Neal Auction 2012

40 145. Jacques Courtois (Giacomo Cortese), called Il Borgognone (French, working in Italy, 1621-1676) , “The Battle of Podhajce”, 1667/1676, oil on 17th-c. canvas, retaining conspicuous impasto, unsigned, with name of the battle (“Perdhacy”, evidently a misspelling during very early relining) in 18th-c. painted script, and an unmarked 18th-c. red wax seal, en verso of 18th-c. herringbone-weave canvas; former owner’s name “Monsieur Raymond Sancery” typed—and in a second instance handwritten—on 19th-c. printed paper labels en verso of stretcher; each rail of stretcher separately inscribed (as are others of the printed paper labels) “No. 18” in early 19th-c. calligraphy; two standard mid- 19th-c. French Customs marks stamped in black ink en verso of stretcher and frame; 37 1/2 in. x 62 3/4 in., in a more recent carved, gessoed, and giltwood frame. $20000/30000 Provenance: A European noble collection (wax seal); Raymond Sancery, Paris; exported legally from France. Note: This very striking panorama depicts Polish and Lithuanian troops under the command of John III Sobieski (wearing red; after 1674 King of Poland) in the act of repulsing an advance of Tatar, Cossack, and Turkish forces under the joint leadership of Adil Giray, khan of Crimea, and Petro Doroshenko, chief of the Ukrainian Cossacks (with blue insignia and flag), whom a recent treaty with Istanbul had confirmed as recognized vassals of the Ottoman Empire. The latter’s objective was nothing less than the subjugation of Europe, as the ultimate goal of the Great Turkish War; but the heroic brilliance of Jan Sobieski as a field commander thwarted this aim, not only in his ten-day campaign around Podhajce (6-16 October 1667, which earned him the title of commander-in-chief), but most memorably in his miraculous repulse of the three-month Turkish siege of Vienna, on 12 September 1683. The Galician town of Podhajce is only separated from the Hungarian and Romanian heartlands by the great chain of the Carpathians; it lies some 60 miles southeast of Lvov (the Lemberg of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and the same distance northwest of Kamienetz, the fortress key to southern Poland, bordering a neighboring district called Podolia, classically disputed between the Western powers, Russia and Ukraine. Its fortified walls rise here above the smoke of battle, and a long perspective opens out to the left over the valley of the River Dniester, and the mountains that bound the Sarmatian plain. Jacques Courtois, called Il Borgognone from his birthplace in the French / Swiss border town of St. Hippolyte in 1621, went to Italy when he was only 15, and spent the next three years as a soldier/painter with the Spanish army around Milan; in travels through Bologna, Florence, Siena, and eventually Rome, in the late 1630s, he was influenced by the respective styles of Salvator Rosa, Pieter van Laer (“Bamboccio”), and especially Pietro da Cortona, who in the 1640s facilitated his introduction to the Roman nobility. His military training and singleness of purpose made him the preeminent battle painter of his day: he was prominent in the collections of Doge Niccolò Sagredo in Venice, was pursued by the Duke of Modena in the 1660s, and by King Charles II as well as King Philip V of Spain (whose respective Battle Scenes are now in the Prado). From 1651 to 1655 he worked in Tuscany for Prince Mattias de’ Medici, brother of the Grand Duke Ferdinando II. As a fellow soldier who had also served in the Thirty Years’ War, Prince Mattias is said to have delighted in the vivid realism of Borgognone’s four great canvases of the War of Castro (1641-44) of which the Prince had been the victor (apart from those exceptional pictures, the present painting is one of the very few among Borgognone’s generic Battles to be specifically localized). A very similar canvas, a “vast and lively battle,” is preserved at Palazzo Pitti; later, he executed four similar frescoes for the Prince’s villa at Lappeggi. Borgognone joined the Jesuits in 1657, intending to give up painting altogether; but the great Padre Oliva, General of the Order, persuaded him to continue his calling, and indeed gave the artist conspicuous commissions. A fresco cycle of Scenes from the Life of St. Ignatius was executed for the Gesù, and Borgognone was also commissioned to fresco the apse of the church itself (but died before that project could be undertaken). He did provide the high altar paintings for Bernini’s churches at Ariccia and S. Andrea al Quirinale, as well as for S. Carlo al Corso. Most of the picture galleries in Rome have impressive examples of his work, perhaps most memorably the Museo Capitolino, Accademia di S. Luca, Galleria Doria-Pamphili, Palazzo Spada, and Pinacoteca of the Vatican, where a splendid Battle Scene (1650s) from the Ferrieri Collection is only slightly smaller than the present canvas. Notwithstanding his fame as “the Raphael of Battles ,” his paintings appear to be rare in American collections: some have however appeared on the market, notably a Christian and Turkish Battle of almost exactly this same size, at Hampel Kunstauktion in Munich on 17 September 2010 (lot 2556), another at the Dorotheum in Vienna on 21 April 2010 (lot 178), and one still larger at Christie’s London on 7 July 2009 (lot 27). On account of its scale, its vivid handling, its apparently unique inscribed localization, and its status as a great late work (it was necessarily painted between the date of the battle in 1667 and Borgognone’s death in Rome on 14 November 1675), this is a most exceptional offering. References: Robert N. Bain, “John III (Sobieski),” Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed., Cambridge, 1911, vol. 15, pp. 442-443; ibid., “Lemberg,” vol. 16, pp. 409-410; William R. Shepherd, Historical Atlas, 9th ed., New York, 1969, pp. 125-167; Ann Sutherland Harris, “Giacomo Cortese [il Borgognone],” Grove Dictionary of Art, Jane Turner, ed., 34 vols., London, 1996, vol. 7, pp. 902-903; Francis Haskell, Patrons and Painters , London, 1963, pp. 78-79; Carlo Pietrangeli, Paintings in the Vatican, Boston, 1996, pp. 508, 568; A. J. Onieva, Complete Guide to the Prado, Madrid, 1966, p.128-129. 145 (detail)