Seneca

The present canvas appears to be a pendant to the canvas of nearly identical dimensions depicting the Roman philosopher Cassiodorus sold as a work of the seventeenth-century Lombard School at Sotheby’s, New York, 27 January 2011, lot 232. Our canvas was last sold at Ader Picard Tajan, Paris, 29 June 1989, lot 91, as a work of the Roman School, circa 1630. At one stage an attribution to the Ticiniese Caravaggist painter Serodine (1600-1631) had been advanced, while others have suggested that it be given to an artist, possibly from Lorraine, active in Rome in the 1630s. In any case, the work’s attribution, and that of the related Cassiodorus, remain open questions.

Seneca (Lucius Annaeus Seneca, also Seneca the Younger) was born around 4 B.C. in Corduba (now Córdoba), Spain, and died 65 A.D. in Rome. A philosopher, statesman, orator and dramatist, Seneca was a leading intellectual figure during the first period of the reign of the Emperor Nero, whom he tutored and later advised. Accused of participating in a conspiracy to assassinate Nero, Seneca took his own life. As a philosopher, Seneca’s writings are essential to the ancient theories of Stoicism. His dramatic works are all tragedies, and include the plays Medea, Thyestes, Oedipus and Phaedra. Celebrated in the Renaissance, Seneca features in the works of Dante, Petrarch and even Chaucer.