Emilian School, first half of the 17th Century

E. Schleier, "Alessandro Turchi: altre aggiunte e precisazioni", in ARTE Documento, vol. 20, 2004, p. 156, reproduced p. 155, fig. 5 (as by a painter close to Alessandro Turchi).

This painting was once considered, as the handwritten inscription on the reverse of the copper indicates, to be a work by Alessandro Turchi, called l'Orbetto (Verona 1578 - 1649 Rome). The figures are indeed very Turchi-like, particularly that of Apollo, but the work is also strongly reminiscent of Giovanni Lanfranco. The painting is closely related to another copper, representing Mars, Venus, Saturn and Amor (An Allegory of the Vanity of Love), today in the Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, inv. no. 218 (see Fig. 1). The paintings are of similar dimensions (the Stuttgart copper measures 46 by 28.5 cm.) and are unquestionably by the same hand: they may have been painted as pendants or, more likely, were executed as part of a larger series of similarly sized coppers. The Stuttgart picture was once understandably attributed to Alessandro Turchi (Katalog der Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. Alte Meister, Stuttgart 1962, p. 225, reproduced fig. 95) but was later catalogued by Gerhard Ewald as "Bolognese School, circa 1700"; an opinion first put forward by Hermann Voss in 1959 (see G. Ewald & Monika Kopplin, Vom Manierismus zum Barock, exh. cat., Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie, 11 December 1982 - 13 February 1983, pp. 21 and 23, cat. no. 5, reproduced p. 22). The Stuttgart picture was once in the Barbini-Breganze collection, Venice (until 1852), and the old italian inscription on the reverse of the present copper might suggest a similar provenance.

We are grateful to Dr. Erich Schleier for his help in cataloguing this lot.