Carlo Innocenzo Carlone
(1686/87 - Scaria d'Intelvi - 1775)

The Agony in the Garden
c.1767

Oil on canvas
61.5 x 51.4 cm

Provenance:
Fröschel Collection, Germany

Literature:
Simonetta Coppa, P.O. Krückmann and D. Teschamona (eds.), Carlo Innocenzo Carloni, 1686/87-1775, Dipinti e Bozzetti, Milan 1997, no. 17, p.106, illus. p.107

Carlo Carlone's oil sketch The Agony in the Garden is a work from his later period. It is a preparatory composition for the painting he executed for the Cappella Piaghe di Gesù Crocifisso in the Basilica San Fedele in Como. The unworked areas in the upper corners of the composition - showing the brown bolus ground - indicate the intended shape of the final painting.[1] The stucco decoration is the work of Isidoro Bianchi and his workshop.[2]

Carlone was commissioned by an aristocratic family - the Passalacquas - to execute a cycle of four paintings depicting scenes from Christ's Passion. They were titled The Agony in the Garden, The Flagellation, The Crowning with Thorns and The Road to Calvary. Records show that the cycle was completed between 1765 and 1767 and that Carlone received final payments for The Agony in the Garden and The Road to Calvary on 15 August 1767.[3]

Some forty years earlier, around 1720 to 1725, he had executed a painting of the same subject for the Collegiata di S. Vittore in Balerna.[4] In terms of composition and typology the two works are very closely related. But it is in the colouristic treatment and expressive handling of the figures so characteristic of the rococo that the forty-year difference is most clearly evident.

Christ - accompanied by an angel - is shown kneeling and with hands folded in prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. His gaze is directed towards the chalice above him borne by an angel in the guise of a young man, symbolizing the words spoken by Christ to his Father - 'Let This Cup Pass From Me'. In the darkness of the lower right corner the apostles can be glimpsed. Briefly sketched, their sleeping figures are set far back from the light-infused chalice.

Carlone was born in Scaria d'Intelvi in 1686 or 1687. As a boy he was taught by his father Giovanni Battista Carlone, a sculptor and stuccoist.[5] He worked briefly under his father in Regensburg before turning to painting. He studied under Giulio Quaglio (1668-1751) and worked with him on a decorative scheme for Ljubljana Cathedral. He travelled to Venice and Rome, coming into contact with the work of Luca Giordano and Giovanni Battista Gaulli (Il Baciccio). In 1708 he received a commission from the Ursuline Convent in Innsbruck, his first Austrian commission. His most important commissions north of the Alps were the frescoes for the Upper Belvedere and the Palais Daun-Kinsky in Vienna, the Residenzschloss in Ludwigsburg and the Residenz in Ansbach.

Returning to northern Italy as an artist of some renown, he settled in Como and Scaria in 1735. In the following twelve years he worked in Lombardy (Monza, Lodi etc) on frescoes and paintings. His last commission north of the Alps took him to Augustusburg near Brühl, where he worked on a decorative scheme for Clemens August von Wittelsbach, Archbishop of Cologne, in 1747-50. The great projects of his later years were the decorative schemes for Bergamo Cathedral (1762), the Church of S. Fedele in Como (1765-7) and Asti Cathedral (1768).

[1] See Silvia A. Colombo and S. Coppa, I Carloni di Scaria, Lugano 1997, pp. 324-5.

[2] Fabio Cani, 'Isidoro Bianchi e Carlo Carloni in San Fedele a Como', in Arte lombarda, 116, 1996, pp. 74-7.

[3] See Cani, op.cit., pp. 74-7.

[4] Simonetta Coppa, P.O. Krückmann and D. Teschamona (eds.), Carlo Innocenzo Carloni, 1686/87-1775, Dipinti e Bozzetti, Milan 1997, no. 31, p. 138, illus. pp. 139-40.

[5] His older brother Diego Francesco followed in his father's footsteps, often working with Carlo as a stuccoist. For biographical details, see Simonetta Coppa, 'Carlo Innocenzo Carlone. Profilo biografico', in Coppa, Krückmann and Teschamona, op. cit., pp. 177-8.; Colombo, op.cit. pp. 49-54.