Giovanni Battista Langetti

(Genoa 1635–1676 Venice)
Diogenes,
oil on canvas, 99 x 81 cm, framed

Provenance:
sale, Christie’s, London, 11 December 1987, lot 125;
sale, Algranti, Milan, 27 October 1988, lot 62;
Private collection, Genoa;
where acquired by the present owner

Literature:
M. Stefani Mantovanelli, Giovanni Battista Langetti, in: Saggi e Memorie di Storia dell’Arte, 17, 1990, p. 80 and p. 308, fig. 122;
M. Stefani Mantovanelli, in: E. Gavazza/G. Rotondi Terminiello (ed.), Genova nell’età barocca, exhibition catalogue, Bologna 1992, pp. 206-208, mentioned under no. 110;
M. Stefani Mantovanelli, Giovanni Battista Langetti. Il principe dei tenebrosi, Soncino 2011, pp. 236-237, no. 156, pl. LXXI

The present painting, together with its pendant lot 61, can be considered ‘tra le più belle e mature’ [‘among the finest and most mature’] half-figure works of the Genoese painter Giovanni Battista Langetti (see literature, Stefani Mantovanelli, 2011, p. 236). Indeed, the work belongs to the late phase of the artist’s career, when his pictorial language had reached a balanced concision, expressive of his past pictorial influences and experiences. It can be dated to a moment a little before the execution, in 1675, of the Saint Peter and Saint Paul made for the now demolished church of Sant’Agostino at Padua (and currently located in the church of San Daniele in the same city).

The Greek philosopher Diogenes is represented in the present painting: in his left hand he holds the characteristic lantern, an emblem of the searching of man, while with his right hand, he points to himself, as if to indicate that his investigation is of his inner being. The profound psychological introspection of the subject is evidenced by the intensity of his expression, rendered highly naturalistically with dense fast brush strokes that form anatomical details, activating the use of light to create dramatic effects of chiaroscuro. The subject of Diogenes, which was more frequently represented in Northern European painting but was treated during the seventeenth century in Italy by other artists including Ribera (Gemäldegalerie, Dresden) and Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione called Il Grechetto (Museo del Prado, Madrid).

Giovanni Battista Langetti’s earliest training occurred in his native city while he completed his apprenticeship at Rome in the studio of Pietro da Cortona, after which he made a journey to Naples where came into contact with various artists who were to draw his painting under the influence of the Caravaggist tenebrosi, and most notably Jusepe de Ribera. From the latter half of the 1650s he established himself definitively in Venice, while never loosing contact with his native Genoese ambient. Boschini described the painter as ‘[d’] inzegno tenebroso e scuro’ [‘[of a] tenebrist and dark genius’] (see M. Boschini, La Carta del Navegar pitoresco, 1660, ed. by A. Pallucchini, Venice and Rome 1966, p. 577) on account of his painterly style, which drew him into association with other painters active in Venice at the time, whose work is likewise characterised by extreme naturalism and a dramatically violent deployment of light and shade.