Satyr's Head Crowned with Vine
(Cortona 1573 - Rome 1636)
This extravagant Satyr's Head, so striking for its spontaneous lines, lively style and rapid broad brushstrokes, shows all the typical characteristics of works by Pietro Paolo Bonzi – known as the Hunchback of the Carracci – a painter specialised in still lifes, and according to the sources, an expert at handling the brush but less adept at drawing.
The feral nature of the satyr, emphasised by the deformed mouth and squint-eyed gaze, is connected to the grapes and vine leaves painted on the head, rendered as a single mass with the hair and ears. The colour tones and lively but nervous strokes in this work seem to express that sense of euphoria, intoxication and joviality induced by the nectar of Bacchus.
Object details
Inventory
Location
Date
first half of the 17th century
Classification
Period
Medium
Oil on canvas-lined paper
Dimensions
Frame
Salvator Rosa, 54.7 x 40.2 x 4.6 cm.
Provenance
Rome, Borghese Collection, 1790 (Inventory 1790, room IV, no. 48); Inventario Fidecommissario Borghese 1833, p. 25. Purchased by the Italian State, 1902.
Exhibitions
- 1956 Bologna, Palazzo dell'Archiginnasio.
Commentary
This refined painting on paper is mentioned for the first time as part of the Borghese Collection in the 1790 inventory, attributed by the compiler of the document to Pietro Paolo Bonzi, called “il Gobbo dei Carracci,” a painter born in Cortona who received his artistic training in Bologna and later attended the private academy of the Crescenzi in Rome. The subject of this painting – a Satyr’s Head Crowned with Vine – caused Adolfo Venturi, Matteo Marangoni, and Aldo de Rinaldis to mistake this work for Caravaggio’s Sick Bacchus (inv. 534; see Della Pergola 1955, p. 48, no. 74; Della Pergola 1959, pp. 76-77, no. 112), an error engendered by the summary descriptions with which the two paintings had been recorded in the 19th century inventories. Regardless of its early attribution to Bonzi, in 1833 this Head was catalogued as a work by an “unknown artist” (Inventario Fidecommissario 1833, p. 25), and soon after assimilated by Adolfo Venturi (1893, p. 107) to the Carracci school. With in mind the Still Life attributed by Matteo Marangoni (pp. 22-24) to Gobbo dei Carracci in 1917, Paola della Pergola did not hesitate in coming back to Bonzi’s name, publishing the painting with this attribution in the catalogue of the Borghese Gallery (1955, p. 48, no. 74), though Longhi (1950, p. 37) had resolutely discarded this ascription a few years earlier. In 1956, Sir Denis Mahon confirmed Della Pergola’s theory and exhibited the painting in an important show dedicated to the Carracci school organised in Bologna in the ancient Palazzo dell’Archiginnasio.
The spontaneity of this painting seems to evoke the words used by Giovanni Baglione to describe our painter, an artist who was very skilled in handling colour, which he expressed “with great ability and strength, and an extremely natural liveliness,” and however “if […] he had been more proficient in his drawing he would have done much more, because his habit of painting from life made him handle colour extremely well” (Baglione 1642, p. 343).
Antonio Iommelli
Bibliography
- G. Baglione, Vite de’ pittori, scultori e architetti. Dal Ponteficato di Gregorio XIII del 1572 in fino à tempi di Papa Urbano VIII nel 1642, Roma 1642, p. 343;
- C.C. Malvasia, Felsina Pittrice, Bologna 1678, a cura di G. P. Zanotti II, Bologna 1841, pp. 91 e ss.;
- G. Piancastelli, Catalogo dei quadri della Galleria Borghese in Archivio Galleria Borghese, 1891, p. 446;
- A. Venturi, Il Museo e la Galleria Borghese, Roma 1893, p. 107;
- M. Marangoni, Valori mal noti e trascurati della pittura italiana del Seicento in alcuni pittori di Natura Morta, in “Rivista d’Arte”, X, 1917, pp. 22-24;
- R. Longhi, Precisioni nelle Gallerie Italiane, I, La R. Galleria Borghese, Roma 1928, p. 191;
- R. Buscaroli, Pittura di paesaggio in Italia, Bologna 1935, pp. 259, 297;
- R. Longhi, Un momento importante nella storia della “Natura morta”, in “Paragone”, I, 1950, p. 37;
- E. Battisti, Profilo del Gobbo dei Carracci, in Commentari, V, 1954, pp. 290-302;
- P. della Pergola, La Galleria Borghese. I Dipinti, I, Roma 1955, p. 48, n. 74;
- Mostra dei Carracci, catalogo della mostra (Bologna, Palazzo dell’Archiginnasio, 1956), a cura di D. Mahon, Bologna 1956, pp. 116-117;
- P. della Pergola, L’Inventario Borghese del 1693 (II), “Arte Antica e Moderna”, 1964, n. 28, p. 462;
- F. Borrioni, Bonzi, Pietro Paolo, voce in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, XII, 1971, ad vocem;
- M.T. Pugliatti, Pietro Paolo Bonzi paesista, in "Quaderni dell’Istituto di Storia dell’Arte medioevale e moderna dell’Università di Messina", I, 1975, pp. 15-23;
- A. Cottino, Pietro Paolo Bonzi, in La natura morta in Italia, a cura di F. Zeri, II, Milano 1989, pp. 698-702;
- A. Cottino, Pietro Paolo Bonzi detto il Gobbo dei Carracci, in La Scuola dei Carracci. I seguaci di Annibale e Agostino, a cura di E. Negro, M. Pirondini, Modena 1995, pp. 125-136;
- Classicismo e Natura. La lezione di Domenichino, catalogo della mostra (Roma, Musei Capitolini, 1996-1997), a cura di D. Mahon, C. Strinati, C. Whitfield, Roma 1996;
- P. Moreno, C. Stefani, Galleria Borghese, Milano 2000, p. 393;
- F. Cappelletti, La pittura di paesaggio in Italia. Il Seicento, a cura di L. Trezzani, Milano 2004, pp. 243-245;
- K. Herrmann Fiore, Galleria Borghese Roma scopre un tesoro. Dalla pinacoteca ai depositi un museo che non ha più segreti, San Giuliano Milanese 2006.
