SIMONE PIGNONI | ARTEMESIA

Anonymous sale, London, Bonham's, 3 December 2008, lot 6;

Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, 8 July 2010, lot 155;

There acquired.

F. Baldassari, La pittura del Seicento a Firenze. Indice degli artisti e delle loro opere, Turin 2009, p. 599.

The Florentine artist Simone Pignoni primarily specialized in appealing half-length female figures in the guise of mythological or religious characters. He trained with Francesco Furini in his native city and developed his master's soft sfumato style. Although their work is confused, Pignoni's models tend to be more shapely than Furini's slender figures.  

Pignoni is known to have repeated the subject of Artemesia, considered a beacon of love and conjugal fidelity, on at least two other occasions.¹ Upon the death of her husband, Mausolus, Artemesia succeeded him on the throne of Caria in Asia Minor. In addition to drinking a mixture of ashes and water in his honor, as depicted in the present painting, Artemesia built a monument to him in Helicanassus. It is from this monument, which would become one of the wonders of the ancient world, that the word' mausoleum' derives. 

1. See F. Baldassari, Simone Pignoni, Turin 2008, pp. 95-96, cat. nos. 20 and 21.