SwissArtGallery · Documented identity
Settled in Rome early on, Pietro Testa developed a body of work in which printmaking occupies an important place: between 1638 and 1644, he produced a series of engravings devoted to the seasons, described as complex and detailed. His training took him briefly to the workshop of Pietro da Cortona, from which he is said to have been expelled shortly after his admission in 1631. The biographical notice reports that he subsequently studied with Pietro Paolini, Domenichino and Annibale Carracci, for whom he worked under the patronage of Cassiano dal Pozzo.
Several compositions are recorded in public collections: The Garden of Venus, dated 1631–1637, and The Sacrifice of Iphigenia, dated 1640–1642, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; The Sacrifice of Isaac, also dated 1640–1642, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The notice also mentions a Madonna of Loreto dated 1633 in Fermo. The corpus also includes works on paper. The Painter’s Crowning on Parnassus, pen and brown ink, is recorded at the Beaux-Arts de Paris; two prints, Study of Saint Michael Slaying the Dragon and The Adoration of the Shepherds, are described as original seventeenth-century etchings. Elizabeth Cropper’s works on Testa include Pietro Testa, 1612-1650: Prints and Drawings, published by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1988, and The Ideal of Painting: Pietro Testa’s Düsseldorf Notebook, published in 1984.
This profile brings together identity references for Pietro Testa and paintings, drawings and works on paper documented in auction catalogues.
Piguet
References include catalogue entries and available results; they do not all represent completed sales. Attributed works and special lots are excluded from the priced results.
Graphite on paper
Diane et Actéon
mine de plomb sur papier
Catalogue period : 2020-12-09
Published result : 1000 CHF
Fees not specified in the available data
Estimate : CHF 1200–1800
View the lot at the auction house ↗These references are shown separately because of their attribution or lot composition. Each record states the reason.
Ink on paper
École de Pietro Testa — Le char du soleil
encre sur papier
école de
Catalogue period : 2018-09-26
School of
Published result : 400 CHF
Fees not specified in the available data
Estimate : CHF 800–1200
View the lot at the auction house ↗Ink on paper
École de Pietro Testa — Le char du soleil
encre sur papier
école de
Catalogue period : 2018-06-20
School of
Catalogue reference — sale not confirmed
Estimate : CHF 800–1200
View the lot at the auction house ↗SwissArtGallery documentary note based on the cited sources. Titles, media and qualifications are provided in the profile language; the original catalogue wording remains available in each record.
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