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Francesco Lorenzi (Mazzurega, 1723 - Verona, 1787) The Meeting of Antony and Cleopatra Oil on canvas 61 x 77.5 cm SOLD The painting, with a precious eighteenth-century frame, has a very recent history, having first appeared at Sotheby's in London in 1989 with an attribution to Francesco Zugno (1709-1787). The reference to the Venetian artist accounted for the stylistic coordinates within which the canvas is placed, unmistakably Tiepolesque, not only for the subject - particularly dear to Giambattista Tiepolo's imagination during the fifth decade of the century - but also for the more properly stylistic features. However, upon closer and more focused analysis, some details - veritable "Morellian" clues (such as the old man seen from behind acting as a backdrop on the extreme left, or, on the right edge, the soldier with his arm outstretched) - point more pertinently to another pupil of Giambattista Tiepolo, namely Francesco Lorenzi (for the artist, in general, see Tomezzoli 2000). This is confirmed by the evident relationship with one of the two paintings that I have already attributed to the hand of the Veronese painter: the larger version of the "The Meeting of Antony and Cleopatra" is in pendant to a "Sacrifice of Iphigenia," canvases that passed on the antique market (Tomezzoli 2005, pp. 41-42, 44) and are now in a private collection. The latter, a pair of works of great visual impact due to their unusual size. An oral tradition wants it to come from a Veronese palace, the exact name of which would be interesting to know. Unless it has some significance, in order to identify potential clients, the dolphin prominently displayed on the soldier's shield on the right: an element that, if affirmative, might suggest the Dolfin family. A dating around the mid-1750s has already been suggested for the clear derivation from Tiepolesque prototypes: a chronological anchor that, perhaps extendable to encompass the entire decade, should obviously be extended to the small canvas under consideration. Specifically, in the present case, the closest term of comparison seems to be the famous enterprise of Palazzo Labia in Venice, from which the general arrangement of the scene derives: and not so much the final fresco version, but rather the preparatory model now preserved in the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh, of which the spatial scanning and the arrangement of individual characters or entire groups of figures are maintained - albeit in the specularity of the layout. The character of King Artavasdes in chains is missing at the top of the walkway connecting the ship with the foreground, now replaced by an elephant advancing frontally to make Antony's triumph even more magniloquent. Likewise, Lorenzi alludes to the arrival of the procession at a fortified city, introducing a lateral backdrop on the left. In the transition from the vertical format of the prototype to a more horizontally developed one, Lorenzi adds the agitated crowd of pages, soldiers, and horses to the right, while having slaves bowing and the spoils of war occupy the foreground in shadow. As for the pose of the main protagonists, Lorenzi seems to recover a different Tiepolesque idea, documented by two sheets in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London (inv. D.1825.186-1885 and especially D.1825.221-1885: see Knox 1960, p. 54, nos. 69-70). It seems almost superfluous to reiterate how much weight the apprenticeship in Tiepolo's workshop from 1745 to 1750 had - even negatively, with a strong mortgage on the developments of his own, autonomous inventive fantasy: years that saw, precisely, the elaboration of the projects and the execution of the frescoes in Palazzo Labia. Beyond any easy conjecture, we have proof that Lorenzi worked assiduously on that workshop material from the numerous graphic copies - veritable "exercises" - collected in the Osio album, now preserved in the collections of the National Institute for Graphics in Rome (Tomezzoli 2006, p. 92). In addition to this initial graphic repertoire, the Veronese painter then had to conduct independent specific studies on individual details, as evidenced by a rather interesting sheet (fig. 1), now in a private collection, which seems to fit perfectly, in the Giamblanco canvas as well as in the final version, the figure of the page immediately behind Antony: a drawing executed from life in the presence of the model, while on the right are traced two tests of the left hand holding the tray, focused in slightly different poses. It remains to note the summary cursiveness of certain details of the model under examination, while maintaining a sense of solid and compact form, which is one of the constant characteristics of Lorenzi's language. The large version, slightly simplified in the background and with the protagonists brought more to the foreground, will cool the palette with a marked chiaroscuro compared to the luminosity and chromatic verve of the preparatory sketch (Andrea Tomezzoli)