Emilian School, 17th century, Allegory of Geometry and Allegory of Music

Emilian school, 17th century

Allegory of Geometry and Allegory of Music

(2) Oil on oval canvas, 66 x 52 cm

With frame, 79 x 63 cm

The two ovals represent two female figures identifiable by the attributes they carry: the flute together with the singing birds and the compass with the square immediately suggest the allegories of music and geometry. As regards the school of origin, we can identify it in the Emilian or Bolognese one of the seventeenth century, daughter of the Accademia degli Incamminati founded by the Carracci brothers in Bologna. Many artists had compared themselves with the success of the Carraccis and the Academy they founded, deciding to adopt the canons of a classicism expressed with a more modern and vibrant vein. The three brothers, together with painters of the calibre of Guido Reni and Guercino, inspired both their own and subsequent generations of Emilian artists, as can also be seen in these two allegories; the warm tones wrapped in an opaque golden light highlight the shades of the clothes and hair while the light chiaroscuro delicately outlines the facial features, rendered with an effective material consistency. Furthermore, the two paintings are stylistically similar to other tondi that make up a series attributable to an artist of a culture close to that of Marcantonio Franceschini (1648-1729), a Bolognese painter, in which almost neo-Correggio-esque typologies filtered through a more modern taste can be found; the comparison between the faces of Correggio's Madonnas, such as the one called "del latte" preserved in Budapest, and that of these two female figures finds more than one tangent.