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Le jugement de Pâris est l’évènement déclencheur de la guerre de Troie : aux noces de Thétis et Pelée, tous les dieux de l’Olympe étaient invités, sauf la Discorde, qui, furieuse, fit irruption au banquet en lançant une pomme d’or « pour la plus belle ». Trois déesses : Junon, Minerve, Vénus, revendiquent ce titre,l’arbitre désigné étant le jeune berger Pâris (en fait un prince de Troie). Vénus lui ayant promis la plus belle femme du monde en récompense, elle gagna facilement. Mais la plus belle femme du monde, Hélène, était déjà mariée au roi de Sparte, Ménélas. Son enlèvement par Pâris déclencha une guerre de représailles, qui dura plus de dix ans.
Notre tableau s’inspire fidèlement d’une eau-forte de François Chauveau (1613-1676) reproduisant une peinture perdue de Laurent de La Hyre (1606-1656), que Pierre Rosenberg et Jacques Thuillier, dans leur catalogue raisonné de l’artiste (Laurent de la Hyre, 1606-1656. L’homme et l’œuvre, Genève 1990, n°168), datent vers 1639-1640. Toutefois, la matière picturale nous semble plutôt relever des écoles du nord (Flandres, Hollande), le panneau, lui pourrait être l’œuvre de l’anversois Melchior de Bout (actif 1625-1658), qui fournissait également certains artistes français. Nous n’avons malheureusement pas pu identifier le monogramme porté en bas à gauche.
Dans la mythologie gréco-romaine, Priape est le dieu de la fertilité, mais aussi le protecteur des jardins et des troupeaux. Il est habituellement représenté comme un personnage âgé, laid, limite difforme, avec un sexe en érection permanente, l’artiste a choisi de le représenter jeune, mais affublé d’oreilles pointues. Ses poignets sont reliés par une chaîne garnie de tintinnabuli dont la fonction est apotropaïque : guérison des maladies, apaisement de la colère des dieux, éloignement du mauvais œil.
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The style of this small portrait, the sitter being unidentified, is close to Ottavio Leoni (1578-Rome-1630) portraitist of the roman aristocracy in Caravaggio’s period ( Leoni also portrayed Caravaggio). If he is today known mainly for his portraits, drawn or engraved, he was also a religious and mythological painter ; we also know a fresco decoration, much damaged, in Palazzo Altemps, in Rome. The corpus of his work was recently published by Yuri Primarosa (« Ottavio Leoni (1578-1630), Eccelente miniator di ritratti, Catalogo ragionato dei disegni e dei dipinti », Rome 2017), it shows that Leoni didn’t paint our portrait, but by costume comparison, we can date it circa 1620. The red carnation in the woman’s hair is an allusion to wedding : either an engagement portrait for the groom, or a keepsake of this happy moment.
Children playing, eating or dinking, and other genre scenes are the main part of Amorosi’s production, which also includes still life and religious painting. After studying at the Albano seminar, the young Amorosi moves to Rome, to live and study with his compatriot the painter Giuseppe Ghezzi (1634-1721). With him he paints canvases for their hometown, Comunanza, of which remains, in the Santa Caterina church, a Loreto Virgin( cf Claudio Maggini, Amorosi, Rimini 1996, pl.1, n°1 of catalogue), then, alone, in 1698, canvases (lost) for Civitavecchia, which attracted the attention of a larger public. The fame as genre painter came from a series of twelve small canvases (lost too !) for the Duke d’Ucceda. In 1715, together with other artists, he is commissionned to paint the ground floor of Palazzo Ruspoli, on the Corso (paintings lost). His genre scenes were appreciated by Italian collectors such as Marchese Casati, Cardinal Origo or Marchese Nicolo Maria Pallavicini, one of the leading collectors in Rome,but also foreigners such as the marquis de Priè, governor of Flanders ; or the polish prince Sobieski. His chance to have commissions for important Roman churches vanished in 1721 at his master’s death,whose son the famous Pier Leone (1674-1755) didn’t renew his protection. Then starts Amorosi’slow decline, painting portraits and genre scenes. After 1725, these commissions almost vanish and he truns to copy and restoration. He died of dysentery in 1738 in Rome. Amorosi’s corpus, such as established by Claudio Maggini (op.cit.) and then by the 2003 Comunanza exhibition catalogue (Antonio Amorosi, vita quotidiana nel ‘700) lists many versions of children palying eating, drinking, in fancy dress, but no mandolinist. We think our painting must be dated circa 1720/30, if compared with one of his masterpieces, children playing with a basket of artichokes and birds, in the Lemme collection (n° 24 in the 2003 exhibition, entry by Ornella Virgili).
Of Swiss birth, Feyerabend settled, for unknown reasons, near caen at the end of the eighteenth century, where the locals, unable to tell his name nicknamed him « Lelong » (“tall one”). A self-portrait of the artist at his easel effectively shows he was tall and thin, but more interesting for us, that he painted still-lives similar to those assigned to « Lelong ». This identification, due to a collector , Guillaume Dubois de la Cotardière, was published in 1920 by A. de Fleury (Journal des Arts, 29 mai 1920). Of the artist we know mainly small still-lives, but also some marines, inspired by, or copied from, Lacroix de Marseille.
Alessandro Allori studied in Bronzino’s(1503-1572) workshop, then the major artist in Florence, working for the Medici and local aristocracy, and we know that as soon as 1549 he works on the cartoons for the Story of Joseph tapestries, and his first independant work is documented 1552 (for a Medici, lost). In 1554 he goes to Rome, for a few years, he seems to be back in Florence in 1560, date of a descent from the Cross for Santa Croce, and in 1562, Bronzino comes to live with Alessandro, his brother, and their mother, now widow. He covers many duties for the Accademia del Disegno until he is elected « console » in 1573, a job he will dismiss the following year, the commissions being very abundant. In his vast production (some two hundred pictures are listed by Simona Lecchini Giovannoni in her catalogue raisonné published in 1991), some fourty portraits are known, though Raffaello Borghini wrote: « Infiniti sono i ritratti dipinti da Alessandro Allori per Principi, Signori e Gentilhuomini » (Raffaello Borghini, II Riposo, Florence, 1584). The sitter of our portrait, certainly a widow, has not yet been identified. Allori used copper as support for religious or profane works, but this is the only portrait known on copper.
