The Pearl of Great Price

Artist Domenico Fetti (Italian, 1588/1589 - 1623)

Date1618-1619

MediumOil on panel

DimensionsUnframed: 24 x 17 3/8 inches (60.96 x 44.12 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust

Object number48-43

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

European Art

Terms

DescriptionAgainst the background of a market scene, four men, three of them turbaned and the fourth barely visible, examine jewels under a stone loggia. In the left foreground a laborer hold a wheelbarrow. In the foreground at right, a seated woman holds two doves in her apron; she turns inward toward a turbaned, bearded man who gestures to her with his right hand. In the right background, outside the loggia, a crowd appears to be viewing some spectacle in a city square surrounded by multi-storied buildings.
Exhibition History

Exhibition History

A Loan Exhibition of Paintings by Domenico Fetti (1589–1624), Durlacher Brothers, New York, February 28–March 25, 1950, no. 2.

Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth Century, Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, Ohio, February 1952, no. 3.

A Tour of Famous Cities, Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, Columbus, Ohio, October 3–November 16, 1952, no. 15.

La pittura del seicento a Venezia, Ca’ Pesaro, Venice, Italy, June 27–October 25, 1959, no. 43.

Art in Italy, 1600–1700, The Detroit Institute of the Arts, Detroit, Michigan, April 6–May 9, 1965, no. 189.

City Views, The Nelson–Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, April 5-–May 15, 1983, no. 5.

Domenico Fetti, 1588/89–1623, Palazzo Te, Mantua, Sept. 15–Dec. 15, 1996, no. 58.

Gallery Label

Domenico Fetti was one of the most realistically inclined artists of his time and specialized in painting parables. As described in Matthew 13:45-46, Fetti depicts a merchant who sells all he owns to buy a pearl of great price, an act that Christ compares to gaining the Kingdom of Heaven. The painting's frothy, creamy brushwork follows the tradition of the Venetian 16th-century painters, while the combination of precisely observed narrative and a contemporary 17th-century setting recalls Dutch and Flemish painting. Fetti's composition creates an impression of great height and space by abruptly cutting off the top of the vertical pillar.

Provenance

Possibly commissioned from the artist by Ferdinando Gonzaga (1587-1626), 6th Duke of Mantua, Palazzo Ducale, Mantua, by 1626 [1];

Possibly with Gonzaga heirs, 1626-at least 1709;

Possibly Pierre Crozat (1665-1740), Paris, by 1740;

Possibly inherited by his nephew, Louis-François Crozat, marquis du Châtel (1691-1750), Paris, 1740-1750;

Possibly inherited by his brother, Joseph Antoine Crozat, baron de Tugny (1696-1751), Paris, 1750-1751;

Possibly purchased at Tableaux et sculptures, tant en bronze qu'en marbre, du cabinet de feu M. le président de Tugny et de celui de M. Crozat, Chez L.-F. Delatour, Paris, June 15, 1751, lot 118, by Goüy;

Sir Arthur Willert, K.B.E. (1882-1973), Headington Hill, Oxfordshire, England, by April 19, 1944;

Purchased at his sale, Drawings & Paintings, Sotheby’s, London, April 19, 1944, lot 76, as A Market Scene with Jewellers in the Foreground, by Koetser Gallery, New York, 1944-at least 1945 [2];

Purchased from Koetser by Arthur C. Tate (b. 1877), New Canaan, CT, by February 7, 1948-December 18, 1948 [3];

Purchased from Tate by Schaeffer Galleries, New York, stock no. 1232, December 18, 1948 [4];

Purchased from Schaeffer by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1948.

NOTES:

[1] For the possible identification of the Nelson-Atkins painting with the work commissioned by the Duke of Mantua and its descent through the Gonzaga and Crozat families, see Eliot W. Rowlands, The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: Italian Paintings 1300-1800 (Kansas City, MO: Trustees of the Nelson Gallery Foundation, 1996): 256-257 and Eduard A. Safarik, Galleria Doria Pamphilj, in a letter to Eliot W. Rowlands, Assistant Curator, November 27, 1989, NAMA curatorial files.

[2] According to Hans Tietze, in a letter to Koetser Gallery, March 4, 1945, NAMA curatorial files.

[3] Tate placed the painting on consignment with Schaeffer from February 21-December 18, 1948. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Schaeffer Galleries Records, Box 178, Folder 2.

[4] Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Schaeffer Galleries Records, Box 178, Folder 2.

Published References

Catalogue des tableaux et sculptures, tant en bronze qu’en marbre, du cabinet de feu M. le Président de Tugny, & de celui de M. Crozat, dont la vente se fera vers le milieu du mois de juin 1751 en l'Hôtel où est décédé M. le président de Tugny, place de Louis le Grand (Paris, June 15, 1751), 35.

Catalogue of Drawings and Paintings comprising, Drawings, The Property of the Rev. P. F. L. Cautley, Drawings and Paintings, The Property of Mrs. M.C. Scott, The Property of Mrs. Dorothy Gretor, Paintings removed from Woodrising Hall, Norfolk, The Property of the Rt. Hon. The Earl of Verulam, The Property of Sir A. Willert, K.B.E., A Portrait of Lord Nelson by L. F. Abbott, The Property of Mrs. Haslewood, Portraits by Sir William Beechey, Sir Henry Raeburn and George Romney, The Property of Miss High, The Property of Mrs. Wormald, The Property of Sir Russell Wilkinson (London: Sotheby, April 19, 1944), 2.

