Offering to Vertumnus and Pomona
(Sermoneta 1521 - Rome 1575)
Based on the 19th-century description of the Casino Olgiati, once located in the area of the present-day gallop in the Villa Borghese grounds – purchased by the Borghese in 1831 and destroyed in 1849 – the Offering to Vertumnus and Pomona decorated the vault of one of the rooms. The walls were frescoed with the Marriage of Alexander and Roxane and the Archers, which can also be seen today in the Gallery and are dated between 1556 and 1560. The subject is the mythological tale of the two agrestic divinities, symbol of happy union and of fertility. Most likely this composition made use of Raphaelesque models, in turn derived from the classical tradition.
Object details
Inventory
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Classification
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Provenance
Borghese Collection, 1831. Purchased by Italian State, 1902.
Exhibitions
- 1992 Torre dei Passeri, Castello Gizzi, Castello di Dante in Abruzzo.
Commentary
The episode, recounted by Ovid in his Metamorphoses, deals with the long and resilient courtship of the beautiful Pomona by the god Vertumnus: assuming the most diverse guises, he succeeds in winning the heart of the young woman by transforming himself into a wise old woman. The scene depicts the moment after the conquest in which the two share a bed and are presented with bountiful baskets of fruit and flowers. In traditional iconography, Vertumnus and Pomona are often surrounded by the gifts of the earth, as deities responsible for the alternation of the seasons.
The fresco was supposed to decorate the vault of one of the rooms in the Casino Olgiati with the other two, also in the Borghese collection, the Archers (no. 294) and The Marriage of Alexander and Roxane (no. 303), with the symbolic meaning of happy union and fertility. The Casino, a summerhouse purchased in 1831 by Prince Camillo Borghese to further enlarge the gardens surrounding the villa (Hunter 1996, p. 137), was already in ruins in 1836, the year in which all three frescoes were removed. The building, now lost, was razed to the ground by French cannonade in 1849 during the siege of Rome led by General Nicholas Charles Victor Oudinot.
The attribution of these paintings, unconfirmed by reliable sources, to the Sermoneta painter Girolamo Siciolante has not been agreed on by all critics despite the fact that the frescoes reflect the stylistic approach adopted in Rome by the painter and appear to be similar to the decoration work he carried out in Castel Sant'Angelo. Cavalcaselle (Crowe-Cavalcaselle 1890, p. 370) associated all three with an artist who must have been familiar with Giulio Romano's drawings, while Passavant (1860, pp. 234, 236) considered this to be the least successful of the three, assigning the other two to Perin del Vaga.
Of the three surviving frescoes, according to Hunter, however, this is the one in which the artist succeeded best in expressing his personality: compared to the others, the choice of colours, pale and acidic, and the construction of the architectural space demonstrate here a greater stylistic mastery, close to the landscapes painted by Siciolante in the loggia of Castel Sant'Angelo. He even goes so far as to hypothesise an association with Perin del Vaga, the latter already being in charge of the Pope Paul III Farnese’s building site (Hunter 1996, pp. 137-138, note 9). The opposite opinion was expressed by Paola della Pergola, who considered this fresco to be ‘considerably inferior’ to the others, perhaps painted ‘by a follower who followed the drawing faithfully, but rather crudely’ (1959, p. 131); she also surmised that it was a derivation from an already existing drawing.
The critical reputation of these frescoes derives mostly from the false attribution to Raphael, owner and inhabitant of that Casino “where at the side of his beloved one he found still greater bliss than in all art and all fame. It is a holy monument. Prince Doria has acquired it and seems disposed to treat it as it deserves to be treated. Raphael has portrayed his mistress twenty-eight times on the walls, in all sorts of clothing and costumes; even in the historical compositions all the female figures resemble her. The position of the house is very beautiful [...]. Every detail deserves to be observed” (Goethe [1788]).
Gabriele de Melis
Bibliography
- C. Burney, Music, men and manners in France and Italy 1770, London 1974.
- M. Vasi, Itinerario istruttivo di Roma antica e moderna ovvero Descrizione generale dei monumenti antichi e moderni, e delle opere le più insigni di pittura, scultura, ed architettura di questa alma città e delle sue vicinanze, Roma 1791, ed. cons. Roma 1816.
- J.W. Goethe, Viaggio in Italia. 1768-1788, Milano 1991.
- J.D. Passavant, Raphael d’Urbin et son père Giovanni Santi, Paris 1860.
- G.B. Cavalcaselle, J.A. Crowe, Raffaello: la sua vita e le sue opere, Le Monnier 1890.
- R. Longhi, Precisioni nelle Gallerie italiane, I: La R. Galleria Borghese, Roma 1928, ed. pp. 346-347.
- B. Berenson, The Drawings of the Florentine Painters, Chicago 1938.
- P. Della Pergola, I dipinti. Roma, Galleria Borghese, 2 voll., II, Roma 1959, p. 131.
- B. Davidson, Some early works by Girolamo Siciolante da Sermoneta in “The art bulletin”, 48, 1966, pp. 55-64.
- J. Hunter, Girolamo Siciolante da Sermoneta (1521 - 1575), Roma 1996, pp. 136-139.
