticism 4 (1962): 23, 25, fig. 10.

1962: Croft-Murray, Edward. Decorative Painting in England 1587-1837. 2 vols. London, 1962; Feltham, 1970: 2:24, 241, no. 21.

1963: Haskell, Francis. Patrons and Painters. London, 1963: 289 (2nd ed., 1985).

1965: Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 115.

1967: Burda, Hubert. Die Ruine in den Bildern Hubert Roberts. Munich, 1967: 35.

1968: National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 102, repro.

1973: Jaffé, Michael. European Fame of Sir Isaac Newton. Exh. cat. Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 1973: 14.

1973: Kaufmann, C. M. Victoria and Albert Museum, Catalogue of Foreign Paintings. 2 vols. London, 1973: 1:239.

1973: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XVI-XVIII Century. London, 1973: 131-133, fig. 259-260.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 306, repro.

1976: Daniels, Jeffery. L'opera completa di Sebastiano Ricci. Milan, 1976: 127, no. 426, repro.

1976: Daniels, Jeffery. Sebastiano Ricci. Hove, 1976: 153-154, no. 531, fig. 55.

1976: Daniels, Jeffery. "Sebastiano Ricci in England." Atti del Congress internazionale di studi su Sebastiano Ricci e il suo tempo. Milan, 1976.

1976: Mazza, Barbara. "La viecenda dei 'Tombeaux des Princes': Matrici, storia e fortuna della serie Swiny tra Bologna e Venezia." Saggi e Memorie di Storia dell'Arte 10 (1976): 90-91, no. 3, fig. 7.

1978: Works by Sebastiano Ricci from British Collections. Exh. cat. P. & D. Colnaghi & Co., Ltd., London, 1978: unpaginated, no. 21, fig. 21a.

1979: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: 1:402-406; 2:pl. 286, 286A.

1983: Knox, George. "The Tombs of Famous Englishmen as Described in the Letters of Owen McSwiny to the Duke of Richmond." Arte Veneta 27 (1983): 231, no. 4.

1984: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 345, no 473, color repro.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 352, repro.

1991: Adolphs, Volker. "Der Impressario als Auftraggeber. Owen McSwiny und die 'Tombeaux des Princes grand capitaines et autres illustres." In Venedigs Ruhm im Norden. Exh. cat. (2 venues). Hannover, 1991: 43, 48-49, 51, fig. 13.

1991: Scarpa Sonino, Annalisa. Marco Ricci. Milan, 1991: 34, 137, no. 112, fig. 312, color pl. 33.

1992: Knox, George. Giovanni Piazzetta 1682-1754. Oxford, 1992: 176, fig. 125.

1992: National Gallery of Art, Washington. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 114, repro. (not in 1995 rev. ed.).

1994: The Glory of Venice. Exh. cat. Royal Academy of Arts, London; National Gallery of Art, Washington; Museo del Settecento Veneziano - Ca'Rezzonico, Venice; Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice, 1994-1995: 489, cat. 37, color repro. 110.

1996: De Grazia, Diane, and Eric Garberson, with Edgar Peters Bowron, Peter M. Lukehart, and Mitchell Merling. Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1996: 237-242, color repro. 239.

2004: Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 244-245, no. 196, color repro.