NEW YORK, NY.- Colnaghi returns to New York from 20th to 29th January 2017 hosting an exhibition of approximately 25 paintings and sculptures at Carlton Hobbs. The show includes two rarely seen still life paintings by Juan van der Hamen y León (Madrid, 1596–1631), court painter to both King Phillip III and King Philip IV of Spain, which are on public view for the first time in over 50 years. Further highlights include a series of three works, Spring, Summer and Autumn, from The Allegory of the Seasons by Giovanni Paolo Castelli, called lo Spadino (Rome, 1659-c.1730); and a portrait of Benedetto Egio by Vincenzo Danti (Perugia, 1530-1576), Renaissance sculptor and one of the most talented followers of Michelangelo.

Jorge Coll, CEO of Colnaghi: “We are delighted to be returning to the U.S. having hosted successful shows last year in Detroit, New York, and at the inaugural TEFAF New York. American collectors are critical to this market, and New York is a hugely important place to be; it holds special significance for us to return for the January exhibition as we showed the newly re-discovered Sebastiano del Piombo here last January, and it was subsequently acquired by the Art Institute of Chicago. We look very forward to starting the New Year amongst such an enthusiastic audience of collectors.”

A leading highlight of the show is a pair of oils on canvas by the outstanding Spanish artist Juan van der Hamen y León (Madrid, 1596–1631). Still life with basket and terracotta jars & Still life with basket and fruit are an exceptional pair of still lifes by the finest artist in this genre working in Spain in the early 17th century, and have not previously been seen on the art market. The light falls from the upper right corner in both works, creating the shadows of the objects standing on the ledges. The paintings may have been part of a set of four still lifes representing the four seasons, and can both be related to the monumental painting in the Williams College Museum of Art in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

A sculptural highlight of the show is a Portrait of Benedetto Egio by Vincenzo Danti (Perugia, 1530-1576), one of the most talented followers of Michelangelo, who completed many splendid Renaissance sculptures during his lifetime. In 1567 the sculptor published a theoretical treatise in which he stressed the importance of geometry, and it also contains an interesting passage where he questions whether in portraiture, artists should really “portray” at all, arguing that the purpose of the artist was to convey the essence of a person rather than the details. These qualities of abstraction and concern with geometry can be seen in this bust of Egio.

In the late 1560s he completed Sansovino’s Baptism group over the east portal of the entrance to the Baptistery in Florence. One relatively understudied area of his activity was the production of portrait busts of which this work is a fine and rare example.

Also featured in the exhibition is a highly theatrical series of anthropomorphic paintings of the Seasons, painted by lo Spadino, one of the leading still-life painters working in Rome in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The series is a deliberate throw-back to the famous proto-surrealist pictures of heads painted by the Mannerist artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo for Rudolf II of Prague and his father Maximilian in the late sixteenth century. For Maximilian, Arcimboldo painted in the 1560s a series of heads composed of stilllife elements emblematic of the Seasons (Louvre Paris,); and the Elements (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna,) and the idea was reprised in Arcimboldo’s famous anthropomorphic portrait of Rudolf II as Vertumnus, God of the Seasons, which was composed of fruit and flowers (1590, Skokloster Castle, Sweden).

Spadino played an important role in developing some of the ideas and techniques of the talented northern still-life painters who were his contemporaries in Rome, Abraham Brueghel, Frans Werner Tamm, David de Koninck (who was resident in the same parish) and Christian Berentz in evolving a theatrical late baroque style featuring tumbling arrangements of lush fruit painted with vivid colouring and virtuoso brushwork.