AFTER POMPEO BATONI (1708-1787) The Choice of Hercules...
AFTER POMPEO BATONI (1708-1787)
The Choice of Hercules
Oil on canvas, 70 x 95cm
Provenance: Florence Elkin Smith, 1959; Sale, Christie's, New York, October 10th 1990, Lot 113.
The original of this composition is in the Galleria Sabauda, Turin.
Pompeo Batoni was born in Lucca, in January 1708, the son of a goldsmith, Paolino Batoni and his wife, Chiara Sesti. He moved to Rome in 1727, and was apprenticed with Agostino Masucci and later Sebastiano Conca. Batoni became a highly-fashionable painter in Rome, particularly after his rival Anton Raphael Mengs, departed for Spain in 1761. Batoni was drawn in his painting to the restrained classicism of painters from earlier centuries rather than to the work of the Venetian artists then in vogue. In 1741, he was inducted into the Accademia di San Luca.
He was greatly in demand for portraits, particularly by the British travelling through Rome, who took pleasure in commissioning standing portraits set against the backdrop of antiquities, ruins, and works of art. There are records of over 200 portraits by Batoni of visiting British ‘Grand Tour’ patrons.
In addition to art-loving nobility, Batoni's subjects included kings and queens, Holy Roman Emperors, as well as popes Benedict XIV, Clement XIII and Pius VI, and many more. He also received numerous orders for altarpieces for churches in Italy, as well as for mythological and allegorical subjects such as the present work.
Batoni's style took inspiration and incorporated elements of classical antiquity, French Rococo, Bolognese classicism, and the work of artists such as Nicolas Poussin, Claude Lorrain, and especially Raphael.
The Choice of Hercules is an ancient Greek parable attributed to Prodicus and reported by Xenophon in Memorabilia. In Xenophon's text, Socrates tells how the young Hercules, as the hero contemplates his future, is visited by the female personifications of Vice and Virtue. They offer him a choice between a pleasant and easy life or a severe but glorious life, and present their respective arguments.
During the Renaissance the story of Hercules at the crossroads became popular again, and it remained so in Baroque and Neoclassical culture. Famous examples from the visual arts include Albrecht Dürer's print Hercules at the Crossroads (1498), Paolo Veronese's Allegory of Virtue and Vice (1565), and Annibale Carracci's iconic The Choice of Hercules (1596). The original of this composition by Pompeo Batoni is in the Galleria Subauda in Turin. It is listed as catalogue number 173 in Anthony M. Clarke’s Catalogue Raisonne of Batoni’s ouvre, New York University Press, 1985. Previously in the collection of Florence Elkin Smith, Homan Potterton purchased this version of the Choice of Hercules in Christies, New York in October 1990.
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AFTER POMPEO BATONI (1708-1787)
The Choice of Hercules
Oil on canvas, 70 x 95cm
Provenance: Florence Elkin Smith, 1959; Sale, Christie's, New York, October 10th 1990, Lot 113.
The original of this composition is in the Galleria Sabauda, Turin.
Pompeo Batoni was born in Lucca, in January 1708, the son of a goldsmith, Paolino Batoni and his wife, Chiara Sesti. He moved to Rome in 1727, and was apprenticed with Agostino Masucci and later Sebastiano Conca. Batoni became a highly-fashionable painter in Rome, particularly after his rival Anton Raphael Mengs, departed for Spain in 1761. Batoni was drawn in his painting to the restrained classicism of painters from earlier centuries rather than to the work of the Venetian artists then in vogue. In 1741, he was inducted into the Accademia di San Luca.
He was greatly in demand for portraits, particularly by the British travelling through Rome, who took pleasure in commissioning standing portraits set against the backdrop of antiquities, ruins, and works of art. There are records of over 200 portraits by Batoni of visiting British ‘Grand Tour’ patrons.
In addition to art-loving nobility, Batoni's subjects included kings and queens, Holy Roman Emperors, as well as popes Benedict XIV, Clement XIII and Pius VI, and many more. He also received numerous orders for altarpieces for churches in Italy, as well as for mythological and allegorical subjects such as the present work.
Batoni's style took inspiration and incorporated elements of classical antiquity, French Rococo, Bolognese classicism, and the work of artists such as Nicolas Poussin, Claude Lorrain, and especially Raphael.
The Choice of Hercules is an ancient Greek parable attributed to Prodicus and reported by Xenophon in Memorabilia. In Xenophon's text, Socrates tells how the young Hercules, as the hero contemplates his future, is visited by the female personifications of Vice and Virtue. They offer him a choice between a pleasant and easy life or a severe but glorious life, and present their respective arguments.
During the Renaissance the story of Hercules at the crossroads became popular again, and it remained so in Baroque and Neoclassical culture. Famous examples from the visual arts include Albrecht Dürer's print Hercules at the Crossroads (1498), Paolo Veronese's Allegory of Virtue and Vice (1565), and Annibale Carracci's iconic The Choice of Hercules (1596). The original of this composition by Pompeo Batoni is in the Galleria Subauda in Turin. It is listed as catalogue number 173 in Anthony M. Clarke’s Catalogue Raisonne of Batoni’s ouvre, New York University Press, 1985. Previously in the collection of Florence Elkin Smith, Homan Potterton purchased this version of the Choice of Hercules in Christies, New York in October 1990.
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