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拍品專文
We are grateful to Dr. Ursula Fischer Pace for confirming the attribution on the basis of transparencies. She considers it 'a very beautiful painting, with the bright, porcelain-like colours typical of his refined Roman style in Paris' (private communication 18 September 2003).
The picture relates to the Flight of Aeneas and his family from burning Troy, executed by Romanelli as part of the fresco decoration of the Gallery of Cardinal Mazarin's palace in Paris (today the Bibliothèque Nationale). Inspired by Carracci's Palazzo Farnese in Rome, Romanelli began his work on this in 1646, and later returned for a second phase in 1655-1657. Pace places the present picture within the first phase. The Galerie was a great success and it is certain that this would have led to the artist painting variations of the different Ovidian subjects that he had depicted there. The Mazarin composition, situated near one end of the vaulted ceiling and set opposite the Rape of Helen shows the family group making their escape from the burning city towards the (viewer's) left. In the present picture, Romanelli has reversed this group, repositioned the child who is now being goaded on by his father and raised the mother's head so that she is now looking anxiously back.
Although unmistakeably Cortonesque in his technique, for this project Romanelli was to look back to Raphaelesque prototypes and in particular that artist's work at the Vatican, as has been demonstrated by Nicolas Milovanovic ('Romanelli à Paris: entre la galerie Farnèse et Versailles', in Actes du Colloque de Rome, French Academy Rome, Paris, 2002, pp. 279-298). Yet if the monumental group of Aeneas and Anchises in this picture does ultimately recall the figures of the old man being carried by a younger man in Raphael's Fire in the Borgo, in the Stanza dell'Incendio in the Vatican, it relates even more directly to the figures of Aeneas and Anchises in Federico Barocci's picture of this subject, in the Galleria Borghese, Rome (also copied by Rubens in a drawing in the Albertina, Vienna), and suggests clear knowledge of Barocci's composition.
This picture was almost certainly that listed in the sale of the property of the deceased Louis-César-Renaud Choiseul-Praslin (the measurements and description correspond). He had inherited most of the pictures of his father César-Gabriel, duc de Praslin. The latter purchased the hôtel de Belle-Isle and the château de Vaux, with the furnishings and paintings that already adorned these buildings, in 1765. The collection was further enriched, and according to an historical almanac of 1777, the hôtel had already 'un des plus considérables cabinets de la capitale'. The inventory of the duchesse in 1784 does not list a single painting but the inventory had not been completed. Her son Louis Renaud, expanded the collection and 114 Dutch and other paintings were finally sold in 1793, when the Republic bought paintings and armour to a value of 36,480 livres.
The picture relates to the Flight of Aeneas and his family from burning Troy, executed by Romanelli as part of the fresco decoration of the Gallery of Cardinal Mazarin's palace in Paris (today the Bibliothèque Nationale). Inspired by Carracci's Palazzo Farnese in Rome, Romanelli began his work on this in 1646, and later returned for a second phase in 1655-1657. Pace places the present picture within the first phase. The Galerie was a great success and it is certain that this would have led to the artist painting variations of the different Ovidian subjects that he had depicted there. The Mazarin composition, situated near one end of the vaulted ceiling and set opposite the Rape of Helen shows the family group making their escape from the burning city towards the (viewer's) left. In the present picture, Romanelli has reversed this group, repositioned the child who is now being goaded on by his father and raised the mother's head so that she is now looking anxiously back.
Although unmistakeably Cortonesque in his technique, for this project Romanelli was to look back to Raphaelesque prototypes and in particular that artist's work at the Vatican, as has been demonstrated by Nicolas Milovanovic ('Romanelli à Paris: entre la galerie Farnèse et Versailles', in Actes du Colloque de Rome, French Academy Rome, Paris, 2002, pp. 279-298). Yet if the monumental group of Aeneas and Anchises in this picture does ultimately recall the figures of the old man being carried by a younger man in Raphael's Fire in the Borgo, in the Stanza dell'Incendio in the Vatican, it relates even more directly to the figures of Aeneas and Anchises in Federico Barocci's picture of this subject, in the Galleria Borghese, Rome (also copied by Rubens in a drawing in the Albertina, Vienna), and suggests clear knowledge of Barocci's composition.
This picture was almost certainly that listed in the sale of the property of the deceased Louis-César-Renaud Choiseul-Praslin (the measurements and description correspond). He had inherited most of the pictures of his father César-Gabriel, duc de Praslin. The latter purchased the hôtel de Belle-Isle and the château de Vaux, with the furnishings and paintings that already adorned these buildings, in 1765. The collection was further enriched, and according to an historical almanac of 1777, the hôtel had already 'un des plus considérables cabinets de la capitale'. The inventory of the duchesse in 1784 does not list a single painting but the inventory had not been completed. Her son Louis Renaud, expanded the collection and 114 Dutch and other paintings were finally sold in 1793, when the Republic bought paintings and armour to a value of 36,480 livres.