Author of the entry: Augusto Russo
Noted over thirty years ago in connection with the painting technique Raimondo di Sangro developed using water-soluble wax to mix colours (de Sangro 1991, pp. 67–68), the work was acquired for the Museo Cappella Sansevero by its present owners in 2005: it amounted, in effect, to a homecoming (Fabrizio Masucci, in I nostri omaggi 2010, pp. 34–36, no. 6).
Although the subject and composition are wholly conventional, this Madonna col Bambino is a singular and eloquent witness to the particular setting in which it came into being, with regard to the associated questions of patronage and the work’s materiality (on which see Cerasuolo 2019 for a full study). The artist’s name and the date of execution appear on the reverse: ‘GIUSEPPE PESCE ROMANO DIPINSE / NELL’AN[NO] 1757’. The painting was commissioned by Raimondo di Sangro, who presented it to Charles of Bourbon, whom he had served as both soldier and courtier. Also on the reverse is the long dedicatory inscription, distinguished moreover by the Prince of Sansevero’s declaration and assertion of priority for the painting technique he had directed the artist to adopt: ‘TO THE MOST AUGUST CHARLES / KING OF THE TWO SICILIES AND OF JERUSALEM / INFANT OF SPAIN / DUKE OF PARMA AND PIACENZA / GREAT HEREDITARY PRINCE OF TUSCANY / RENOWNED PROTECTOR OF THE FINE ARTS / HIS LORD / RAIMONDO DI SANGRO / PRINCE OF S. SEVERO / FIRST INVENTOR / OF PAINTING WITH COLOURED WAXES / IN TEMPERA / THIS FIRST EXAMPLE / GIVES DEDICATES AND CONSECRATES’.
This has made it possible to identify the painting with one which, in a contemporary source very close to Raimondo, is mentioned as being housed in the royal apartments at the time and described as ‘painted with coloured waxes in a manner much finer than that already devised by the Comte de Caylus of Paris’ (Breve nota 1766, p. 24). The same source further reports that several exemplars of the technique were kept at the Di Sangro residence: the Prince, taking up the ancient practice, is said to have brought the method to a higher degree of perfection, and a number of small paintings are cited as examples, so finely executed that they had the refinement of miniatures. In 1758, Raimondo repeated the experiment, having the same painter produce a Sacra Famiglia in encaustic to his own design, this time as a gift for the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. This second painting, now lost, also bore on its reverse the patron’s dedication and the artist’s signature with date, as recorded in the inventory of the Belvedere Gallery in Vienna in 1781 (de Mechel 1784, p. 145, no. 17; cf. Attanasio 2011, p. 63, note 29; Cerasuolo 2019).
The reference to Caylus, author of the Mémoire sur la peinture à l’encaustique et sur la peinture à la cire (1755), signals Raimondo’s international currency and the breadth of his learning in the field, and his timely – and to some degree – direct participation in the discussion and experimentation then under way in Europe on the absorbing subject of encaustic painting, whose exceptional properties interested a wide audience of antiquarians, intellectuals, connoisseurs, and artists. We know that Raimondo’s library contained the Encyclopédie, with a revised definition under the entry encaustique (1755), as well as a copy of Caylus’s Mémoire (Fabrizio Masucci and Leen Spruit, in Raimondo di Sangro 2020, pp. 319, 357).
The Prince’s competence and practice in the matter are attested by travellers and writers of the period. L’abbé Richard (1766, p. 199) writes that Raimondo had ‘le secret de la peinture encaustique’ and claimed to owe nothing to the French artists; on the contrary, he had found the secret entirely through his own research and had even explained the procedures to Caylus himself. The astronomer Lalande (1769, p. 244) describes a painting that Sansevero executed avec la cire colorée et privée de son huile, which seemed to him au-dessus des encaustiques qu’on a faits à Paris d’après M. le comte de Caylus. It should be borne in mind, moreover, that at the centre of the Enlightenment debate lay not only the secret of the technique’s rediscovery, but also whether it was appropriate to keep it secret from the public or not.
