(Camerano 1625–1713 Rome)
The Madonna reading,
oil on canvas, 39.5 x 33 cm, framed

Provenance:
possibly Collection of Giovanni Antonio Tedeschi, 1712;
possibly Farquharson Collection, Braemar Castle, Aberdeenshire, Scotland (according to a label on the reverse);
sale, Kunsthaus Lempertz, Cologne, 20 May 2017, lot 1091 (as Attributed to Carlo Maratta);
art market, London

We are grateful to Stella Rudolph for confirming the attribution. She dates the present painting to circa 1695.

According to Stella Rudolph, the present work could be identified as the work mentioned in the 1712 inventory of the collection of Carlo Maratta in Rome (see L. Bershad, The newly discovered testament and inventories of Carlo Maratta and his wife Francesca, in: Antologia di Belle Arti, 1985, p. 84). Indeed, in this list there is: ‘Una Madonna in tela di mezza testa con cornice dorata mezza figura in atto di leggere con paese dipinta da Sig. Cav. re Carlo Maratta data al Sig. Gio: Antonio Tedeschi scarpellino in scomputo de’ lavori fatti’ [‘a Madonna on a half-head size canvas with a gilded frame, half-figure, reading with landscape painted by Sig. Cav. re Carlo Maratta given to Sig. Gio: Antonio Tedeschi, stone carver on account of his works’].

Comparisons with other works suggest a date of around 1695, the period when the artist was at the height of his career and was celebrated throughout Europe. Indeed, the typology of the Virgin’s features correspond with those of Rebecca in the painting Rebecca and Eliezer at the Well preserved in the Galleria Corsini, Rome (inv. no. 402)