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44
Apollo
Belvedere
Roman copy after Hellenistic
ca. 350-330 b.c.
original,
Marble, 88 ?4 in. (224 cm)
Museo Pi? Clementia, Vatican Museums
Photograph: Alinari/Art Resource, N.Y.
43- (opposite)
Andrea Sacchi
(Italian,
Rome, 1599-1661)
Marcantonio
Pasqualini
(1614-16Q1)
Crowned
by
Apollo, 1641
Oil on canvas, 96
x 76 V2 in.
x
(243.8 194.3 cm)
Purchase, Enid A. Haupt
Gift and Gwynne
Andrews
Fund, 1981 (1981.317)
while
playing
he turns to display
his face, most beautifully painted
from life_On the
ground
lies a bound satyr, to signify
his
competition
and punishment."
As this description
implies,
the picture
is as much an as a allegory portrait. The intent was to celebrate
Pasqualini's
status as one of the preeminent singers
at the court of the Barberini
family
in Rome
(Rosa
wrote a scathing poem about the popularity
of such
singers
and of their generous
remunera
tion for performances).
Pasqualini had
appeared
in a number of Barberini-sponsored operas,
a
including
five
hour
spectacle
for which Bernini
designed
intermedi
(interact entertainments)
and others for
which Sacchi
designed
the sets. The costume
wears
Pasqualini
in this picture would be
appropriate either for a shepherd
or?in view of the leopard pelt?the
character of Bacchus.
However, Pasqualini
is shown as a though giving
solo performance, accompanying
himself
on a keyed harp (a clavicytherium); perhaps
it is one of his own
compositions. Apollo
defeated
Marsyas
in a musical
competition by accompanying
himself on the lyre,
and the
laurel wreath he
suspends
over Pasqualini's head doubtless suggests that Marcantonio has
accomplished what Marsyas
could not do
(and for which he was punished by being flayed).
Apollo's pose is based on the celebrated
Apollo Belvedere (fig. 44),
but we know that Sacchi
drew the figure
from a handsomely proportioned
model whose features he then smoothed
out to Apollonian perfection (fig. 45).
He used a coarser brush to give Pasqualini's clothes a
richly
textured appearance. The
contrasting
of smooth and was a
rough painting techniques
method of underscoring
the ways the mythic past has been combined with the tactile present,
47