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Lot Essay
This graceful and elegant copper depicts the Birth of Pegasus -- the winged horse that sprang from the blood of Medusa -- and the Creation of Coral. As recounted by Ovid in the Metamorphoses, Perseus, the son Danaë and Jupiter, having beheaded the Gorgon whose very glance turned men to stone, carried the severed head to a beach, where he carefully laid it on a bed of seaweed. The blood seeping from the severed veins tinged the seaweed red, and the power of Medusa’s magic turned the seaweed into coral. Surrounded by bathing sea nymphs, Pegasus rose up from the flowing blood; henceforth, the flying horse was the loyal mount of Perseus. Scarsellino’s charming painting eschews the grisly violence of the ancient tale in favor of gentle humor and classical eroticism: bathing waist deep in a placid, blue sea, nine nymphs frolic and play with the magically created coral, while the hero (in his winged helmet) and the Gorgon’s bloody head are relegated to the background, and Pegasus has taken distant flight.
The small scale of the painting, its theme and precious support might suggest that it was intended to hang in a cabinet alongside objets de vertu, including possibly coral; the most obvious parallel would be the appearance of the subject in one of the painted panels in Francesco I’s Studiolo in Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.
An early visit to Venice enabled Scarsellino to discover the range and depth of Venetian color which, after Titian and Veronese, had been elaborated by Schiavone, the Bassano family, and Tintoretto. In the present painting, the influence of Schiavone is strong, and the similarity to the earlier master’s Original Sin (Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice), with its distinctive conception of the female nude, is striking. Scarsellino’s most notable works are perhaps to be found among his small paintings of profane subjects incorporating female nudes, such as Susanna or Venus or, as here, sea nymphs, set against brilliant skies or dramatic sunsets. Similar boneless female nudes occur in Diana and Endymion (Galleria Borghese, Rome), a picture generally dated to around 1585-95. In its landscape format and the disposition and movement of the nudes, The Discovery of Coral closely resembles the much larger canvas of Bathing Nymphs now in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
The small scale of the painting, its theme and precious support might suggest that it was intended to hang in a cabinet alongside objets de vertu, including possibly coral; the most obvious parallel would be the appearance of the subject in one of the painted panels in Francesco I’s Studiolo in Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.
An early visit to Venice enabled Scarsellino to discover the range and depth of Venetian color which, after Titian and Veronese, had been elaborated by Schiavone, the Bassano family, and Tintoretto. In the present painting, the influence of Schiavone is strong, and the similarity to the earlier master’s Original Sin (Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice), with its distinctive conception of the female nude, is striking. Scarsellino’s most notable works are perhaps to be found among his small paintings of profane subjects incorporating female nudes, such as Susanna or Venus or, as here, sea nymphs, set against brilliant skies or dramatic sunsets. Similar boneless female nudes occur in Diana and Endymion (Galleria Borghese, Rome), a picture generally dated to around 1585-95. In its landscape format and the disposition and movement of the nudes, The Discovery of Coral closely resembles the much larger canvas of Bathing Nymphs now in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.