Lot 167: Saint Agnes

Niccolò de Simone (documented in Naples 1636-1677)
Saint Agnes
oil on canvas
44 x 36½ in. (111.8 x 92.8 cm.) including later additions of 4 in. (10.2 cm.) to the left, right and bottom edge

Philips family archives, memorandum book, Pictures and Ornaments in the Library and Drawing Room, c. 1900, in the Library, as Guido Reni.

Count Demetrius de Palatiano, Naples, from whom purchased in 1842 by
John Burton Philips, Heath House, Staffordshire, and by descent.

We are grateful to Professor Nicola Spinosa for suggesting the attribution on the inspection of the original, noting that it relates to ILa Poesia (signed; formerly private collection, Naples; see N. Spinosa, Pittura Napoletana del Seicento, Milano, 1984, fig. 296).

Niccoló de Simone received a number of prestigious commissions in such Neapolitan churches as i Santi Severino e Sossio, Santa Teresa agli Studi, and San Lorenzo Maggiore e San Potito. He worked for numerous important patrons and collaborated with Viviano Codazzi, adding figures to the latter's architectural capricci (cf. A. Brejon de Lavergnée in Civilt del Seicento a Napoli, exh. cat., Naples, 1984, pp. 131, 254-6; I. Creazzo, 'Alcuni inediti di Niccol de Simone e altre precisazioni sul pittore', in Scritti di storia dell'arte in onore di Raffaello Causa, Naples, 1988, pp. 223-32; R. Lattuada, 'Un inedito di Niccol de Simone alla Galleria Doria Pamphilij', in Bollettino d'Arte del Ministero per i Beni Culturali e Ambientali, nos. 96-7, pp. 133-4).

John Burton Philips made the Grand Tour in the 1840s, shortly after completing the construction of Heath House, returning with this and other works of art acquired on his travels through Italy.

John Burton Philips and his wife Joanna moved into Heath house, North Staffordshire, in 1840, which they had rebuilt over the previous four years. At the end of 1840 they embarked upon a tour of the Continent spending the next winter in Rome, only returning to England in June 1843. On this tour the Philipses acquired a number of pictures, including copies of some of the great pictures they had seen, and several sculptures, to complement their existing collection of mostly contemporary British art, which included works by Frederick Lee, William Collins, Sir Augustus Callcott and William Clarkson Stanfield. According to a memorandum book preserved in the family archives this picture was acquired from Count Palatiano in 1842.