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Lot Essay
For the subject of the present work, please see the note for lots 48 and 52.
In Zampetti (loc. cit.), Mariolina Olivari notes that Zanchi is known to have treated this story in two other works: the first, of octagonal format and depicting Ercole che fila, is recorded by Crico (1833) in the Alessandri collection, Treviso, while the other, a smaller painting measuring 84 x 72 cm., was once in the Scalco Collection, Bassano del Grappa with an attribution to Francesco Ruschi - who was an important influence on Zanchi in the 1650s (see for example lot 52 in the present catalogue) - until it was given by Riccoboni to Zanchi himself in 1966. In the present work, too, the influence of Ruschi can be felt in the face of the maid, the slightly heavy classical figure of Omphale and in the truncated column in the background. However, the figure of Hercules also betrays Zanchi's interest in the early works of Giordano, which would thus suggest a dating to the 1660s for this painting. This was, as Olivari notes (loc. cit.), the period when Zanchi produced some of his finest paintings, before his art went into decline as he tried with varying degrees of success to keep up with the latest developments in Venetian painting.
It is possible that the present work may be identifiable with a painting of the same subject that is first recorded in 1967 in a Roman private collection by Donizelli and Pilo, as by Ruschi, and a decade later by Safarik (see E. Safarik, 'Per la pittura veneta del Seicento; Francesco Ruschi', Römisches Jahrbuch für Kunstgesichte, 1976, pp. 307-342).
In Zampetti (loc. cit.), Mariolina Olivari notes that Zanchi is known to have treated this story in two other works: the first, of octagonal format and depicting Ercole che fila, is recorded by Crico (1833) in the Alessandri collection, Treviso, while the other, a smaller painting measuring 84 x 72 cm., was once in the Scalco Collection, Bassano del Grappa with an attribution to Francesco Ruschi - who was an important influence on Zanchi in the 1650s (see for example lot 52 in the present catalogue) - until it was given by Riccoboni to Zanchi himself in 1966. In the present work, too, the influence of Ruschi can be felt in the face of the maid, the slightly heavy classical figure of Omphale and in the truncated column in the background. However, the figure of Hercules also betrays Zanchi's interest in the early works of Giordano, which would thus suggest a dating to the 1660s for this painting. This was, as Olivari notes (loc. cit.), the period when Zanchi produced some of his finest paintings, before his art went into decline as he tried with varying degrees of success to keep up with the latest developments in Venetian painting.
It is possible that the present work may be identifiable with a painting of the same subject that is first recorded in 1967 in a Roman private collection by Donizelli and Pilo, as by Ruschi, and a decade later by Safarik (see E. Safarik, 'Per la pittura veneta del Seicento; Francesco Ruschi', Römisches Jahrbuch für Kunstgesichte, 1976, pp. 307-342).