Albeit obedient to Raimondo’s wishes, Giuseppe Pesce (or Pesci), whose catalogue is currently slim, partly through material misfortune, was not an artist of standing. He was most probably the son of the better-known painter Girolamo, a pupil of Carlo Maratti (1625–1713) and then of Francesco Trevisani (1656–1746), active in Rome and Lazio chiefly on commissions for sacred pieces and also enjoying a respectable reputation abroad (for more on him: Randolfi 2015). Born in 1710, Giuseppe was still in Rome in 1750, living in the parish of San Lorenzo in Lucina (Pampalone 2004, p. 44; eadem 2013, p. 202).
His earliest activity in Rome is almost unknown, though one guidebook attributes to him the decoration of the sacristy vault of the church of Santi Claudio e Andrea dei Borgognoni (Roma antica e moderna 1750, p. 257; for an initial study of the artist’s Roman phase, see Russo 2025). Several of his paintings are recorded in the Marche, particularly at San Severino Marche, where local sources attribute to him, among other works, the high altarpiece in the old Cathedral, dating from 1741 to 1742 (cf. most recently Massimo Francucci, in Pro Loco lombarde Pro Arte 2021, pp. 121–128). Precisely when the painter moved to Naples is unknown; the guidebook literature from there attributes to him (Sigismondo 1788, pp. 132, 265) two untraced over-door paintings at Santa Maria Donnaregina Nuova and two oils in the nuns’ choirs flanking the high altar of Santa Chiara, the decoration of which was destroyed in 1943 during the Second World War. The work at Santa Chiara is documented as of 1759 (Mormone 1959, p. 103).
Tellingly, the scarce archive information regarding Pesce concerns his relations with the Prince of Sansevero. A payment in 1760 ‘in settlement of his stipends to the end of November 1759’ suggests that the artist was receiving a more or less regular wage and working in the Prince’s employ. By 1763, however, further documents indicate a quarrel between the two: Pesce had appealed to the King and accused his patron of failing to pay him as agreed, claiming ‘19 monthly payments at the rate of 30 ducats apiece for certain paintings, pastels, and drawings’, while Raimondo denied that any such agreements existed; the matter was settled amicably, out of court, for two hundred ducats to the claimant (for the documents, see Nappi 2010, pp. 83–85, docs. 268–271). The inventory of the Prince’s estate, drawn up at his death (1771, fol. 59v; cf. Attanasio 2011, pp. 89, 127), records two paintings of Venus by Pesce in the so-called Phoenix apartment of Palazzo Sansevero. In 1765, at last, a payment is recorded for the painter’s part in the no-longer-surviving decoration of Palazzo Orsini di Gravina (Guida 2011, p. 366, doc. 75).
Stylistically, the Madonna col Bambino in the Museo Cappella Sansevero bears the hallmarks of a generic classicism, in keeping with Pesce’s Roman origin and his father’s background. Infrared examination has revealed traces of a careful preparatory drawing, and the colour is laid down with diligence and compactness. The slightly laboured brushwork, on the other hand, must be attributed in part to the unusual medium, which impedes the fluid application of colour (Cerasuolo 2019).
Essential bibliography on the work
Breve nota di quel che si vede in casa del Principe di Sansevero don Raimondo di Sangro nella città di Napoli, [Naples] 1766, p. 24.
de Sangro Oderisio, Raimondo de Sangro e la Cappella Sansevero, Rome 1991, pp. 67–68.
I nostri omaggi, Principe!, exhibition catalogue, Fabrizio Masucci (ed.), Museo Cappella Sansevero (23 April – 18 July 2010), Naples 2010, pp. 34–36, no. 6.
