(Venice 1637–1700)
The Adoration of the Shepherds,
oil on canvas, 140 x 201 cm, framed

Inventory number on the reverse: C. / Nr. 6

Provenance:
Collection of Girolamo Manfrin (1742–1801), Venice (according to a label on the reverse);
by descent to his son Pietro Manfrin (died 1833), Venice;
by descent to his sister Giulia Angela Giovanna Manfrin Plattis (died 1848), Venice;
possibly art market, Spain, end of the 19th century;
Private collection, Madrid;
where acquired by the present owner

Documented:
Abbozzi catalogo Galleria manfriniana, 1794, Venice, c. [4]r, no. 140: ‘kavalier Andrea Celesti Presepio’;
Inventario e stima delli qui descritti quadri esistenti nella Galleria del defunto marchese Pietro Manfrin del fu Girolamo eseguita da noi sottoscritti per commissione della nobile signora marchesa Giulia Giovanna Mandrin Palttis, 23 March 1834, Venice, c. [3]v, Chamber C, no. 6: ‘tela Andrea Celesti La nascita del Bambino Gesù 100,00 [Austrian Lire]’;

Literature:
F. Zanotto, Il Fiore della Scuola Pittorica Veneziana, Trieste 1880, mentioned on p. 91 (as Andrea Celesti);
L. Borean, La Galleria Manfrin a Venezia. L’ultima collezione d’arte della Serenissima, Udine 2018, pp. 97, 110 (as Andrea Celesti)

Andrea Celesti was active between Venice, the Garda Riviera and Brescia and was best known for his works of sacred subjects, characterised by a delicate and luminous style influenced by the models of the great 16th-century Venetian tradition, particularly those of Tintoretto and Paolo Veronese. In the mature phase of his output, the artist also drew closer to Dutch painting, especially that of Rembrandt, from which he borrowed a new use of light and attention to the everyday aspects of popular life. These characteristics are also evident in this Adoration of the Shepherds with its nocturnal setting, illuminated almost exclusively by the divine light emanating from the Christ Child.

Despite its imposing size, the painting is executed with extreme delicacy, with brushstrokes that seem almost on the verge of melting. The same composition was reproposed by Celesti in the canvas now at the Pinacoteca Corrado Giaquinto in Bari (inv. no. 19), almost identical in size to the present and datable to the last decade of the 17th century (A.M. Mucchi, C. Della Croce, Il pittore Andrea Celesti, Milan 1954, p. 90).

The work presented here is documented in the inventories of the collection of Girolamo Manfrin, a wealthy impresario active in the tobacco trade, who created one of the most important collections in Venice between the 18th and 19th centuries. Housed in the family palace in Cannaregio, the picture gallery was open to the public twice a week and is mentioned in all the city’s guide books; it is also mentioned in the travel diaries of numerous men of letters and artists who visited it, such as George Byron, Jacob Burckhardt, Gustav Friedrich Waagen and Edouard Manet. Manfrin was particularly fond of 16th- and 17th-century Venetian painting, and among the most important paintings in his picture gallery were two canvases by Giorgione, The Old Woman and the famous Tempest, both of which are now in the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice. Girolamo’s collections, however, also included sculptures, books, prints and a scientific collection of fossils and shells, in the spirit of ‘encyclopaedic’ collecting.

The Adoration of the Shepherds by Andrea Celesti, which still has the labels and inventory references on the reverse, belongs to the original nucleus of the collection as it is already mentioned in the first document conserved, an inventory compiled in 1794 by the restorer Pietro Edwards, Manfrin’s collaborator and consultant (Abbozzi catalogo Galleria manfriniana 1794); It then appears in another inventory dated 1834, compiled after the death of Pietro Manfrin, Girolamo’s son, at the time of the transfer of his property to his sister Giulia Angela Giovanna. Both documents mention the existence of a pendant depicting The Multiplication of the Loaves, currently untraced.

The dispersal of the Manfrin collections began around the middle of the 19th century, with a first sale held in Venice in 1856, followed by further auctions in Paris (1870) and Milan (1897). The works were fought over by eminent private collectors, especially British and American, and by the most important European museums: the National Gallery and the Louvre entered into negotiations with the Manfrin heirs to buy blocks of the collection. However, a considerable number of paintings remained at home, acquired by the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice.

For the present canvas, as recalled in Francesco Zanotto’s volume on the history of Venetian painting published in 1880, ‘the two paintings, truly distinct, one with the Birth of Jesus, the other with the Multiplication of the Loaves’ from the Manfrin gallery ended up in Spain, where they possibly have been sold at auction.