Adoration of the Holy Cross on the Day of the Last Judgment

Artist Corrado Giaquinto (Italian, 1703 - 1766)

Date1740-1742

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 32 3/16 x 53 5/16 inches (81.76 x 135.41 cm)
Framed: 42 3/4 x 64 1/4 inches (108.59 x 163.2 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust

Object number47-6

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

European Art

Terms

DescriptionFloating on a platform of whitish gray clouds, a group of male figures (Apostles) sit and kneel around the central scene, where angels hold a wood cross; the sky above is filled with cherubim and bathed in a golden light. An angel at the far right blows a horn; two other angels at the bottom of the composition also hold horns.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

La Mostra della pittura napoletana dei secoli XVII–XVIII–XIX, Castel Nuovo, Naples, Italy, 1938; Cappella di San Barbara, Tuscany, Italy, 1938, no. 3.

A Taste for Angels: Neapolitan Painting in North America, 1650–1750, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, September 9–November 29, 1987; John and Mabel Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL, January 13–March 13, 1988; The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, April 30–June 12, 1988, no. 43.

Art in Rome in the Eighteenth Century, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, March 9-May 28, 2000.

Gallery Label

The opalescent colors and freely flowing rhythms of this painting are typical of the Italian Rococo. Giaquinto intended it as a modello, or finished study, for a painting in Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, Rome. The importance of this church was its association with a fragment of the Cross that the mother of the Emperor Constantine (272-377 C.E.), had brought to Rome from the Holy Land. Among the Apostles adoring the Cross are Saint Peter, dressed partly in blue and holding his attribute, a key; and behind Peter, Saint James, dressed in green and holding a sword, the instrument of his martyrdom. The Latin inscription on the Cross reads signum fili hominis in coeli (the sign of the son of man in heaven).

Provenance

N. Zanco, Bologna, Italy, by January 22, 1932;

Purchased from Zanco by Salvatore Romano (1875-1955), Florence, 1932-1947;

Purchased from Romano by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1947.

Published References

Sergio Ortolani et al., La Mostra della pittura napoletana dei secoli XVII–XVIII–XIX, exh. cat. (Naples: Castel Nuovo, 1938), 330.

Mario d’Orsi, Corrado Giaquinto (Rome: Arte della Stampa, 1958), 65–66, (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 Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959) 262.

Antonio Videtta, “Disegni di Corrado Giaquinto nel Museo di San Martino,” Napoli Nobilissima 2 (1962–63): 23, 25, 28n49, (repro.).

Antonio Videtta, Considerazioni su Corrado Giaquinto in rapporto ai disegni del Museo di S. Martino (Naples: Libreria Scientifica editrice, 1965), 122-23.

Antonio Videtta, “Discussioni giaquintesche,” in Studi di storia dell’arte in onore di Valerio Mariani (Naples: Libreria scientifica editrice, 1971): 251, (repro.).

Ralph T. Coe, “The Baroque and Rococo in France and Italy,” Apollo 96 (1972): 541 [repr. in Denys Sutton, ed., William Rockhill Nelson Gallery, Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City (London: Apollo Magazine, 1972), 73].

Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 85, 357, 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), 260.

Giancarlo Sestieri, ed., Maria Cristina Funghini, Claudio Gasparrini: Mostra di Disegni Italiani, exh. cat. (Rome: Nuova editrice romana, 1984), unpaginated, (repro.).

Pietro Amato, ed., Corrado Giaquinto (1703–1766): Atti del II Convegno Internazionale di Studi (Molfetta: Mezzina, 1985), 102n19.

Stephen Pepper et al., A Taste for Angels: Neapolitan Painting in North America, 1650-1750, exh. cat. (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1987), 309–13, 314, 318, (repro.).

The Settecento: Italian Rococo and Early Neo-Classical Paintings, 1700–1800, exh. cat. (London: Matthiesen, 1987), 151, (repro.).

Neil MacGregor et al., “Recent Acquisitions at the National Gallery, London: Supplement,” The Burlington Magazine 130, no. 1024 (1988): 574, (repro.).

National Gallery Report, January 1985–December 1987 (London: National Gallery, 1988), 38.

Castello Sueveo Bari, Giaquinto: Capolavori dale Corti in Europa, exh. cat. (Bari: Charta, 1993), 61n117.

Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 186, (repro.).

Elliot W. Rowlands, The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: Italian Paintings 1300-1800 (Kansas City, MO: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1996), 19, 384, 398-404, 450, (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.