Hercules Crowned by Fame

The present work formed a pendant to Fame and Erato (Michigan, Ann Arbor University of Michigan Museum of Art), sold as the successive lot in the 1985 sale. The monogram employed here is uncommon in Conca’s work; it is a signature he seems to have used on only one other painting, the Adoration of the Magi (Tours, Musée des Beaux-Arts), dated 1707, the year the artist settled in Rome, where he received a number of prestigious commissions from patrons in Italy and abroad. Conca was to remain in the city for around 45 years, and the influence of its artistic heritage is clearly visible in this painting.

Although Hercules and Fame were frequently depicted in Italian art of this date, this subject appears to be a relatively unusual one in Conca’s oeuvre; other paintings of Fame are held in the Galleria dell’Accademia di San Luca, Roma and O. Kaufman collection, Strasbourg (see N. Spinosa, ed., Sebastiano Conca (1680-1764), exhibition catalogue, Gaeta, 1981, pp. 162-163, nos. 36a and 36b).