Cerasuolo Angela, ‘Raimondo di Sangro e le sperimentazioni sull’encausto in Europa: la Madonna con Bambino di Giuseppe Pesce donata a Carlo di Borbone’, in Polygraphia, 1, 2019, pp. 85–105.
Russo Augusto, ‘Giuseppe Pesci: New Findings on a Little-Known Eighteenth-Century Painter and Draughtsman’, in RIHA Journal, 0324, 24 June 2025, online only:
Comparative bibliography
Roma antica e moderna, o sia nuova descrizione di tutti gl’edificj antichi e moderni, tanto sagri quanto profani, della città di Roma, II, Rome, appresso Gregorio Roisecco, 1750, p. 257.
Richard Jérôme, Description historique et critique de l’Italie…, IV, Dijon–Paris, chez François Des Ventes et Michel Lambert, 1766, p. 199.
Lalande Joseph-Jérôme Le Français de, Voyage d’un François en Italie, fait dans les années 1765 et 1766…, VI, Venice–Paris, chez Desaint, 1769, p. 244.
Inventario de’ beni rimasti nell’eredità del fu eccellentissimo don Raimondo di Sangro principe di Sansevero, Naples, notary Francesco de Maggio, 1771, copy of the document held at the Archivio Storico del Pio Monte della Misericordia di Napoli, d’Aquino di Caramanico collection, provisional shelfmark A.162, fol. 59v.
de Mechel Chrétien, Catalogue des tableaux de la Galerie impériale et royale de Vienne, Basel 1784, p. 145, no. 17.
Sigismondo Giuseppe, Descrizione della città di Napoli e suoi borghi, I, [Naples,] presso i fratelli Terres, 1788, pp. 132, 265.
Mormone Raffaele, ‘Il rifacimento settecentesco nella chiesa di Santa Chiara a Napoli’, in Studi in onore di Riccardo Filangieri, III, Naples 1959, p. 103.
Pampalone Antonella, ‘Parrocchia di Sant’Andrea delle Fratte. Rione Colonna’, in Studi sul Settecento Romano. Artisti e artigiani a Roma, I, dagli Stati delle Anime del 1700, 1725, 1750, 1775, Elisa Debenedetti (ed.), Rome 2004, p. 44.
Nappi Eduardo, Dai numeri la verità. Nuovi documenti sulla famiglia, i palazzi e la Cappella dei Sansevero, Naples 2010, pp. 83–85, docs. 268–271.
Attanasio Sergio, In casa del Principe di Sansevero. Architettura, invenzioni, inventari, Naples 2011, p. 63, note 29, pp. 89, 127.
Guida Gloria, ‘Il Palazzo Gravina: nuovi documenti’, in Istituto Banco di Napoli-Fondazione. Quaderni dell’Archivio Storico 2009–2010, Naples 2011, pp. 345–380, esp. p. 366, doc. 75.
Pampalone Antonella, ‘Parrocchia di San Lorenzo in Lucina. Rione Colonna’, in Studi sul Settecento Romano. Artisti e artigiani a Roma, III, dagli Stati delle Anime del 1700, 1725, 1750, 1775, Elisa Debenedetti (ed.), Rome 2013, pp. 202, 256, note 658.
Randolfi Rita, ‘Pesci, Girolamo’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 82, Rome 2015, online: www.treccani.it/biografico.
Raimondo di Sangro. Cronaca di vita e opere, Fabrizio Masucci and Leen Spruit (eds), Naples 2020, pp. 319, 357.
Pro Loco lombarde Pro Arte, Pierluigi Moriconi (ed.), Comitato Regionale UNPLI Lombardia-APS, Restauri nelle Marche colpite dal sisma 2016, Milan 2021, pp. 121–128.
Russo Augusto, ‘Giuseppe Pesci: New Findings on a Little-Known Eighteenth-Century Painter and Draughtsman’, in RIHA Journal, 0324, 24 June 2025, online only: https://doi.org/10.11588/riha.2025.1.109016.
DOI: 10.82049/CATALOGO31