(Vienna 1649–1705 Turin)
The Drunkenness of Noah,
oil on canvas, 100 x 164 cm, framed

Provenance:
Collection of Ambrogio Riva (1799–1881), Turin;
and thence by decent to the present owner

We are grateful to Daniele Benati for suggesting the attribution after examination of the present painting in the original.

The present unpublished painting is a new addition to the catalogue of Daniel Seiter and should be dated, according to Daniele Benati, to the end of the 17th century.

The figure of Noah, languidly reclining in a barren landscape wherein the only iconographic signifiers are the grapes in the foreground, reveals Seiter’s capacity as a draughtsman. Here he shows his ability to adapt an unadulterated academic study of the male nude to a sacred theme, to generate a painting of compositional modernity.

Close stylistic comparisons can be made with other works be Seiter, for example, the Biblical patriarch’s features are close to those of the bearded man in the Diana and Orion of the Louvre (inv. n. R.F. 1997-30), likely made by Seiter around 1685 during his first Roman sojourn. The nude figure of Noah is imbued with the classicism and naturalism characteristic of the great Seicento culture of Emilia, which is best expressed by artists such as Guido Cagnacci. A comparison of particular note is with a painting by the latter, of the same subject as that under discussion, where Cagnacci also adapted a nude of great modernity to a sacred subject: Cagnacci’s Drunkenness of Noah was presented at this auction house in 2010 (Dorotheum, Vienna, 21 April 2010, lot 47).

Daniel Seiter was born in Vienna but for personal reasons at the age of twenty he was forced to escape to Venice, where he studied with the ‘tenebrist’ painter Johann Carl Loth with whom he collaborated for about a decade. During the early 1680s he stayed in Florence where he worked for the Grand Duke of Tuscany and absorbed the influence of Pietro da Cortona. Between 1682 and 1688 he established himself in Rome where he received important public and private commissions. Indeed, he was active in the churches of Santa Maria degli Angeli, Santa Maria in Aracoeli, Santa Maria di Montesanto and for Cardinal Cybo in Santa Maria del Popolo, as well as for important dynastic families such as the Colonna, Pallavicini and the Sforza Cesarini.

From 1688 Seiter definitively established himself in Turin, with the exception of another Roman sojourn towards the end of the century, during which time he may have received the commission for the present painting. In the Piedmont capital Daniel Seiter worked for Vittorio Amadeo II of Savoy for whom he undertook the great decorative enterprise of the so-called Galleria di Daniele, which is named after him, in the Palazzo Reale. Here the painter brought his artistic achievement to together in an original style that expressed his great cultural versatility and complexity.