Lot Essay
In an English 18th century carved and gilded swept frame,
indistinctly stamped
The story of how Jason used herbs given him by Medea to send to sleep the dragon guarding the Golden Fleece is related by Ovid, Metamorphoses, VII, 149-55.
Professor Salerno, loc. cit, accepts the present picture as an autograph version of the smaller, signed picture in the Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal (idem, 1963, pl.89; and 1975, colour pl.LXIII).
Mrs. Helen Langdon has written of the composition 'there is no parallel in 17th-century painting to the mood of mystery and horror which Rosa creates here, which was to exercise so profound an influence on English Romantic painters' (in the catalogue of the exhibition Salvator Rosa, Hayward Gallery, London, 17 Oct.-23 Dec. 1973, p.36, under no.43)
indistinctly stamped
The story of how Jason used herbs given him by Medea to send to sleep the dragon guarding the Golden Fleece is related by Ovid, Metamorphoses, VII, 149-55.
Professor Salerno, loc. cit, accepts the present picture as an autograph version of the smaller, signed picture in the Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal (idem, 1963, pl.89; and 1975, colour pl.LXIII).
Mrs. Helen Langdon has written of the composition 'there is no parallel in 17th-century painting to the mood of mystery and horror which Rosa creates here, which was to exercise so profound an influence on English Romantic painters' (in the catalogue of the exhibition Salvator Rosa, Hayward Gallery, London, 17 Oct.-23 Dec. 1973, p.36, under no.43)