Lot 393: GIUSEPPE VALERIANI

ROME C. 1708 - 1762 ST. PETERSBURG ACHILLES DISCOVERED AMONG THE DAUGHTERS OF LYCOMEDES Pen and dark brown ink over black chalk 215 by 267 mm

St. Petersburg, Lomonosoff et l'époque d'Elisabeth, 1912 (the whole album); Newcastle, 1960, no. 62; Newcastle, 1964, no. 79; Newcastle, 1974, no. 110

A. Benois, Review of St. Petersburg exhibition, Stary Gody, May 1912, pp. 3-28 (comments on the importance of the whole album); H. Macandrew, Catalogue of... Drawings, vol. III, Italian Schools: Supplement, Oxford 1980, p. 189, under no. 1101-1

The Duke of Leuchtenberg; Edmond Fatio (L.3472), probably his sale, Geneva, Nicolas Rauch, 3-4 June 1959, in lot 241 (an album of drawings by Valeriani compiled by the Duc de Leuchtenberg); with P & D Colnaghi, London, from whom purchased, February 1960

Another drawing for this composition, with many differences, but also from the Fatio collection, is in the Ashmolean Museum.1 Macandrew suggests that they were designs for a ceiling decoration, since destroyed, and the watermark in the Oxford drawing indicates a date of after 1752. Valeriani was primarily a scenographer and painter of decorative schemes. He was summoned to St. Petersburg in 1742 to become Empress Elizabeth's court theatre designer and he remained there for the rest of his life. He also decorated various Imperial and aristocratic palaces and made views of St. Petersburg which were engraved by other artists. The Empress bought many of his drawings after his death and they are now in the Hermitage. As the Duc de Leuchtenberg married the daughter of Nicholas I, it may be that the album descended in the Russian Imperial family. 1. Inv. no. 1101-1, see Macandrew, loc. cit.