Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew

Artist Giovanni Battista Pittoni (Italian (Venetian), 1687 - 1767)

Date1735

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 27 3/8 x 14 1/8 inches (69.52 x 35.88 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust

Object number47-29

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

European Art

Terms

DescriptionIn the left foreground is a woman half-reclining who shields her eyes with her left arm. To the right stands a dog. Above and behind the woman kneels a helmeted soldier. The twisted body of a bearded man (Saint Bartholomew) at center lies on an elevated platform. His raised arms are tied with ropes to wood posts. A man trips the skin from Bartholomew's left underarm with a knife. Others figures stand behind and around Bartholomew. In the upper register at right is a seated man. Behind him, a curtain is drawn back by a cord to reveal a large stone column. A statue of a female holding a spear and bow is at the upper left. A pair of angels with arms linked hovers in the blue sky over the scene.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Il settecento Italiano, Palazzo della Biennale, Venice, July 18-October 10, 1929, no. 4a.

Mostra di pittura veneziana del settecento, Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne, Rome, December 1941, no. 23.

The Century of Mozart, The Nelson Gallery and Atkins Museum, Kansas City, MO, January 15-March 4, 1956, no. 88.

Ways to Look, Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IA, August 19-September 26, 1960, no cat.

Mid-America Collects, Oklahoma Art Center, Oklahoma City, OK, October 23-November 27, 1977, no. 46.

Gallery Label

Pittoni is the most Rococo of 18th-century Venetian painters as can be seen in the light, fragmented rhythms of this picture of Saint Bartholomew's martyrdom. By order of King Astrages of Armenia, Bartholomew was flayed, or skinned alive, for refusing to worship pagan idols, one of which is on the plinth to the left. This is a study for an altarpiece formerly in the Basilica of Saint Bartholomew in Padua, and is a finished modello, intended to be shown to the patron for approval.

Provenance

Possibly purchased from the artist by Field Marshal Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg (1661-1747), Palazzo Loredan dell’Ambasciatore, San Trovaso, Venice and Verona, July 9, 1737 [1];

Possibly by descent to the Schulenburg heirs, Berlin, by 1750;

With Italico Brass (1870-1943), Venice, by 1927-at the latest 1941;

By descent to his son, Alessandro Brass, Venice, by 1941-1947;

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

NOTES:

[1] Schulenburg commissioned several paintings from Pittoni, who also acted as an agent and restorer for Schulenburg’s collection. According to a 1738 inventory, Schulenburg bought a painting titled Martirio de San Bartolomeo copiosissimo di Figure from Pittoni on July 9, 1737. The dimensions given in the inventory do not match those of NAMA’s painting, but the sizes in the Schulenburg archive are not always accurate. The last mention of the Schulenburg Martirio de San Bartolomeo is in a 1750 catalogue of the collection.

Published References

Laura Coggiola Pittoni, “Note d’arte settecentesca veneziana,” Rivista mensile della città di Venezia 6 (January 1927): 24, 25, (repro.).

Il settecento italiano, exh. cat. (Venice, 1929), 38.

Giuseppe Fiocco, “La pittura veneziana alla mostra del settencento,” Rivista mensile della città di Venezia 8 (August-September 1929): 75.

Andor Pigler, “Giovanni Battista Pittoni Szent Erzsébet-vázlata,” Az Orzágos Magyar Szépmüvésezti Múzeum Évkönyvei 6 (1929-30): 207, 208, 208n1, (repro.).

Laura Coggiola Pittoni, Opere inedite, rivendicate o poco note di Giambattista Pittoni (Venice: Gazzettino Illustrato, 1933), 41-42.

Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker, eds., Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler, vol. 27 (Leipzig: E. A. Seeman, 1933), 120.

Edoardo Arslan, “Studi sulla pittura del primo settecento venziano,“ Critica d’Arte 1 (October 1935-December 1936): 241.

Alessandro Morandotti, Mostra di pittura veneziana del settecento, exh. cat. (Venice: Carlo Ferrari, 1941), 28, (repro.).

Rodolfi Pallucchini, I disegni di Giambattista Pittoni (Padua: Le Tre Venezie, 1945), 20, 29n34.

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.).

“The Century of Mozart,” Bulletin (The Nelson Gallery and Atkins Museum) 1, no. 1 (January 1956): 31, 52, (repro.).

Andor Pigler, Barockthemen: eine Auswahl von Verzeichnissen zur Ikonographie des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, vol. 1 (Budapest: Verlag der Ungarischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1956), 423.

Noemi Gabrielli, “Un bozzetto di Giambattista Pittoni,” Arte Venete 11 (1957): 220, 220n1.

Carlo Donzelli, I Pittori veneziana del settecento (Florence: Sansoni, 1957), 194.

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.

Rodolfo Pallucchini, La pittura veneziana del settecento (Venice: Istituto per la collaborazione culturale, 1960), 118.

Olga N. Nikitiouk, “Eskizy D.B. Pittoni,” in Sobshchcenia Gosudarstvennogo Museia (Moscow: Pushkin Museum, 1966): 62n6, 64, (repro.).

Ralph T. Coe, “The Baroque and Rococo in France and Italy,” Apollo 96, no. 130 (December 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), 167, 377, 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), 144, (repro.).

Mid-America Collects, exh. cat. (Oklahoma: Oklahoma Art Center, 1977), unpaginated, (repro.).

Franca Zava Baccozzi, Pittoni (Venice: Alfieri, 1979), no. 73, pp. 11, 131-132, 341, (repro.).

Carmillo Semenzato, ed., Le pitture del Santo di Padova (Venice: Neri Pozza, 1984): 182, (repro.).

Alice Binion, La galleria scomparsa del maresciallo von der Schulenburg: Un mecenate nella Venezia del Settecento (Milan: Electa, 1990), 89, 91n24, 207, 233, 281.

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), 184, (repro.).

Eliot W. Rowlands, The Collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: Italian Paintings 1300-1800, (Kansas City, MO: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1996), 383-391.

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