
Poppy Harvey-Jones
Head of Sale
£30,000 - £50,000
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PROVENANCE
Frederick Dickson, Haverthwaite, Cumbria around 1850, and thence by family descent to the present owner
The present painting, hitherto unknown, closely relates to a small group of secular works by Ricchi, such as the Morra Players with Canesso, Paris, the Card Players in the Maestri Collection, Forlì and Tric-trac players (offered at Piasa, Paris, 17 December 1997, lot 34). The present scene appears to be more lively in colouring, but the group has the same facial types, a very similar spatial conception, treatment of light and the thick and vibrant impasto.
Thanks to Baldinucci it is known that Pietro Ricchi travelled extensively throughout Italy and Europe: after an apprenticeship in Florence with Domenico Passignano, the artist moved to Bologna in 1625, where he entered the workshop of Guido Reni and then moved to Rome, before heading to France, where he found important commissions and great success. He returned to Italy in 1634, where he was active in Milan, and later Brescia, Venice and Udine. The uncertainty about his early works and the complexity of cultural references explain the difficulty in establishing a chronology for Ricchi's oeuvre.
Lanzi, the art historian, criticised Ricchi for having introduced to Venice the "quel metodo di dipingere così oleoso, ed oscuro' (see: Storia pittorica della Italia dell'Abate Luigi Lanzi antiquario, 1823, Epoca Terza, p. 61) and it is quite likely that the artist started experimenting with chiaroscuro and candlelit compositions of neo-Caravaggesque taste during the 1650s, when he already knew French Caravaggism and the examples of Claude Vignon and the 'stile tenebroso' of Francesco Cairo.