Circle of Francesco Albani (Bologna, 1578 – 1660), Sleeping Cupids disarmed by nymphs

Circle of Francesco Albani (Bologna, 1578 – 1660)

Sleeping Cupids disarmed by the nymphs

Oil on canvas, 72 x 93.5 cm

With frame, 96 x 117,5 cm

The work under consideration constitutes an elegant and refined testimony to the visual acclaim and enormous collector's success of the models designed by Francesco Albani (Bologna, 1578–1660), one of the greatest and most acclaimed interpreters of 17th-century Emilian classicism. The composition depicts the allegorical episode of The Cupids Disarmed by Diana's Nymphs (also known as The Triumph of Chastity or Winter), a subject that draws its literary inspiration from Philostratus of Lemnos's Eikones—a text of extraordinary popularity between the 16th and 17th centuries, describing the games and allegories of the cupids linked to the four seasons—and from the classical theme of the contrast between Love and Continence.

The scene is set in an idyllic, expansive woodland landscape opening onto a luminous sunset horizon. In the foreground, amidst soft drapes and meticulous chiaroscuro, a group of cupids lies asleep; taking advantage of their vulnerability, Diana's nymphs—followers of the goddess of the hunt and guardians of purity—surreptitiously steal their bows and quivers of arrows. In the background, other nymphs burn their weapons of love on a purifying bonfire, while in the upper section of the canvas, seated on a radiant cloud and accompanied by the crescendo of the iconographic crescent, the goddess Diana herself appears, benevolently presiding over the definitive triumph of Chastity over the snares and futile beauty embodied by Venus and Cupid.

Compositionally, the invention harks back to the celebrated cycles dedicated to the Stories of Venus and Diana conceived by Albani between the 1620s and 1630s. The prototype for this canvas finds its first fundamental precedent in the celebrated tondo The Triumph of Diana (or Winter) executed for Cardinal Scipione Borghese (Rome, Galleria Borghese), a work that concluded the celebrated Borghese cycle by introducing the moral epilogue of the victory of Chastity. Subsequently, in 1621, Albani reworked the series for Duke Ferdinando Gonzaga of Mantua, resulting in the four rectangular canvases now housed in the Musée du Louvre in Paris, among which Les Amours désarmés stands out.

Compared to the Louvre version, the present canvas displays a rigorously mirrored articulation of the scene (reversed from right to left). This iconographic inversion is key to correctly contextualizing the work: it certainly attests to the use of a translation print as a workshop model. Period engravings, by printing the matrix in a mirror image of the original painting, rendered an inverted image on the printed sheet, which was then promptly adopted by students, followers, and copyists of the time—a field in which entire workshops emerged between the 17th and 18th centuries.

The widespread distribution of these engravings responded to the immense market demand of the time. As evidenced by both the autograph replicas published by Albani (including the variants held in Bordeaux, Kassel, and Potsdam) and the high-quality contemporary copies sought after by the same collectors (such as those executed for the Borghese family and now at the Colegio de Santamarca in Madrid), the Bolognese master's "Anacreontic" painting—capable of transforming ancient myth into a serene and harmonious interpenetration of figure and nature—guaranteed these images a long and successful resonance, of which the present canvas represents a valuable contemporary reworking.

Compared to the work analysed here, see in particular the studies of goats made in oil on paper and in watercolour preserved at the Accademia Carrara and the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana of the painting of the same subject preserved at the Museo di Casa Martelli in Florence.

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