Page 18 - Vision & Ecstasy - Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione's St. Francis.

contained a number of very heavyweight paintings the likes of which one rarely, if ever, sees on the market
today.10 Basia purchased the Castiglione discussed in this catalogue, a ravishing Orazio Gentileschi Madonna and
Child on panel (Fig. 7), a rare Bartolomeo Manfredi Flagellation (Fig .8), An Annunciation to the Shepherds by the
synonymous master, probably the best example of his work I have seen and a huge Castiglione depicting God
Creating the Animals, all from the first exhibition over a period of time. From the second exhibition she purchased
a brutally violent Ribera depiction of Prometheus (Fig. 9) which in recent years made a record price at auction11.
In view of her status as a favoured client we made a gift of a beautiful altarpiece by Carlo Bononi representing
Basia’s namesake, St.Barbara. (Fig. 10) On the same occasion we sold her one of the most beautiful paintings that
have ever passed through my hands, Carlo Saraceni’s Martyrdom of St Cecilia.12 (Fig. 11)

In the years between these two exhibitions we held two landmark exhibitions; the first on early Italian paintings
with many significant loans from private collections and which looked glorious in the new galleries. It was the
first major exhibition of this kind since theWildenstein show in the 1960s.There followed in 1984 an exhibition
which really put the new gallery on the map.This was From Borso to Cesare d’Este:The School of Ferrara 1450-1628
and I have never had so much fun with an exhibition before or since. It was organised in the record making time
of nine months start to finish thanks to the participation of the late Emmanuele Mattaliano, whose humour and
spirit is encompassed in the essay he contributed to the catalogue, and of John Lishawa who acted as my right
hand. Never before or since has a private dealer obtained so many loans from the Italian Government – indeed
an entire truck which proceeded in convoy with an armed escort across Europe and whose progress and clearance
though customs caused many a headache particularly for the overnight stay in a laager.The exhibition was a huge

10. The gallery sold paintings from these two baroque exhibitions alone to The Los Angeles County Museum (4);The Ringling
Museum, Sarasota;The deYoung Museum, San Francisco (2);The Gemäldegalerie, Berlin;The Art Institute of Chicago (2);
The Brooks Museum, Memphis; Pinacoteca Sabauda,Turin; Banca Agricola, Mantua; Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio, Pisa;
The Copenhagen Museum of Art;The Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux;The Cleveland Art Museum;The Birmingham City
Art Gallery and many private collectors.

11. This painting fetched over $6,000,000 some 20 times what I had sold it for giving the lie to the stories that if you buy from a
dealer you cannot recover your investment! No stock market investment could generate such a return.Alas, Basia had offered
the painting back to me for under two million dollars and I had declined.

12. Many years later we were given this painting to resell and placed it with the LosAngeles County Museum. Many of the paintings
we sold to the Barbara Piasecka Johnson Collection were subsequently exhibited inWarsaw in 1990 in Opus Sacrum at the Royal
Castle Museum. Over the succeeding decades we resold many of the paintings for her at substantial mark ups when compared
to her purchasing price: the Manfredi for instance to a private collector.

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