The Marriage of Alexander and Roxane

Attributed to Siciolante Girolamo

(Sermoneta 1521 - Rome 1575)

Like the Offering to Vertumnus and Pomona and the Archers, housed in the Gallery, the fresco adorned one of the rooms 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 paintings, already badly decayed, were detached and later transported to Palazzo Borghese in Campo Marzio. The fresco is today attributed to Siciolante and dated between 1556 and 1560. The work depicts the wedding between the great commander Alexander the Great and the most famous of his wives, the Persian princess Roxane.

Object details

Commentary

“It is worth seeing the Casino of this villa, which is said to have belonged to Raphael of Urbino; and in fact there are several paintings of his school, including in the vault of the second room on the first floor, two small paintings by his own hand; in one of which the Marriage of Alexander is depicted [...]” (Vasi, 1791, p. 283). This is how Mariano Vasi described what was still considered Raphael's ‘Casino’ [small house, summerhouse] in 1791, to the extent of attributing the work in question to Raphael. The Casino, formerly belonging to Olgiati Bevilacqua, had been purchased by Prince Borghese in 1831; the fresco, together with the other two (inv. 294 and 300), was detached in 1836 and integrated into the Borghese collection, held until 1894 in the family palazzo in Campo Marzio and only later in the Villa. The scene depicts the wedding of Alexander the Great with the Persian princess Roxane.  Faithfully following the classical iconographic tradition, based on sources such as the ekphrastic descriptions by Lucian of Samosata, the fresco shows the moment of the offering of the crown by the commander to the princess. The two protagonists are surrounded by cupids: they play a central role in the scene by rendering services and animating the future union. Next to them stands ‘Hephaistos... with a lighted torch in his hand, leaning on a beautiful young man’ (Lucian). The iridescent colours and style of the figures demonstrate the hand of Siciolante even though the iconographic elements seem to derive from earlier drawings or prints. In fact, several scholars have likened the fresco to a drawing believed to be by Raphael, housed in the Albertina in Vienna, from which numerous engravings were taken. The poses of the characters, in the drawing undressed, are virtually modelled on the famous model, although the overall quality of our fresco is decidedly inferior.

The Scotsman John Hamilton in his Schola Italica Picturae (Hamilton 1773) astonishingly included this fresco in a sort of ideal gallery of masterpieces alongside undisputed masters such as Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael and Titian. For Hamilton's book, Giovanni Volpato converted the scene (signed and dated 1773) into an engraving with the title ‘Alexandri et Roxane Nuptiae’, documenting the fresco in situ (‘Exstat Romae in Aedibus suburbani Marchionis Olgiati’); the fresco was also engraved by J.G.A. Frenzel in 1823. Moreover, in 1839, Quatremere de Quincy was to write: “Reading these descriptions by Lucian with Raphael's drawings in front of one's eyes, one would almost believe that the text of the former had been written after the execution of the latter [...] The first of these drawings certainly served as a sketch for the painting of the subject of Alexander and Roxane [...]” (de Quincy 1839, p. 204)

This overappraisal doubtless stems from the cycle's incorrect ascription to Raphael. The fresco was at first attributed by Passavant to Perin del Vaga. He believed, as did Berenson, that it was a rendering from an original drawing by Raphael, purchased by Rubens and later transferred to the Austrian collections in Vienna. It was later more generically to the school of Raphael (Passavant 1860, pp. 286-290; Berenson 1938, p. 218). Attribution to Siciolante da Sermoneta was only mooted in the 20th century, first by Bernice Davidson (1966, p. 63) then by John Hunter (1996, pp. 136-139) – an attribution now partially accepted by critics.

Gabriele de Melis