Jean-François de Troy (Paris 1679-1752 Rome)

De Troy's magnificent pair of paintings, the present and following lot, depict two erotic episodes from Ovid's Metamorphoses, one familiar, one obscure. This pendant to Venus and Adonis represents a less well-known tale that Ovid seems to have adapted from a Hellenistic myth of Asian origin (Metamorphosis 4:285-388). Hermaphroditus was the offspring of Venus and Mercury. As a youth, he bathed in a lake where Salmacis, one of Diana's nymphs, dwelt. She fell in love with him a first sight and clung to him with such passion that their two bodies became - literally - one, uniting both male and female sexual traits. In de Troy's painting, Hermaphroditus, sitting by the pool's edge, pulls backward violently as he tries in futility to resist Salmacis' inescapable embrace. As a pair, de Troy's paintings are remarkable not just for their large scale, suave handling, and the boldness of their eroticism, but also for the artist's decision to depict two subjects in which beautiful young men are made the object of overwhelming - even slightly unhinged - feminine passion.

The paintings' original owner and the year in which they were painted are securely established in a contemporary document, although their subjects were slightly confused. The Extrait de la vie de M. de Troy (written by the Chevalier de Valory and published in L. Dussieux, Memoires inédits, op. cit.) mentions, under the year 1729: 'Pour M. le comte de Saint-Maure, deux tableaux grands comme nature; l'un Mars et Venus, l'autre Salmacis et Hermaphrodite'. Although the author understandably confused Mars for Adonis, it has always been accepted that he was referring to the present paintings.

An excellent autograph replica of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus was acquired in 1976 by the Musée Bosseut, Meaux (see C. Leribault, op. cit., p.185b), and numerous copies of the painting are known, indicating that it enjoyed a considerable degree of fame in the eighteenth century.