known as Carlotto
Allegory of the Sense of Touch
Provenance
Probably Antony Hoevenaar, Amsterdam
His sale, The Hague, 15 April 1693, lot 8 (as “Een Architect, of Beeldhouwer, van denzelven” with reference to Carelotti)
Possibly acquired by the artist Philip van Dijk (1683–1753)
His sale, The Hague, 13 June 1753, lot 10 (as “Praxiteles met een Hoofdt, zeer kunstig en kraftig geschildert, door Carlo Lotti”)
Johann Gottlob von Quandt , Dresden acquired from the above
Fedor Zschille, Counsellor of Commerce at Dresden, Kingdom of Saxony
His sale, Cologne, J.M. Heberle, 27 May 1889, lot 3 (as by Guercino)
Acquired by Mutmann, Radolfzell, Germany
Private Collection, Radolfzell, until 2001
Private Collection, Germany
Sotheby’s, London, 9 December 2010, lot 199
Luigi Koelliker, Milan
with Robilant & Voena. by 2015
Private Collection, Florida
with Nicholas Hall, by 2023
Private Collection, acquired from the above
Exhibitions
Radolfzell, Museum der Stadt Radolfzell, on loan 2001–2010
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gerard Hoet, Catalogus of Naamlyst van Schilderyen met Derzelver Pryzen, the Hague, 1752, vol. I, p. 16, no. 8.
Gerard Hoet and Pieter Terwesten, Catalogus of Naamlyst van Schilderyen, the Hague, 1770, vol. III, p. 69, no. 6.
Gerhard Ewald, Johann Carl Loth 1632-1698, Amsterdam, 1965, p. 116, no. 494.
Dudok van Heel, ‘Honderdvijftig advertenties van kunstverkopingen uit veertig Jaargangen van de Amsterdamsche Courant’, Jaarboek Amstelodamum, Amsterdam, 1975, p. 158, no. 34.
Jonathan Bikker, ‘Drost’s end and Loth’s beginning in Venice’, Burlington Magazine, London, March 2002, vol. 144, no. 1188, p. 155, reproduced plate 26.
Giuseppi Fusari, Johann Carl Loth, Soncino, 2017, p. 213, no. 207, reproduced plate LIX.
Essay
An elderly man garbed in billowing blue and crimson clothes with his features modeled in raking light looks down at a bust. His right hand, which grasps a chalk holder, caresses the marble. The bust, as well as the figure’s clothing and beard, attest to Johann Carl Loth’s extraordinary ability to convey materiality. Luigi Lanzi, in his history of Italian painting, counts Loth among the most important painters of the end of the seventeenth century and proclaims him to be the only Venetian of international rank. Large form and monumentality define Loth’s compositional style; as in the present painting, an over life-sized figure, seen from close up, occupies almost the entire picture field.
By the early 1650s when Loth arrived in Venice, the city had become a requisite stop for Northern artists eager to study in the shadow of the Apelleses of the sixteenth century, namely Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese. He followed a prestigious group of Germanic artists, including the sixteenth century Swiss artist Joseph Heintz the Elder, who visited and painted topographical views of Venice, and Loth’s slightly older countrymen Johann Liss and Adam Elsheimer. The end of the Thirty Years War and the marriage of Ferdinand Maria Wittelsbach to the Turin-born Enrichetta Adelaide of Savoy stimulated a stronger cultural dialogue between Loth’s birthplace, Bavaria, and his adopted home, the Italian peninsula. German speaking artists including Johann Anton Eismann and Johann Michael Rottmayr joined Loth in Venice and were followed by the next generation, led by Paul Troger and Franz Anton Maulbertsch.
Contributing to Venice’s vibrant artistic milieu were the commissions of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm’s court and networks of international agents, diplomats, and collectors. In 1659, the approximate date of the present picture, the Archduke commissioned Loth to paint a Jupiter and Mercury with Philemon and Baucis (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. no. 109; fig. 1), marking the artist’s first dealings with a non-Venetian patron and a surge in his fame. In 1692, he was appointed court painter to Archduke Leopold. Loth’s other important patrons included Frederick III of Denmark, who purchased two paintings by Loth—Jupiter suckled by the goat Amalthea (Copenhagen, Statens Museum of Kunst, inv. no. KMSsp153) and Pandora (untraced), which Frederick’s agent, Lambert van Haven, described as “virtuoso.” In Bavaria, Johann Wilhelm von der Pfalz-Neuburg, Elector Palatine, acquired multiple canvases by the artist. Notably, the merchant and patron of the arts, Francesco Feroni, commissioned from Loth an altarpiece for the funeral chapel in the Santissima Annunziata in Florence depicting The Death of Saint Joseph, a rare example of seicento Venetian religious painting in Tuscany. In the eighteenth century, Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg acquired (alongside masterpieces by Raphael, Correggio, and Giorgione from the collection of Ferdinando Carlo Gonzaga) a large number of paintings by Loth.
