Provenance: Private collection, Rome. Belonging to Adele della Rocca and her descendants in a direct line
A thorough genealogical research retraced the whereabouts of the painting since it was given to Adele. A society newspaper of the period, “La Conversazione della Domenica” notes that she was married to Count Gianelli-Viscardi in 1887. It was “quite an event,” reports the paper. Indeed, the last owner of the painting, who thought Luna was the name of a village in the Lazio province of Rome, only recalled that it had been inherited from his grandmother Antonietta, who happened to be a “pianist of Polish origin”. We discovered through genealogical study that the Count and Countess Gianelli-Viscardi had a son, Giulio, and that indeed the young Count married Antonietta Crijenko Descovich, the former owner’s pianist grand-mother.
The portrait at hand, as well as that of the sitter’s sister Irene, have thus continuously stayed in the same family until this extraordinary discovery.

ABOUT THE WORK

It is well known that, as Juan Luna was finishing the “Spoliarium”, his masterpiece now at the National Museum, the rumor spread all over Rome that a new, but very exotic, Master from the Philippines was busy resurrecting the glorious art and culture of ancient Rome. Everybody was queuing at his workshop in via Margutta, and one day, end of 1883, as the painter was applying his last touches, he became aware of a loud disturbance behind him: King Umberto I and his wife, Queen Marguerita were there, accompanied by a group of courtiers, ready to admire the masterpiece which everybody was talking about. According to an article published by “The Sun”, an American newspaper, 9 years later, an American citizen who had been Luna’s roommate in Rome and who happened to be in this workshop that day, reported the scene: the painter apologizing for not being able to shake the royal hand offered to him, his own being covered with paint, and the enthusiasm of the royal couple discovering the painting. One of the main courtiers of King Umberto I happened to be the General Enrico della Rocca, a senior aide-de-camp of the king since 1882, and descended from a marquis himself. It is therefore very likely that he was accompanying his master on that occasion. What better gift for his nieces Adele and Irene della Rocca, who were at a marriageable age and about to be launched in Society, than celebrating their beauty through the talent of that painter who had been the talk in town? Luna needed money more than ever, as the monthly allowance from his family was usually exhausted before the end of each month, and also because he had not been able to accept any work during the whole year, busy as he was with the monumental task of his Spoliarium. It has been reported that King Umberto, praising Luna’s work, proposed to buy it at a high price but Luna could not accept, because the Spoliarium was due to compete for a prize in Madrid, scheduled in July. He had already got the silver medal in Madrid in 1881 for the Death of Cleopatra, and now longed for the gold. After rebuffing the king, albeit for good reasons, Luna could hardly reject as well such a prestigious and lucrative commission, emanating from one of the most prominent members of the Italian court. These historical accounts allow us to determine a date for our portrait with even more precision than the date 1884 next to the signature of Luna. It is known that he left Rome for Madrid in April ’84, ready to participate to the fine art competition in which he was to receive indeed the gold medal in July. Therefore, the painting and that of the subject’s sister were necessarily executed in the very first months of the year. An interesting comparison with these portraits is to be made with another work of Luna, representing two young and elegant girls at the balcony of an opera house, which we believe was executed in the same period. We indeed know through the telling of Luna’s roommate in The Sun, that Luna was commissioned for “various works” once he was through with the Spoliarium, including “for some European monarchs”. Doing this painting must have been a pleasant moment for Luna, who had been busy since a year depicting the extreme violence of gladiators’ life in the Colosseum. For this portrait, recreational as it was, he dropped the dark palette of the Spoliarium for a paler one, powder blue dress, white flowers in order to enhance the virtue of this aristocratic girl in ceremonial attire, somewhat hieratic and official, a maiden in Majesty. But the need for colors takes over in details, like the intervention of red and purple in the white bouquet, and the movement of the beige background, treated in an almost impressionistic manner, a way Luna has often adopted in order to let the light animate his paintings and play behind its characters. Juan Luna, having studied so far in Spanish institutions, had not yet been deeply influenced by the impressionist movement emerging in France, but it is obvious that he had already been confronted by some works, be it for the simple reason that they were scandalizing the whole of Europe. As for the technique, the usual strong impasto scattered here and there, characteristic of our national painter’s manner in these years, adds depth and strength to the virginal and evanescent beauty.