An Italian micromosaic panel by Filippo Cocchi, Vatican Mosaic Workshop, circa 1780

This impressive micromosaic roundel is based on a painting by Pietro Bianchi (1694–1740) depicting the Muse Euterpe; three versions of this painting exist, one of which was previously in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, another said to be in the Koelliker collection and a third that sold at Dorotheum in 2018.¹ By the later eighteenth century, copies of contemporary Italian paintings both secular and sacred were becoming part of the repertoire of subjects depicted in micromosaic, though they would become more widespread in the nineteenth century.

Filippo Cocchi was, as was often the case for eighteenth-century craftsmen, part of a multi-generational lineage of practitioners of the same art. His father Alessandro, his son Raffaele and his brother Vincenzo were all micromosaicists, and aside from Alessandro they all worked for the prestigious Vatican Workshops.² Not many works by the Cocchi family are firmly attributed, but Alessandro is known to have made a portrait of Tsarina Elisabeth that is now in the Hermitage (Эпр-5720) and is also ventured by the V&A cataloguer as the maker of a striking portrait of a saint with upturned gaze (LOAN:GILBERT.222:1, 2-2008). The style of the present lot is clearly from later in the century, and is comparable to a panel after Guido Reni attributed to Filippo Cocci and sold at Replica Shoes ’s in 2014.³ There is a strong chance that the present lot is a pendant to, or was created as part of a group with, a panel by Cocchi that is now in the Design Museum in Denmark (26/1965), since they are both of oval form and the Design Museum example also depicts a Muse in a similar manner.⁵

Portrait panels from the period of similar quality without an attribution include an example recently with Thomas Coulbourn and subsequently purchased by the MFA Houston (2024.1594), a Madonna in a private collection⁴ and some at auction at Bertolami in 2021, Cambi Casa d'Aste in 2022 and Hampel in 2021.⁶

¹ MET example: K. Baetjer, European Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art by artists born in or before 1865, New York, 1980, vol I, p.11 and vol II p.103; the Koelliker example is referenced in the Dorotheum catalogue note but not among the paintings illustrated in the publications on the collection; Dorotheum Vienna, 24 April 2018, lot 108.

² R. Grieco and A. Gambino, Roman mosaic: l’arte del micromosaico fra ‘700 e ‘800, Milan, 2001, p.38.

³ Sotheby’s London, Of Royal and Noble Descent, 23 January 2014, lot 71.

⁴ F. Leone (ed), Pittura in mosaico, Rome, 2023, pp.44-5, cat. 1.

⁵ Illustrated in A. Gonzàlez-Palacios, Il Tempio del gusto: Roma e il Regno delle due Sicilie, Milan, 1984, pl.XIX.

⁶ Bertolami Rome, 21 December 2021, lot 44; Cambi Casa d'Aste Genoa 24 November 2022, lot 406; Hampel Munich, 23 September 2021, lot 707.