The present canvas is a splendid example of Loth’s early Venetian period, which mainly consists of half-length figures cast in strong light intended to enhance the structure of his subjects. Loth’s dexterity in portraying this elderly man with a weathered face and dirty fingernails evokes the naturalism of earlier Caravaggesque artists, for instance Ribera’s compositionally similar Sense of Touch (Pasadena, Norton Simon Museum, inv. no. F.1965.1.052.P; fig. 2). His early master, Willem Drost, greately influenced Loth’s expressive draperies, illuminated background, and reddish tones seen in the beard and flesh. Drost, one of Rembrandt’s most gifted pupils, came to Venice in 1655 and was among the vanguard of artists to introduce tenebrism to the lagoon city. The figure of the man with a luxuriant white beard and large hands can be identified in several works by both artists, including in Drost’s Mercury and Argus (Dresden, Gemäldegaleire, inv. no. 1608), and in his now lost Daedalus and Icarus (known from a drawing). He is also found in Loth’s Mercury and Argusdated to the late 1650s (London, National Gallery, inv. no. NG3571) and in his Saint Romuald (Venice, Galleria dell’Accademia, inv. no. 222). A similarly illuminated background appears in Loth’s Jupiter and Mercury and in many of Drost’s Italian paintings, for example his Self-portrait as an Ancient Philosopher(Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi, inv. no. 1890; fig. 3). Their artistic proximity resulted in the attributions of several paintings vacillating between Loth and Drost.
The subject of this painting remains enigmatic. It has been documented as ‘an architect or sculptor’ and ‘a Philosopher (Phidias contemplating a bust)’ in the eighteenth century and most recently as ‘Praxiteles contemplating the bust of Alexander the Great.’ Loth studied the ancient world: an inventory of his library contains a reference to a group of “statue romane” (roman statues) and he was exposed to antiquities in Venice and Rome, though neither the man (who appears as a model in multiple paintings), nor the bust can be associated with either Praxiteles/Phidias or Alexander.
Rembrandt’s Aristotle with a Bust of Homer (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 61.198; fig. 4) was painted for a Sicilian patron, Don Antonio Ruffo, in 1653. Drost, and therefore Loth, could have been aware of this painting. Seventeenth century documents reveal the complexity in interpretation. By 1657, only four years since Ruffo’s commission, the painting is recorded in his inventory as “a half-length figure of a philosopher, possibly Aristotle or Albertus Magnus” and is later described by Ruffo in a letter to Guercino as “Rembrandt’s which I judge to represent a Physiognomist.” When considered in the broader context of Italian seventeenth iconography, the present painting, probably painted for the open market, may depict an ‘Allegory of Touch.’
Furthermore, the marble bust, as proposed by Sir Nicholas Penny, is not Roman but Michelangelesque. It is physiognomically comparable to the head of Michelangelo’s Portrait of Giuliano de’ Medici (Florence, Tomb of Duke Giuliano de’Medici, Medici Chapel, San Lorenzo; fig. 5). A letter dated 7 July 1538 from Pietro Aretino to Giorgio Vasari describes Aretino’s great admiration for the sculptures and thanks Vasari for sending him drawing of the heads of Giuliano and Lorenzo.[1] Michelangelo’s influence on Loth extended beyond the present painting, Loth would continue later in his career to emphasizes the dominance of the male form, painting figures with heroic proportions, statuesque poses and emphasized musculature evoking Michelangelo’s Sistine ‘ignudi’ and Titian’s Michelangelesque paintings for the Santo Spirito in Isola (fig. 6).
Here, Loth suggests a contrast between the tactile quality of sculpture and the purely visual realm of painting, or a paragone (comparison) of the merits of painting and sculpture. He also promotes another paragone, the differing aesthetic qualities of central Italian and Venetian schools of paintings, or disegno/colore, as indicated by the chalk holder in the old man’s proper right hand.
This painting was listed in the 1693 sale of the collection of Antonio Hoevenaar, a clock maker in Amsterdam, further evidence of Loth’s international appeal. Hoevenaar owned fifteen paintings by Loth, which, according to the advertisement for his sale in the Amsterdamsche Courant, he had collected in Italy. Lot 8 in the sale was ‘Een Architect, of Beeldhouwer, van denzelven [Loth]’ (‘An Architect, or Sculptor, by the same [Loth]’) valued at 122 guilders. The same painting was recorded in the 1753 sale of the Hague artist Philip van Dijk (1680–1753) as ‘Braxiteles met een Hoofdt, zeer kunstig en kragtig geschildert, door Carlo Lotti‘ (‘Praxiteles with a Head, very artfully and powerfully painted, by Carlo Lotti’). At the 1753 sale, Johann Gottlob von Quandt acquired the picture. Quandt, who was recently the focus of an extensive study, built a significant collection including paintings by Friedrich, Botticelli, Fra Angelico and Cranach. He is best known as the founder of the Sachsische Kunstverien (‘Saxon Art Society’) where he lectured and hosted leading artists such as Bertel Thorvaldsen, Johann Friedrich Overbeck, and Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld. The painting then passed to Gustav Fedor Zschille, an industrialist and politician, who was the Royal Saxon Secret Commercial Counselor. Most recently, the painting was on loan to the Museum der Stadt Radolfzell (2001-10).]❖