Pietro Bianchi

(Rome 1694–1740)
The Judgement of Midas,
oil on canvas, 73.5 x 97 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private Collection, Switzerland;
sale, Koller, Zurich, 23 March 2018, lot 3085;
where acquired by the present owner

We are grateful to Erich Schleier for confirming the attribution on the basis of a photograph and for his help in the research and cataloguing of the present painting (written communication).

The Judgement of Midas was a popular subject in Italian painting between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. In a musical duel between Pan and Apollo, the mountain god Tmolus decided in favour of Apollo. King Midas, who had not been asked for his opinion, objected that the judgement was unfair. Insulted by his criticism, Apollo punished him by transforming his ears into those of an ass (Ovid, Metamorphoses, XI: 147–180). Bianchi has added seven subsidiary figures to the four protagonists, Midas, Apollo, Tmolus, and Pan: a young mother and her child, escaping towards the left in a panic; three pilgrims in dark garments behind Midas; a young woman (a shepherdess), her breast partly exposed, and a young man behind the edge of a rock on the right. Pan appears somewhat removed from the scene in the lower right corner, quasi acting as a repoussoir.

The present painting by Pietro Bianchi belongs to a small group of differently sized pictures featuring mythological subjects in which the handling of light, the warm and sometimes damp and hazy atmosphere, and the landscape backdrop play a vital role. These compositions are characterised by tall trees with luscious foliage. With its inclusion of eleven figures, the present painting is one of the most elaborately orchestrated pictures in this group and a true masterpiece, despite its moderate dimensions.

An almost identical version of the Judgment of Midas is registered as a black and white photograph in the Fototeca Zeri (no. 49116, whereabouts unknown). Federico Zeri attributed this version to an unknown painter of the Roman school from the seventeenth century. It has some major differences that speak against a mere copy, but rather suggest a painting by the workshop, possibly to meet the needs of the market (the figure of Tmolus is younger, the drapery of Apollo is different, the birds in the background are missing, the man behind Midas has a shorter stick and the vegetation is less dense and detailed).

Works comparable to the present composition include the large painting of Mercury, Argus and Io (186.1 x 130.1 cm) in the Museo de Arte in Ponce, Puerto Rico, Luis Ferré Foundation, in which the light also comes in from the left and the sleeping Argus is half in the shade, similar to the figure of Midas in the present composition, with only the back of his golden coat illuminated. Bowron dates the latter painting to the years 1730–35 (see E. P. Bowron, Pietro Bianchi, in: Art in Rome in the Eighteenth Century, exhibition catalogue, Philadelphia 2000, pp. 326/27, no. 181), whereas the present work seems to have been executed slightly earlier, probably around 1730–32. Another comparable painting by Bianchi showing Pyramus and Thisbe is in a private collection in Florence; its dimensions of 74.5 x 100 centimetres are almost identical to those of the present painting, although its format is vertical. The painting was published in 1992 by Mary Newcome Schleier and dated around 1724–34 (see M. Newcome Schleier, in: Kunst in der Republik Genua, exhibition catalogue, Frankfurt 1992, pp. 220–22, colour plate).

We are informed about Bianchi’s brief life and career through two biographies from the eighteenth century by Dezallier d’Argenville and Carlo Giuseppe Ratti. In 1682, Bianchi’s father moved from Sarzana in Liguria to Rome. Bianchi began his apprenticeship under Giacomo Triga at the young age of seven. When commissions forced Triga to go to Venice, Pietro switched to Giovanni Battista Gaulli. After the latter’s death in 1709, Bianchi was only fifteen years old. For a short period of time he studied with Giuseppe Ghezzi and then he became the favourite pupil of Benedetto Luti. Between 1708 and 1713 he emerged victorious from the Accademia di San Luca’s concorsi four times. By 1715, when he was twenty-one years old, Bianchi had developed into an independent personality and also worked as an art dealer. Nevertheless, ten years elapsed until he received his first important jobs as a painter in 1725. There can be no doubt that Luti’s art had a crucial impact on Bianchi – in terms of figure style but also and above all when it came to the importance of light in his composition, as can be seen in his clever distribution of light, light-suffused pictorial spaces, and use of contre-jour effects.