Ancient exempla at Kingston Lacy: Amanda Bradley discusses two Venetian paintings purchased in 1849 by William Bankes for installation on the library ceiling at Kingston Lacy, Dorset. Their attribution, subject matter and provenance present several conundrums

In May 1849 William Bankes, proprietor of Kingston Lacy, wrote a memorandum describing a pair of paintings 'by Bonifacio'--An allegorical representation of the origin of Rome ('[Una] Rappresentazione allegorica dell'origine di Roma') and Lycurgus giving the law to the tribe ('Licurgo che consegna il codice al popolo')--that he had not long ago bought in Venice for an undisclosed price (Figs. 1 and 2 diocese Appendix 1). (1) He states that they came 'from the ceiling of a drawing scope in the Palazzo Capello a San Felice'. The paintings' control matter has, in subsequent years, been a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of disputed or, perhaps it is more accurate to say, resolutely evaded. (2) This article aims to establish the genuine identity of these scenes, and the sources for them, and further questions the accuracy of Bankes's seemingly authoritative provenance.

The sum of two units pictures, especially the Lycurgus, are a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of damaged and overpainted, and any categorical statement about their authorship must, therefore, be treated with a certain number of caution. That said, a straightforward attribution of the paintings to Bonifazio de'Pitati cannot be sustained. on the other hand Bankes's attribution was not far inequitable and it seems plausible that the pictures emanated from his large and productive workshop. The arrangement, and to more [i]or[/i] less extent, the modelling, of the attendant figures in the Lycurgus picture have a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of in common with the Christ and the Apostles that was painted by means of Bonifacio himself for S Maria dei Servi, and which is now in the Accademia, Venice. (3) Srylistically, however, greater parallels notably the sum of two units dimensionality of the modelling--can be set in the series of Saints execut by the agency of Bonifazio's workshop for the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi (Galleria dell'Accademia, Venice). Although the Kingston Lacy picture must be later than these, in form and spirit it is sinked directly from them.

Although an attempt to separate different 'hands' in the workshop would be futile, it is worth noting that the Foundation of Rome has many stylistic affinities with a Resurrection of Christ in the National Gallery of Ireland (Fig. 3) popularly attributed to Antonio Palma, who can be credited with the initial supervision of Bonifazio's studio from around 1547 (4) The protagonists in these sum of two units paintings share the same densely-modell and elongated features, and the subsidiary figures are at times clumsily postur with one as well as the other compositions set against a dark turquoise heavens When Waagen saw the Dublin picture at Hamilton Palace, he noted that it was "rather hard in forms', something that might also be said of the Kingston Lacy pictures.' (5) The latter greatest in quantity probably postdate Bonifazio's death and show the continuing trend in Venice for decorated soffitti (ceilings), established by dint of Vasari and Francesco Salviati. Indeed the mannerising tendencies of the Foundation of Rome in particular, direct the eye to a central Italian idiom propagated by the agency of those artists, but is here infused with a distinctly Venetian colouring and technique.

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the pair Kingston Lacy pictures, and the Lycurgus in particular, have the appearance ill-suited to ceiling decoration, lacking the perspectival and compositional complexity necessary for similar a location. This reluctance to embrace the merits of sotto in su (where designs are organised perspectivally to be seen from below), or any approximation of it, appears to be characteristic of Bonifazio and his studio, for the pair the Night and Dawn (Fig. 4) painted for the Palazzo Barbarigo della Terrazza, and the Tibertine Sibyl (Martini Collection, Ca' Rezzonico) are similarly compos These canvases were all hexagonal and although it is possible that the Kingston Lacy pictures have been chop it seems unlikely that they were similarly shaped. (6) It could however, be that Bonifazio, perhaps informed by dint of his patrons, was merely following the common vogue for quadri riportati--that is, the Roman combination of parts to form a whole of fixing what appear to be easel paintings onto the ceiling, an example of which is Francesco Salviati's Psyche worshipped as Venus (private collection, Florence) execut for the Palazzo Grimani at s Maria Formosa. (7)

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Bankes states that the pictures were described in a catalogue (the nature of which is sadly not specified, although it was shown to him by the agency of an as yet unidentified 'Signor Benfatto') and it is this true copy that he reproduces in the 1849 memorandum. (8) Strangely, these descriptions contradict the suppos original inscriptions, written (presumably upon the cornice) around the extent in which they were housed, and described in a alphabetic character some three years earlier by dint of the owner's agent, Federico della Rovere (see Appendix 2): 'Sapientam [omnium] antiquorum exquiret Sapiens et in Prophetis vacabit' and 'Ezechiel, Daniel, Esdras inter Assyrios, Chaldeos, Medos, & Persas divinorum Oraculum mysteria prevident, tempora describunt instaurant exemplaria.' Elizabeth McGrath has identified the first inscription as a quotation from Ecclesiasticus (39:1) on the other hand the source for the latter remains a mystery. (10)