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Macbeth meeting the witches [graphic] / Zuccarelli fecit / 1760.

Macbeth and Banquo meeting the wayward Sisters in a Storm

1760.

1 painting : oil on panel ; 31 9/16 x 56 1/4 in. (81.7 x 143 cm) + frame 44.5 x 69 x 5 inches.

Signed and dated at lower center beneath Banquo's right foot: "Zuccarelli fecit [possibly 'fecet'] / 1760." (This inscription, uncovered in a 1988 restoration, is not recorded in the previous literature; the last two digits are difficult to read and are open to interpretation; "1768" has also been suggested, but the painting has since been found listed in a sale catalogue from 1761).
Related works: A painting (37 x 47 in.) signed and dated "Fran. Zuccarelli, fecit ... 1760 in Londra" sold at Christie's 14 December 1956, lot 52. This is the painting that was engraved by William Woollett in a print published on 20 December 1770, one state of which gives William Lock as the picture's owner; a canvas (27 x 36 in.) at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, is similar in composition to the Lock version but is inferior in quality; Levey mentions that a picture of this subject by Zuccarelli appeared in a London sale of 1761, and one of the versions was exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1767 (no. 196), as "Macbeth meeting the Witches"; there is a pen-and-ink drawing (16 x 21 in.) at Stourhead which is related to the Lock version.
Title from Pressly.

John Young, "A Catalogue of the Pictures at Grosvenor House, London," London, 1821, p. 41 (no. 128); Anna Jameson, "Companion to the most celebrated Private Galleries of Art in London," London, 1844, pp.262-63; G. F. Waagen, "Treasures of Art in Great Britain," London, 1854, vol. 2, p. 173, misattributed to Richard Wilson; MIchael Levey, "Francesco Zuccarelli in England," Italian Studies 14, (1959), pp. 6-7.
Engravings: An etching, 2 1/4 x 37/8 in., appears in Young's 1821 A Catalogue of the Pictures at Grosvenor House, facing p. 41.

Provenance: Sir William Hamilton, sold by him at auction 21 February 1761 as "Macbeth and Banquo meeting the wayward Sisters in a Storm" to Richard Grosvenor, first earl of Grosvenor; by descent to the duke of Westminster, Grosvenor House, Park Lane, London; sold by him to Rosenbach in 1925.

Bought by Folger, July 1925, $2850.

Exhibited: Mead Art Building, Amherst College, "Shakespeare, Hamlet, and Macbeth" (no catalogue), 1951; 'As imagination bodies forth...' [paintings] Oct. 28, 1993-Feb. 15, 1994.
Washington, D.C., Folger Shakespeare Library, 2010. Extending the Book.
Washington, DC, Folger Shakespeare Library, May 2017- February 2018. Painting Shakespeare.

Pressly, W.L. Paintings in the Folger Shakespeare Library, 95 (Plate 1)

Great Britain -- England.

FPa89

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