Letter from Hans Tietze to Koetser Gallery, March 4, 1945, NAMA Curatorial files.

Schaffer Galleries Bulletin, no. 5 (May 1948): unpaginated, (repro.).

Art Treasures from Vienna, exh. cat. (London: The Tate Gallery, 1949), 39, (repro.).

“Masterpiece of the Month,” Gallery News (The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts) 15, no. 5 (February 1949), 47, (repro.).

The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, The William Rockhill Nelson Collection, 3^rd ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1949), 47, (repro.).

Bernice F. Davidson, A Loan Exhibition of Paintings by Domenico Fetti (1589–1624), exh. cat. (New York: Durlacher Bros.: 1950), unpaginated, (repro.).

Rodolfo Pallucchini, “Una mostra del Fetti a New York,” Arte Veneta 4 (1950): 184.

A Tour of Famous Cities, exh. cat. (Columbus, Ohio: Gallery of Fine Arts, 1952), unpaginated, (repro.).

Allen Memorial Art Museum Bulletin 9, no. 2 (1952): 37–38, 40, 48, (repro.).

Paola Michelini, “Domenico Fetti a Venezia,” Arte Veneta 9 (1955): 132, 135, 135n3, 136, (repro.).

Blida Heynold-v. Graefe, "Ehrenrettung des Venezianischen Barock," Weltkunst 29 no. 14 (July 15, 1959), 6-7, (repro.).

Ross E. Taggart, ed., Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4^th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 262.

Pietro Zampetti, La pittura del seicento a Venezia, exh. cat. (Venice: Edizioni Alfieri, 1959), 38, (repro.).

Rodolfo Pallucchini, “La mostra della pittura veneta del seicento,” Pantheon 18 (1960): 5.

Katalog der Gemäldegalerie: Italiener, Spanier, Franzӧsen, Engländer, vol. 1 (Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum, 1960), 50.

Pamela Askew, “The Parable Paintings of Domenico Fetti,” Art Bulletin 43, no. 1 (1961): 45.

Nicola Ivanoff, “A Bozzetto by Domenico Fetti,” Connoisseur 154 (1963): 40, (repro.).

Francis H. Dowley, “’Art in Italy, 1600-1700’ at The Detroit Institute of Arts,” Art Quarterly 27 (1964): 524–25, (repro.).

Life 57 (December 25, 1964): 104, (repro.).

Frederick J. Cummings and Rudolf Wittkower, Art in Italy, 1600–1700, exh. cat. (Detroit, Institute of Arts, 1965), 18, 166, (repro.).

Denis Mahon, “Stock-taking in Seicento Studies,” Apollo 82 (1965): 386.

B. Nicolson, “Fetti, Domenico,” in Kindlers Malerei Lexikon, vol. 2 (Zurich 1965): 357–358, (repro.).

Carlo Donzelli and Giuseppe Maria Pilo, I pittori del seicento veneto (Florence: R. Sandron, 1967), 172, 175, (repro.).

Jürgen Klaus Michael Lehmann, “Domenico Fetti: Leben und Werk des Rӧmischen Malers” (PhD. Diss., Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, 1967), 194, (repro.), as workshop of Fetti.

Pierre Rosenberg, “Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen: II. Deux tableaux de Fetti,” La Revue du Louvre 18 (1968): 206, (repro.).

Ralph T. Coe, “The Baroque and Rococo in France and Italy,” Apollo 96 (1972): 538, (repro.) [repr. in Denys Sutton, ed., William Rockhill Nelson Gallery, Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City (London: Apollo Magazine, 1972), 67, (repro.)].

Giulio Bolaffi, ed., Dizionario enciclopedico dei pittori e degli incisori italiani, vol. 4 (Turin: Bolaffi, 1972), 427–429.

Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 70, 278, 589.

Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5^th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 112, (repro.).

Rodolfo Pallucchini, La pittura veneziana del seicento (Milan: Alfieri, 1981), 1:139; 2: (repro.).

Alistair Smith, ed., Larousse Dictionary of Painters (London: Hamlyn, 1981), 125.

Christopher Wright, Italian, French and Spanish Paintings of the Seventeenth Century (London: Frederick Warne, 1981), 20.

Ross E. Taggart and Roger B. Ward, City Views, exh. cat. (Kansas City: Nelson–Atkins Museum of Art, 1983), 20, (repro.).

Michel Laclotte, ed., Dictionnaire de la peinture, vol. 1 (Paris: Larousse, 1987), 288.

Seicento: Le siècle de Caravage dans les collections françaises, exh. cat. (Paris: de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1988), 215, (repro.).

Letter from Eduard A. Safarik to Eliot W. Rowlands, November 27, 1989, NAMA Curatorial Files.

Eduard A. Safarik, Fetti (Milan: Electa, 1990), no. 22d, pp. 89-90, (repro.).

Eduard A. Safarik, Domenico Fetti, 1588/89–1623, exh. cat. (Milan: Electa, 1996), 226, (repro.).

Eliot W. Rowlands, The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: Italian Paintings 1300–1800 (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1996), 19, 252–258, (repro.).

Newsletter (The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art) (November 2002): 10, (repro.).

Information about a particular artwork or image, including provenance information, is based upon historic information and may not be currently accurate or complete. Research on artwork and images is an ongoing process, and the information about a particular artwork or image may not reflect the most current information available to the Museum. If you notice a mistake or have additional information about a particular artwork or image, please e-mail provenance@nelson-atkins.org.