Robilant+Voena New York presents Rediscoveries: Five Centuries of European Painting.

The exhibition brings together nine artworks, each of which represents a significant art historical discovery from recent years, the result of technical analysis, scholarly research and connoisseurship. Prior to research undertaken by the gallery, many of the paintings were unknown, unpublished, or misattributed. The paintings in the exhibition range from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, demonstrating the breadth as well as the depth of R+V’s expertise. Artists represented in the exhibition include Jacopo Bassano, Neri di Bicci, Francesco Botticini, Vincenzo Cabianca, Artemisia Gentileschi, Francesco Goya, Filippo Napoletano, Hyacinthe Rigaud, and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. The paintings are presented for the first time together, allowing a full appreciation of discoveries through the centuries. R+V will be publishing a catalogue for the exhibition, with essays by leading scholars on each artwork. A separate catalogue on Vincenzo Cabianca’s masterpiece, Ai Bagni di Viareggio, is also being published for the exhibition.

The earliest work in the exhibition is a magnificent altarpiece by Neri di Bicci (1419–1491), depicting Archangel Raphael and several Saints. The gold-ground panel, never previously exhibited in public and in an excellent state of condition, dates from the fifteenth century when the Bicci dynasty was at its height, the workshop among the most highly regarded in Florence. The panel shows the impressive technical abilities of Neri, the third generation of the Bicci family of artists, as well as the individual style that he developed through combining his family’s training and elements from other leading artists including Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi.

Moving into the sixteenth century, Jacopo Bassano (c. 1510–1592) was the most successful and influential of a dynasty of painters named for their home town in the Veneto. The Penitent Saint Jerome is a mature work by Bassano, and was unknown in the artist’s oeuvre prior to Robilant+Voena’s research. The painting represents an important addition to the artist’s last maniera of painting as described by Alessandro Ballarin, reflecting the culmination of the career of one of the greatest sixteenth-century Venetian painters.

A sensuous Penitent Magdalene by Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–after 1654), the greatest female painter of the seventeenth century, takes the exhibition into the Baroque era, a particular specialism of Robilant+Voena. The painting, until recently misidentified and hidden in a private collection in the United States, probably dates from her second Roman period. It provides a superb example of the artist’s sensitive representation of female protagonists, as well as her receptiveness to new ideas and styles, as explained in recent studies by Maria Cristina Terzaghi, a leading expert on Artemisia. Indeed, an X-ray undertaken during R+V’s research has revealed that the painting was not originally intended to portray Mary Magdalene, but instead Cleopatra, on account of an underpainting of an asp. This painting will feature in the upcoming exhibition at the Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris, Artemisia and Europe, opening in March 2025.

Almost a century later, French court painter Hyacinthe Rigaud (1659–1743) painted a much-lauded self-portrait that today hangs in the Chateau de Versailles. Such was the success of this painting that Rigaud, the pre-eminent portrait-painter of the era who set the standard for official portraitists for generations to come, made another version, almost identical to the picture in Versailles, that has been unknown for centuries. This painting is presented here, on view in public for the first time, and demonstrates the master at the height of his abilities, depicting himself with a lively veracity, the drama of the portrait emphasized by the delicate interplay between light and shadow.

A delightfully entertaining painting by the Venetian artist Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696–1770) depicts a favourite subject of his from the Commedia dell’Arte, a group of Punchinello. The scene shows the Venerdì Gnocolar, the last Friday of Carnival, on which is traditionally held a great feast of gnocchi. The painting was, until last year, misattributed to his son Giandomenico, but is now unanimously assigned to the father Giovanni Battista, resulting from scholarly research and comparison with known autograph drawings and paintings. The painting featured in the Morgan Library and Museum’s exhibition Spirit and Invention alongside other Punchinello works by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, highlighting its importance among the artist’s known works on this subject.

One of the works with the most complex history is Francesco Goya’s (1746–1828) portrait of Maria Soledad Rocha Fernandez de la Peña, Marquesa de Caballero, painted at the start of the nineteenth century. This masterpiece – which remained in the sitter’s family for over 100 years, before appearing briefly on the Spanish art market in the 1930s, since which it has descended through generations of the same family – has only recently become available to scholars. It is now thought to be the prime version of a portrait that has been much copied, a version of which is in the Alte Pinakothek Munich. This is the first time in almost 100 years that this painting will be shown in public, since appearing in the seminal Goya exhibition at the Prado Museum in 1928, and then at the Exposicion Ibero-Americana in Seville in 1929.

The most recent work in the exhibition is also one of the most extraordinary from and art historical perspective: a masterpiece by an artist rarely seen in the United States, the Italian painter Vincenzo Cabianca (1827–1902). The painting, until recently thought to be lost, was instead found in a private collection, where it had been for generations. Indeed, the importance of the painting, Ai bagni di Viareggio, in the Macchiaioli painter’s oeuvre has been attested to by expert Francesca Dini in her 2020 catalogue raisonné, where the scholar mentions it as a highlight of the 1866 annual Turin Promotrice exhibition, listing it among Cabianca’s key works of the period, but categorising it as lost. It has since come to light, and will be the focus of a study by American art historian Jason Rosenfeld, emphasising what it reveals about the period of Cabianca’s life and his technique, and about the parallels between the artist’s practice and that of his contemporaries in France and the United States.

Marco Voena, Partner at Robilant +Voena, says:

“The works in this exhibition together reveal one of the great responsibilities and tasks that is central to our work as Old Master art dealers: to rediscover the past, to piece together the great mosaic of art history, through rigorous research and connoisseurship. Each of the paintings embody a notable rediscovery achieved through scholarly collaboration, expert analysis of style and technique, and archival research.”