Lot 34: GUILLAUME COURTOIS, CALLED GUGLIELMO CORTESE, ABRAHAM BRUEGHEL

GUILLAUME COURTOIS, CALLED GUGLIELMO CORTESE, ABRAHAM BRUEGHEL ST HIPPOLYTE, FRANCHE-COMTÉ 1628 - 1679 ROME ANTWERP 1631 - 1697 NAPLES CERES ATTENDED BY PUTTI, AT A FOUNTAIN oil on canvas 69 11/16 by 100 3/8 in.; 177 by 255 cm.

D. Graf and E. Schleier, "Guglielmo Cortese und Abraham Brueghel", in Pantheon, XXXI, Jan.-March 1973, no. 1, p. 56, reproduced p. 55, fig. 11;
D. Graf, "Handzeichnungen van Guglielmo Cortese und Giovanni Battista Gaulli", in kataloge des kunstmuseums Düsseldorf, vol. III, 2/1, 1976, vol. I, p. 45, under cat. nos. 75-79;
L. Salerno, La natura morta Italiana, Rome 1984, p. 190;
F. Zeri, La Natura morta in Italia, Milan 1989, vol. II, p. 794, reproduced fig. 936;
L. Salerno, Nuovi studi su la Natura Morta Italiana, Rome 1989, p. 82, reproduced fig. 73;
L. Trezzani in G. & U. Bocchi, Pittori di Natura Morta a Roma, Artisti Stranieri 1630-1750, Viadana 2005, p. 125, reproduced p. 130, fig. AB.12.

F. Trimnell, Avening Court, Tetbury, Gloucestershire;
His deceased sale, 3-5 October 1972, lot 375;
With B. Cohen and Sons, London;
Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 8 December 1972, lot 83 (as Luca Giordano and Abraham Brueghel) for 4,200 Guineas to Fine Arts;
J. Paul Getty, Sutton Place, Guildford, Surrey;
Bequeathed to The J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, California, 1978;
By whom sold, New York, Christie's, 21 May 1992, lot 36;
There purchased by the present collector.

This impressive painting is a collaboration between Courtois, who painted the figures, and Brueghel, who executed the flowers, fruit and landscape. Both artists were stranieri who spent most of their careers in Italy, Courtois originally from France and Brueghel a member of the famous Flemish dynasty of painters. This type of collaboration between artists with different specialties was a common practice in Rome. In a series of letters that survive from the second half of the 1660s between Abraham Brueghel and the Sicilian collector, Antonio Ruffo, Brueghel writes in detail about his working methods and the artists he collaborated with such as Courtois, Giovanni Battista Gaulli (Il Baccicio) and Giacinto Brandi. Though a chronology is difficult to establish, in discussing Brueghel's career Ludovica Trezzani (see Literature) has dated these collaborative works from the mid-1660s to around the time that Brueghel departed for Naples in 1675.

There are five known preparatory drawings by Courtois for the present canvas in the Kunstmuseum, Dusseldorf. Four are for the figure of Ceres: two Studies of the Legs and Feet (both black chalk heightened with white on blue-green paper, one 273 by 400 mm. (see fig. 1).; the other 229 by 401 mm.); a Study of the Upper Figure, an Arm and a Hand, red chalk heightened with white on blue-green paper, 272 by 417 mm. (see fig. 2); and a Study of an Arm and the Legs, black chalk heightened with white on blue-green paper, 268 by 416 mm.). The fifth drawing is for the putto holding the basket of fruit, (black chalk heightened with white on gray- brown paper, 357 by 243 mm.).