Winter Exhibition

Our Winter Exhibition at Colnaghi London featured important masterpieces from the Northern and Italian Baroque, including works by Jusepe de Ribera, Corrado Giaquinto, Antonio Joli, Jan Baptist Xavery, and others.

Highlights included two paintings by Jusepe de Ribera: a bold and melancholic Saint John the Baptist, dating from the 1630s, and a powerful Saint Francis of Assisi, which demonstrates remarkable subtlety and realism, in line with its late execution date of 1648. The latter work notably features a signature that was only uncovered during recent conservation.

Furthermore, Corrado Giaquinto’s Saint Cecilia from the early 1750s stands as a strong example of the artist at his most Roman. The painting is particularly close in style to the Museo del Prado’s Justice and Peace, with its pastel palette, elegant French-inspired draftsmanship, and luminous flesh tonalities.

Also on display were a pair of beautifully executed white Carrara marble reliefs by Jan Baptist Xavery, once part of the renowned Van Ertborn collection in the nineteenth century. The reliefs depict a popular Flemish Baroque subject: mischievous little angels, also known as putti.

Strong examples of the Neapolitan Baroque included Still Life of Fish, Crustaceans and Other Seafood by Giuseppe Recco, alongside a view of the ruined Greek temple complex at Paestum by Antonio Joli.

Two vibrant still lifes by Agostino Verrocchi, dating to the 1630s, were among the exhibition’s true masterpieces. The paintings exemplify the work of one of the leading still-life painters active in Rome during the first half of the seventeenth century. Recurrent motifs throughout Verrocchi’s oeuvre can be recognised here: symmetrical compositions, fluttering butterflies as vanitas symbols, and the seemingly disorderly arrangement of fruits and vegetables across marble ledges.