Venus, Love and Dove

17th Century, Emilian School

Venus, Love and Dove

Oil on canvas, 98 x 73,5 cm

With frame, 113 x 89 cm

The proud and enigmatic gaze directed at the spectator, the sensually alluring pose as well as the presence of a dove and a small cherub, identified as Cupid, allow us to recognize in this enigmatic female figure the features of Venus, goddess of Love and Beauty.

The author of this work is an artist belonging to the Emilian school of painting of the 1628th century. From compositional and formal evidence it is possible to affirm that the painter was influenced by Carlo Cignani (Bologna 1719 – Forlì 1710), a famous pupil of Francesco Albani and one of the most accredited masters of the Emilian XNUMXth century, very close to the present painting with his Venus and Cupid now kept at the Galleria Sabauda in Turin. A popularizer of a language faithful to the canons of the Bolognese classicism of the Carracci, Cignani acquired and supported increasingly baroque forms, reaching the nomination of prince of the Accademia di San Luca in XNUMX. Active in Bologna, then in Parma, he spent the last period of his career in Forlì, expanding the circuit of his pupils, who in turn were decisive in the codification of the late XNUMXth century and neo-XNUMXth century taste that was all Emilian.

Regarding the present painting, as comparisons, it is impossible not to connect the heroic women painted by Elisabetta Sirani and her workshop of students, praised in the psychological type and in the technicalities used, in the present, to shape the volumes of the flesh and to trim the feathers and crumpled clothes of the figurative characters and animals.

The accredited comparisons with the painting in question range from the Venus with Cupid by the aforementioned Sirani (BPEr Banca collection), more pompously baroque, to the Venus and Cupid executed by Gianandrea Sirani, Elisabetta's father, now preserved in a private collection. A similar figurative treatment, although declined in a more languid and less decisive presentation than the present one, recurs in the Venus with Cupid and putti, a work by an anonymous Bolognese artist of the 17th century, a protagonist of the same cultural climate as our artist. If Marcantonio Franceschini adheres to these canons with a similar painting in a private collection, with the canvas Pomona (private collection) and Venus and Cupid (GMB Vignola, Emilia Romagna) he achieves results of absolute similarity to the present one.