FRANCESCO SOLIMENA (Canale di Serino, 1657-Naples, 1747) NOLI ME TANGERE Canvas Old frame Old restorations Canvas, with restorations 71 x 50 CM - 28 x 19,7 IN. PROVENANCE Private mansion in Burgundy, Semur-en-Auxois Our painting comes from the same collection and the same private mansion as the spectacular ceiling project executed by Solimena and sold at Tajan in 2022 (22 June 2022, lot 29, €1,249,000). BIBLIOGRAPHY OF RELATED WORKS Nicola Spinosa, Francesco Solimena (1657-1747) e le Arti a Napoli, Ugo Bozzi editore, Rome, 2018, p. 372, cat. 149. Our "modello" is unpublished. Its composition, with variants, was known thanks to the engraving by Pietro Monaco in 1743 indicating that a version was in the collection of Francesco Widmann in Venice (this print was later taken over by Philipp Andres Kilian in 1758 for a series of illustrations of the New Testament). Around 1705, his uncle Monsignor Antonio Widmann commissioned three paintings from Solimena, two of which are now in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden, and in 1713 he wrote to the Marquis Bonaccorsi announcing that he was expecting a third by the painter, a Noli me Tangere, which probably later passed to his nephew. We know of two replicas of our composition, of similar dimensions, sold in London, one at Sotheby's on 4 July 2013 (lot 221) and the other at Christie's on 21 April 2004 (lot 85). The flowerpot on the left is different in each case. Our painting shows another variation in the position of the cherub's arm on the left, here folded over the cloud, and outstretched in the other two replicas. Francesco Solimena was the leading artist of 18th-century Naples and one of the most important painters of Italian Baroque art. His career encompassed all genres: prestigious monumental decorations, altarpieces, easel paintings, mythological and historical scenes, portraits, still lifes, etc. He was also a poet, sculptor, precursor of the art of the cot and architect. Trained by his father, Angelo Solimena, a naturalist painter, he collaborated with him on frescoes in his youth. His meeting with Luca Giordano and Mattia Preti gave him the decisive impetus to synthesise the open spatial vision of great Roman Baroque decoration (Cortona, Gaulli, Pozzo) with the Neapolitan pictorial heritage, which drew its taste for realism from Ribera. He was an artist of international stature: from Naples, he received commissions from the major European capitals, for the German courts (Rohrau, Schloss Harrach; for Bavaria, for Mainz), for Louis XIV, for Spain (commissioned by Philip V in 1706, in 1735), for Vienna (commissioned by Charles VI) and Prague, or in Italy, for Genoa and the Royal Palace in Turin. We would like to thank Nicola Spinosa for confirming the attribution on the basis of a digital photograph in April 2025 and for pointing out that our painting is of better quality than the painting he reproduced in 2018.