Old Master week brings Jean-Luc Baroni to New York with and exhibit at Carlton Hobbs at 60 East 93rd St. opening today. Baroni is stocking the gallery with prominent pictures recently bought at auction like Tiepolo’s Portrait of a Lady as ‘Flora’ that he bought a year ago for $4.2m:
Another work is Salmacis and Hermaphroditus by Ludovico Carracci (Bologna 1555-1619) Oil on canvas, 114 x 151 cm. This magnificent painting, whose provenance goes back to 1632, was discovered in 2006 by Aidan Weston Lewis at Knole in Kent, where it had been in store, unrecognized, since 1674. Recently, the picture has undergone careful restoration, which has revealed a painted surface in superb state of preservation. It has a characteristic late 17th century frame from a model that was also used for a number of other pictures in the same collection at Knole.
Carlton Hobbs is using the week as an occasion to show off his own stock too:
This is the first time we have lent a large part of our gallery to a dealer from a different discipline, but believe that we will provide the perfect setting for Mr. Baroni’s stunning collection. We will carefully select pieces from our own inventory to complement the old master works.” Amongst these will be an extraordinary and, according to Lucy Wood, “pioneering” early neoclassical giltwood armchair attributed to Ince & Mayhew, presumably from a group at Bramshill Park; a highly important overmantel mirror with the frame attributed to Thomas and René Pelletier; and a pair of giltwood console tables almost certainly commissioned for Schloss Seehof.
