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Lot Essay
The subject of Angelo Caroselli’s dramatic and emotive musical scene is taken from a canto by the celebrated Roman poet, Gaio Valerio Catullus (84-54 B.C.), The death of Lesbia’s sparrow. Lesbia, despondent with her head resting on her hand, listens and gestures to her deceased pet bird. The musician – presumably intended as Catullus himself – is open-mouthed with his instrument poised mid-note, showing the seventeenth-century fashion for the recitation of poetry through song (Rossetti 2015, op. cit., pp. 420-421). The verse is one of two composed by the poet in relation to his beloved’s pet sparrow. In the first, Catullus addresses the bird directly and recounts how Lesbia would play with it or hold it to her breast, wishing he,, too could play with the sparrow as she does. The second verse, however, is a mournful lament upon the passing of Lesbia’s pet:
Mourn O Venuses and Cupids,
and all the more lovely people
My girl's sparrow is dead
the Sparrow, my girl's delight,
which she loved more than her own eyes....
O awful deed! O wretched sparrow
it's your fault that now my girl's
eyes are puffy red from crying.
Caroselli’s composition and starkly lit figures are inspired by Caravaggio, and Marta Rossetti compares it to the latter’s Fortune Teller in the Musei Capitolini, Rome, and his Martha and Mary Magdalene in the Detroit Institute of Art (fig. 1). In his choice of subject though, Caroselli plays with the age-old conceit of ut pictora poesis, the argument that poetry and painting were equally worthy of merit. The painting is therefore steeped in symbolic motifs which would have been instantly recognizable to his contemporary audience. The cushion on which the sparrow rests, for example, is encircled in myrtle, a plant sacred to Venus, the goddess of love – an allusion to Catullus’ feelings for Lesbia. The inclusion may also have been a play on the alliteration of myrtus (myrtle) and mortus (death) in the original Latin (ibid.). Similarly, the musician plays a lira da braccio, traditionally a solo instrument, a reference to Catullus’ unrequited love (ibid.). The sparrow itself is, of course, a metaphor. A woman of Lesbia’s standing was unlikely to choose an untrainable pet whose song is unremarkable and plumage relatively plain; the sparrow can therefore be read as a reference to something more vulgar, much to the amusement of Caroselli's audience.
Such literary references would no doubt have been relished by the painting’s first recorded owner, Federico Sforza Cesarini (1651-1712), Prince of Genzano. Federico Sfroza was a member of both the Academy of the Humorists and the Academy of Arcadia in Rome and dedicated himself to the study of poetry and literature (ibid.). The painting is first mentioned in an inventory of the princely collection in Palazzo Sfroza Cesarini, compiled in 1713, the year after Sfroza’s death. The inventory describes ‘Un quadro di palmi 7 e 5 rappresenta un’uomo, che suona il violino, ed una donna, che ascolta opera del Caroselli vecchio – scudi 30’ (‘A painting 7 by 5 palms, depicting a man playing the violin and a lady listening by the elder Caroselli – 30 scudi’; loc. cit.). The painting was listed as hanging in the anticamera or fumoir near the ducal bedroom. It may also be the painting described in Duchess Maria Giustiniani’s inventory of the palazzo in 1744 – this time given to Caravaggio – recorded as hanging in the 'second room of the wardrobe' and remained in the family until at least the second half of the nineteenth century (loc. cit.).
Mourn O Venuses and Cupids,
and all the more lovely people
My girl's sparrow is dead
the Sparrow, my girl's delight,
which she loved more than her own eyes....
O awful deed! O wretched sparrow
it's your fault that now my girl's
eyes are puffy red from crying.
Caroselli’s composition and starkly lit figures are inspired by Caravaggio, and Marta Rossetti compares it to the latter’s Fortune Teller in the Musei Capitolini, Rome, and his Martha and Mary Magdalene in the Detroit Institute of Art (fig. 1). In his choice of subject though, Caroselli plays with the age-old conceit of ut pictora poesis, the argument that poetry and painting were equally worthy of merit. The painting is therefore steeped in symbolic motifs which would have been instantly recognizable to his contemporary audience. The cushion on which the sparrow rests, for example, is encircled in myrtle, a plant sacred to Venus, the goddess of love – an allusion to Catullus’ feelings for Lesbia. The inclusion may also have been a play on the alliteration of myrtus (myrtle) and mortus (death) in the original Latin (ibid.). Similarly, the musician plays a lira da braccio, traditionally a solo instrument, a reference to Catullus’ unrequited love (ibid.). The sparrow itself is, of course, a metaphor. A woman of Lesbia’s standing was unlikely to choose an untrainable pet whose song is unremarkable and plumage relatively plain; the sparrow can therefore be read as a reference to something more vulgar, much to the amusement of Caroselli's audience.
Such literary references would no doubt have been relished by the painting’s first recorded owner, Federico Sforza Cesarini (1651-1712), Prince of Genzano. Federico Sfroza was a member of both the Academy of the Humorists and the Academy of Arcadia in Rome and dedicated himself to the study of poetry and literature (ibid.). The painting is first mentioned in an inventory of the princely collection in Palazzo Sfroza Cesarini, compiled in 1713, the year after Sfroza’s death. The inventory describes ‘Un quadro di palmi 7 e 5 rappresenta un’uomo, che suona il violino, ed una donna, che ascolta opera del Caroselli vecchio – scudi 30’ (‘A painting 7 by 5 palms, depicting a man playing the violin and a lady listening by the elder Caroselli – 30 scudi’; loc. cit.). The painting was listed as hanging in the anticamera or fumoir near the ducal bedroom. It may also be the painting described in Duchess Maria Giustiniani’s inventory of the palazzo in 1744 – this time given to Caravaggio – recorded as hanging in the 'second room of the wardrobe' and remained in the family until at least the second half of the nineteenth century (loc. cit.).