Resumen de Abbé Celotti and the provenance of Antonello da Messina's 'The condottiere' and Antonio de Solario's 'Virgin and Child with St John'.
Unpublished letters provide new evidence on the provenance of Antonello da Messina's Portrait of a man, known as The condottiere, and of Antonio de Solario's Virgin and Child with St. John. The new evidence consists of correspondence between the Abbé Luigi Celotti and the Viceroy of the Kingdom of Lombardy and Venetia in 1829, and letters from the abbé to canon Giannantonio Moschini and Giovanni Rosini between 1832 and 1836. Celotti was employed by the noble Barbarigo family of San Polo in Venice in the late 178os as a tutor and turned to art dealing after the fall of the Venetian Republic while still in the family's employ. Throughout the first half of the 19th century, many treasures from Venetian patrician and ecclesiastical art collections and libraries passed through Celotti's hands and onto the major European markets.
