Anonymous sale, Belfort, Hotel des Ventes, 23 November 2002, lot 9, where acquired by the present owner.

"The following condition report has been provided by Sarah Walden, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has a recent lining and stretcher, and has been recently restored. The surface appears to have fallen away between the weave of the canvas in some areas, perhaps due to brittleness or to over lining, so that the lighter drapery and the flesh painting is peppered in places with minute dots, which have been retouched. The darker areas have been far more consistently preserved, in particular the figure of Thomas is finely intact, with just a few marginal touches at the edge of his profile. The background is worn and has various recent retouchings and also older touches, over past friable areas. Some broad older retouching can be seen down Christ's arm on the left, where there is also a recent line of retouching and wider patch in the hand itself. Christ's hair and His face is quite fine where it has been spared past brittleness, but the darks of His nose are very thin and His chest and white drapery are speckled with retouching. The powerful image remains dramatically strong nevertheless. This report was not done under laboratory conditions."
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Dated by Prof. John T. Spike to the 1670s, this is one of five treatments of the same subject by Preti, and of the five this is the most restrained both in terms of composition and palette. The silvery tonality is typical of Preti's output in the 1670s when he was firmly established in Malta, having moved there in 1661, and may be compared to other works from a similar date, such as the recently rediscovered David playing the harp before Saul,¹ Queen Tomyris receiving the head of Cyrus² and the Canonisation of Saint Catherine commissioned in 1672 by a Maltese knight of the Piccolomini family for their chapel in the church of San Francesco, Siena.³ It should be further compared with another Incredulity of Saint Thomas that is today in the Museum of Fine Arts, Valletta, which is datable to soon after the present work, to a transitional moment in Preti's career in the mid 1670s when he began to darken his palette; the figure of Christ, his left arm raised to shoulder height and his right outstretched and pointing downwards, mirrors his pose in the present painting.

Although usually considered a painter of the Neapolitan school Preti in fact only spent seven years in Naples, from 1653-1660. Raised in Calabria he spent much of his youth with his brother Gregorio in Rome and the earliest document of him there places him in the Accademia di S. Luca in 1628. During the 1640s he travelled widely, notably to Venice, acquiring many clients along the route, but it was really in the 1650s, in Naples, where he truly established his reputation. Soon after his arrival there he attracted the patronage of his own order, the Knights of Malta, and it was later through them, having first been elevated to the rank of Knight of Grace in 1661, and then to Knight of Justice in 1662, that he received his greatest, and most difficult commission, the decoration of the apse, vault, side arches and the interior west wall of the church of St. John, Valletta. There followed numerous important commissions from mainland Italy, Spain and Sicily. His reputation lived on into the 18th century through the publication of De Dominici's Vite (1742-5) in which the author championed him over his rival Luca Giordano.

We a🐟re grateful to Prof. John T. Spi🌼ke for endorsing the attribution to Mattia Preti on the basis of photographs.

1. Sold New York, Sotheby's, 24 January 2008, lot 104, for $1,900,000.
2. See J.T. Spike, Mattia Preti- Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Florence 1999, pp. 157-8, cat. no. 67, reproduced.
3. Now in the church of San Domenico in Siena. Idem., pp. 279-80, reproduced.