Always drawn to antiquity, Paolo Rotili attended the workshop of a talented Umbrian restorer aged fifteen, from whom he learnt the tools of the trade. He opened his very first business as a restorer and antiques dealer in Orvieto and subsequently decided to move up north to broaden his work experience, searching for works of art that fully reflected his great passion. At the end of 2005 he met Anna Maria Cucci, a former colleague who then became his companion; Anna is an art historian who graduated in History of Art at the DAMS University in Bologna, in Humanities at Urbino University, where she completed a dissertation on “Raphael and istoriato majolica”, followed by a third degree in Classical Archeology in 2012. Anna and Paolo immediately started working in the family shop in Rimini’s old town (currently Piazza Tre Martiri, formerly Antico Foro Romano). The acumen and talent of the two dealers, along with thorough studies and research, with the help of the most eminent scholars, led to numerous discoveries. A case in point is the recent large painting by J.H.W. Tischbein depicting “Oxyartes offering his daughter Roxana in marriage to Alexander the Great”, executed by the artist during his first Roman stay, bought from the Casa di Goethe museum in Rome in September 2020.
This magnificent small-format copperplate is an important addition to the catalog of Gottfried Wals, reconstructed in only nineteen examples by the scholar who wrote his monograph forty years ago (A. Repp, Goffredo Wals. Zur Landschaftsmalerei zwischen Adam Elsheimer und Claude Lorrain, Cologne 1985), but it was certainly much more substantial if contemporary sources already mentioned sixty examples (including paintings and drawings) in the collection of the Flemish merchant Gaspar Roomer, who was active in Naples and since the 17th- and 18th-century inventories of many other private collections record his works under the name Goffredo or Goffredo todesco. The overall quality of the painting, the mastery of the composition, the definition of the details, and not least its perfect state of preservation, make it a very original, valuable, and rare example.
Purchased for a private collection on the Munich antiques market in 2003; Italy, private collection
Bibliography: “Ceramiche varie” 1984, p. 38, n. 10; Giuliana Gardelli, in “Valori Tattili” 2010, pp. 5-7; Skulpturen & Kunsthandwerk 2013, pp. 110-111; Claudio Paolinelli, “Lacrime di smalto.Plastiche maiolicate tra Marche e Romagna nell’età del Rinascimento”, 2014, pp. 108-109.
Provenance: private collection. Bibliography: unpublished.
