Bath of Venus

Scarsella Ippolito called Scarsellino

(Ferrara c. 1550 - 1620)

This work, reported in the inventory of Scipione Borghese datable to 1620–1630, is considered a pendant to Salmacis and Hermaphrodite (inv. 214), even though it was painted on a different type of support. The style is in fact perfectly consistent with the narrative tone used by Scarsellino for mythological subjects. In this scene, Venus, against a background of striated sky, has just come out of the water, assisted by putti who offer her towels dried by the warmth of the fire.

Object details

Commentary

The first inventory listing of the painting is found in a document published by Sandro Corradini, where it is described as ‘a painting on canvas [of] Venus bathing with lots of Cupids who are serving her [in a] gilt frame with dragons and eagles [measuring] about 1 high, 1 wide, [by] Scarsellino’. The painting, which was probably expanded given the square format mentioned in the inventory, might have been a diplomatic gift to Cardinal Scipione from one of his acquaintances in Ferrara or, more probably, was commissioned directly by him from the artist by the first decade of the seventeenth century (Herrmann Fiore 2002).

Scarsellino has portrayed Venus sitting on the edge of a pool of water near a river. The artist included only a few elements of nature in the painting: the few trees stand out against a sky painted in dawn-like hues and the scene is framed by a crumbling building with a broken roof resting on two columns and, to the left, a fountain topped by a dolphin and a puer mingens, a male child urinating. The latter is linked to the theme of fertility and fecundity and had been very popular in decorative sculpture for fountains and similar since the publication of Hypnerotomachia Poliphili by Francesco Colonna (1433–1527), which was printed by Aldo Manuzio in 1499 (Miarelli Mariani 1996). The goddess is surrounded by a group of winged cupids. Two are helping her out of the bath, one of which offering her towels while the other helps her get her feet out of the water. Two other putti are near the small atrium in front of the building, tasked with warming towels by the fire and bringing them to the goddess. And two more are resting in the right corner, to the side, having left their arrows and quiver near the edge of the natural pool.

A pendant to the painting of Salmacis and Hermaphrodite (inv. 214), this work, like the others by the Ferrara painter, has been difficult to date. Maria Angela Novelli (1955; 1964; 2008) proposed a date prior to 1592-1593, the period when Scarsellino came into contact with the Carracci during the decoration of Palazzo dei Diamanti and adhered closely to the formal language of Venetian painting. This dating was accepted by Coliva (1994), who proposed the more specific date of 1585, and Stefani (2000). The strong influence of the classical ideal of Carraccesque painting, found in the stripped-down nature of the landscape, in harmony with the figures, led Morandotti (1997) and Herrmann Fiore (2002) to instead date the work to the artist’s mature period.

Lara Scanu