View of Delphi with a Procession

Provenance

Commissioned along with Coast View with Perseus and the Origin of Coral (LV 184) by Cardinal Carlo Camillo Massimi (died 1676), Rome, 1673, presumably to accompany two other paired paintings by Claude, identified as Landscape with Argus Gaurding Io (LV 86) and Coast View with Apollo and the Cumaean Sibyl (LV 99) [according to inscriptions that accompany the drawing after the painting in Claude’s “Liber Veritatis” (LV 182) that read “CLAVDIO fecit IV / Roma 1673” and “quadro facto per leminmo e Reve.ro / sigre Cardinale Massimo / A Roma 1673”]; at his death to his younger brother, Fabio Camillo Massimi [according to Röthlisberger 1979, vol. 1, p. 240, under LV 86]. Possibly John Drummond, first earl of Melfort, London, by 1690; possibly sold Whitehall, London, June 21, 1693 [suggested by Röthlisberger 1979, vol. 1, pp. 239–41, under LV 86, pp. 428–31, LV 182 on the basis that one of the pendants of the painting, Landscape with Argus Guarding Io, Holkham Hall, Norfolk, may be listed in an 1693 supplement to an 1692 inventory of the Melfort collection]. Humphrey Edwin, by 1746; probably sold by his widow, c. 1750 [according to Röthlisberger 1979, vol. 1, p. 430, under LV 182]. In the possession of the Earls of Derby, certainly by 1854 when it was lent to London 1854; by descent to Edward George Villiers, seventeenth earl of Derby; sold Christie’s London, July 26, 1940, no. 9, to Rothschild for £126, as Priests Proceeding with a Sacrificial Bull towards a Fortified City [price and buyer according to an annotated copy of the sale catalogue, Christie’s, London]. Arnold Seligmann, Rey, and Co., New York, by 1941; purchased by the Art Institute, 1941.

Official Citations