Luca Giordano

Private Collection, Sweden.

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com , an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This large and impressive painting has not been restored for many years but is in noticeably fresh and undamaged condition. The canvas is not lined. The painting has not been cleaned for many years, if ever. There are a few scratches and drops of debris noticeable and there is some retouching in the back of the putti on the left and possibly elsewhere, yet generally the condition is splendid. One should certainly be encouraged to carefully clean the picture but there is an opportunity to allow a patina to remain, which would be beneficial. This painting is in unusually good condition.
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The rediscovery of this large work is an important addition to the corpus of paintings by Luca Giordano, the most versatile and well-travelled painter of the Italian Baroque. It is surprising that despite its monumental size, sensual subject matter and fine quality the work has remained unknown to both scholars and the art market until now.¹

The subject is taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses and shows Jupiter, in the form of a satyr, approaching the sleeping Antiope, ready to have his wicked way with her. She is presented naked other than for a set of pearls around her neck and a carefully arranged bunch of roses before her modesty, accentuating the fact that she is soon to be deflowered. Beside her to the right Cupid is also asleep and thus is not an active participant in this sequence of events, underlining that what is about to take place is a scene of lust rather than love. Along with the theme of Susannah and the Elders, the subject matter of Jupiter and Antiope was popular in seventeenth-century painting as it provided a convenient medium to depict the female nude. Certainly it was dear to Giordano's heart for he visited the subject – or variations of it frequently referred to as Venus, Cupid and a Satyr - on numerous occasions, a fuller discussion of which follows.

The present composition relates in different ways to several of Giordano's other interpretations of this scene and includes aspects of all of them, thereby arguably creating the most exciting and successful interpretation. Broadly-speaking, it is a mirror image of the celebrated Venus, Cupid and a Satyr in a private collection in the Bahamas which was part of a series of paintings probably commissioned by Andrea D'Avalos, Marquis of Montesarchio.² The paintings in that series, which also include a Lucretia and Tarquin in the Museo di Capodimonte Naples, are signed and dated 1663. However, besides being on a larger canvas, the present design is undoubtedly more complex than the Bahamas interpretation, particularly as a result of the inclusion of three busy putti who assist Jupiter in his nefarious act, one of whom pulls back the red curtain and reveals Antiope in all her glory. This Jupiter and Antiope also stands out for the unusual still life elements found behind Jupiter, in the tree upper left and, of course, the roses before Antiope's midrift. In this respect it parallels a second autograph variant of the Bahamas painting, also in the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples, in which flowers are scattered liberally in the foreground.³ The composition is also made more interesting by the discreet yet unmistakeable inclusion of a detailed background. In this respect, and more specifically in the virtually identical pose of Antiope, the work follows another signed and dated work from 1663, a Venus, Cupid and a Satyr from Palazzo Montecitorio in deposit at the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples.⁴ As a work which appears to date after these aforementioned pictures, this composition shows the artist at a reflective, yet highly mature moment in his career. Here, he has taken previously utilized compositional elements, and incorporated them into a stunning and powerful painting.

We are grateful to Professor Giuseppe Scavizzi for confirming the attribution of this work to Giordano, based on photographs. Professor Scavizzi has suggested a dating after 1680.


1. A painting of this subject was formerly in the Sanssouci Neues Palais in Potsdam and was apparently destroyed during the Second Wold War (see O. Ferrari and G. Scavizzi, Luca Giordano, l'opera completa, Naples 1992, vol. I, p. 387, cat. no. B46a). It can be quite safely excluded that the present work is in fact that very Potsdam painting on account of the difficulty and unlikelihood of transporting such a large canvas in war-time conditions.
2. See O. Ferrari and G. Scavizzi, Luca Giordano, l'opera completa, Naples 1992, vol. I, p. 276, cat. no. A163, reproduced in colour p. 47, figure XXVII.
3. Idem. vol. I, p. 276, cat. no. A163, reproduced vol. II, p. 550, figure 242.
4. Idem, vol. I, p. 277, cat. no. A165, reproduced vol. II, p. 551, fig. 245.