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Lot 152
Description:
Italian School, 18th c., "The Muse Euterpe, Seated at a Pianoforte", oil on canvas, unsigned, 53 in. x 38 in., in an attractive antique hand-carved wood frame.
- Provenance: Provenance: 20th Century Fox, Inc.; Darryl Zanuck Note: The motif of pan-pipes-visible in the carved frieze on the urn at the upper right, and accompanying the satyr in the painted panel on the piano-case, clearly identifies the figure as the Muse of Lyric Poetry (that is of instrumental music to be accompanied by flutes), or Euterpe. The Muses of Mount Helicon were said to be the offspring of Zeus himself, in his union with Mnemosyne, or Memory; and indeed the fictive marble figures on the sculptural hemicycle in the background suggest this exalted parentage, as they are glimpsed beyond the charming device of the roll of sheet-music, whose tubular form hints at the flute, the identifying characteristic of this particular Muse. Indeed all the Muses (of whom there were traditionally nine) are at times recorded as playing flutes, and th s figure's gesture toward other pages of sheet-music laid out on the pianoforte might suggest her alternate identification as Polyhymnia (or of song accompanied by musical instruments), were not the pan-pipes so conspicuously featured on the marble urn. The rich but pastel-tinted palette and the serene classical features argue for a date in the first half of the 18th c., probably in Emilia, but with substantial influences from Venice. The segmentally-curved sculptural hemicycle and the gem-studded diadem are both borrowed from Paolo Veronese (Italian, 1528-1588), though the powerful filling of the frame with a richly endowed three-quarter-length figure is more up-to-date, and the delightful motif of the bacchante being fed with grapes on the piano's painted panel is inspired by such recent masters as Sebastiano Ricci (Venetian 1659-1734). The gestures of the background sculptures recall Tiepolo (Venetian, 1696-1770) and Bortoloni (Italian, 1696-1750); but the central figure has a physical weight and gravitas hat is probably Bolognese or Ferraran. The picture was acquired by the middle of the 20th c. for the famed Hollywood studio, and was used as a cinematic property. References: N.G.L. Hammond & H.H. Scullard, eds., Oxford Classical Dictionary (1970), p. 704; M.C. Howatson, Oxford Companion to Classical Literature (1989), p. 372.
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September 11, 2010 10:00 AM CDT
New Orleans, LA, US
Neal Auction Company
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