Giovanni Battista Paggi

(Genoa 1554–1627)
Venus and Cupid,
oil on canvas, 81 x 66 cm, framed

We are grateful to Anna Orlando for suggesting the attribution of the present painting and for her help in cataloguing this lot. A written certificate is available.

The present previously unpublished painting relates to other versions of this composition which derive from Ovid’s Metamorphosis (X, 520-526), and it appears to have been a subject favoured by contemporary patrons.

A Venus and Amor by Paggi is described in the collection of Giovanni Carlo Doria (see V. Farina in P. Boccardo (ed.), L’età di Rubens, exhibition catalogue, Milan 2004, p. 194, no. 104). Orlando suggests that this might be the version which is today in a Genovese private collection (oil on canvas, 76 x 58 cm). The present rediscovered painting is most closely related to a version which is in the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London (oil on canvas, 84.8 x 64.2 cm), and to an oval variant in the Musei di Strada Nuova, Genova (oil on canvas, 96 x 74 cm). An engraving by Cornelis Galle I. may record the present painting (see fig 1, illustrated in: F. W. H. Hollstein, Dutch and Flemish etchings, engravings and woodcuts: ca. 1450 - 1700, vol. 7, Amsterdam 1952, p. 59, no. 275). The composition and execution show the influence of Paggi’s teacher Luca Cambiaso.

Paggi was born in Genoa into the prosperous family of his father Pellegrino. Under uncertain circumstances he was forced to flee Genoa in 1579, and take refuge in Florence. He joined the Accademia e Compagnia delle Arti del Disegno in 1568, and shared a studio in Florence with Federico Zuccari. He returned to Genoa as early as 1590, under the protection of the Doria family. He is known as one of the followers of the style and was briefly a pupil of Luca Cambiasi and the teacher of Giulio Benso, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, Sinibaldo Scorza, Domenico Fiasella and Giovanni Andrea Podestà.