Orpheus charming the animals
(Brussels 1568 - Antwerp 1625)
Traditionally this work has been ascribed to the school of Jan Brueghel the Elder, although more recently critics have proposed the name of Sinibaldo Scorza, a painter who trained in Genoa. The panel treats the myth of Orpheus, who was able to tame wild beasts with his music. The theme was dear to Flemish painters, as it allowed them to depict a wide variety of plants and animals. The subject became popular in Italy as well among early 17th-century collectors, above all those who took an interest in music.
Object details
Inventory
Location
Date
Classification
Period
Medium
Dimensions
Frame
Salvator Rosa cm. 86 x 98 x 7
Provenance
Borghese collection, Inventory 1790, room II, no. 40; Inventario Fidecommissario Borghese 1833, p. 28, no. 44. Purchased by Italian state, 1902.
Exhibitions
- 1996-1997 Lecce, Fondazione Memmo
- 1998-1999 Bruxelles, Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire
Conservation and Diagnostic
- 1906 Luigi Bartolucci (pest control)
Commentary
The circumstances of the entry of this painting based on the myth of Orpheus into the Borghese Collection are still unknown. The panel may have first been mentioned in the 1790 inventory, which contains an ‘Orpheus, by Paul Bril’. The same description – with the addition of the measurements ‘2 1/7 spans [high], 3 spans 1 inch [wide]’ – appears later in the 1833 Inventario Fidecommissario. The attribution to Bril was maintained by Piancastelli (1891, p. 388), while Venturi (1893, p. 145) was the first scholar to put forth the name of Jan Brueghel the Elder. Longhi (1928, p. 201) agreed in part, proposing that it was a work of his school. Subsequently, Van Puyvelde (1950, p. 182) concurred with the attribution to Brueghel, dating the panel to his stay in Italy, in the wake of his assimilation of Bril’s style.
Like Longhi, Della Pergola ascribed this Orpheus to Brueghel’s school. It was indeed with this attribution that the work was displayed in Lecce in 1996-97 (see Trinchieri Camiz 1996, pp. 112-113) and again in Brussels in 1998 (see Welzel 1998, pp. 138-139). On the latter occasion, the panel was described as a high-quality copy of a lost original by the master, executed by a painter in his circle. Although the Allegory of Hearing by Brueghel and Rubens (Museo Nacional del Prado Madrid) – one of the so-called ‘paintings within a painting’ – makes a visual reference to the subject of Orpheus, this was not repeated anywhere else in the artist’s oeuvre. Yet a set of small works of the same genre by Brueghel relate to the Borghese panel, which are held in various museums throughout the world today, including the Ringling Museum in Sarasota and the Museum and Art Gallery of Ipswich (Della Pergola 1959; Trinchieri Camiz 1996). Together these works form a series, varying in the choice of musical instrument held by Orpheus and in the species of the depicted animals, which range from the tame to the wild, from the local to the exotic and even to the fantastic. In the Borghese painting, for example, we see a white unicorn on the left of the composition, while Orpheus is shown in the act of playing a viola, a more modern instrument which often began replacing the more traditional lyre from the mid-15th century (Trinchieri Camiz 1996).
The subject of the painting is taken from the story of Orpheus, specifically the moment following the loss of his bride Eurydice: the melancholy protagonist devotes himself to singing and playing his instruments, whose sound had the extraordinary effect of taming wild beasts.
The theme was a highly popular one in the tradition of Flemish painting; it enabled artists to show their talent in meticulously representing a great variety of flora and fauna. In Italy, the genre was particularly appreciated by collectors in the early 17th century, in part as a result of Brueghel’s stay in Milan and Rome between 1594 and 1596. In this milieu, the myth of Orpheus exerted its unique charm for its allusion to the magical power of music, which many collectors cultivated as an interest (Trinchieri Camiz 1996; Welzel 1998, pp. 138-139).
Kristina Herrmann Fiore (2006, p. 93) added a twist to the question of the attribution of this panel, when she proposed the name of Sinibaldo Scorza, a painter who trained in Genoa and was active in the first decades of the 17th century. Influenced by Flemish painting, Scorza depicted the subject on various occasions; numerous versions by him are known.
Pier Ludovico Puddu
Bibliography
- X. Barbier de Montault, Les Musées et Galeries de Rome, Rome 1870, p. 359;
- G. Piancastelli, Catalogo dei quadri della Galleria Borghese in Archivio Galleria Borghese, 1891, p. 388;
- A. Venturi, Il Museo e la Galleria Borghese, Roma 1893, p. 145;
- R. Longhi, Precisioni nelle Gallerie Italiane, I, La R. Galleria Borghese, Roma 1928, p. 201;
- L. Van Puyvelde, La Peinture Flamande à Rome, Bruxelles 1950, p. 182;
- P. Della Pergola, Itinerario della Galleria Borghese, Roma 1951, p. 44;
- P. Della Pergola, La Galleria Borghese. I Dipinti, II, Roma 1959, p. 156, n. 223;
- F. Trinchieri Camiz, Immagini degli Dei. Mitologia e collezionismo tra Cinquecento e Seicento, catalogo della mostra (Lecce, Fondazione Memmo, 1996-1997), a cura di C. Cieri Via, Milano 1996, pp. 112-113, n. 5;
- B. Welzel, in Albert & Isabelle 1598-1621, catalogo della mostra (Bruxelles, Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, 1998-1999), a cura di L. Duerloo, W. Thomas, Turnhout 1998, pp. 138-139, n. 184;
- C. Stefani in P. Moreno, C. Stefani, Galleria Borghese, Milano 2000, p. 207, n. 4;
- K. Herrmann Fiore, Galleria Borghese Roma scopre un tesoro. Dalla pinacoteca ai depositi un museo che non ha più segreti, San Giuliano Milanese 2006, p. 93.
