A Queen's Picture

A Queen’s Picture
MORETTI

MORETTI
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Gabriele Caioni, director
Flavio Gianassi, director
This exhibition has been organized on the occasion of
London Art Week
30 June - 7 July 2017
Preview 29 June
www.londonartweek.co.uk

A Queen’s Picture
Guido Reni and European Diplomacy
MORETTI

Guido Reni
Two Bacchantes (ca. 1639 - 1640)
Oil on canvas, 254.3 x 144.1 cm
PROVENANCE
Greenwich, Henrietta Maria de Bourbon, Queen consort of England (1637)
France, Michel Particelli d’Emery Collection (Contrôleur Général des Finances under Mazarin)
France, Mme. Michel Particelli d’Emery Collection
BIBLIOGRAPHY
S. Madocks, Trop de beautez découvertes: New light on Guido Reni’s late Bacchus and Ariadne in The Burlington
Magazine, vol. 126, no. 978, Sept. 1984, pp. 544 - 547
S. Guarino, Il quadro della regina: la storia delle Nozze di Bacco e Arianna di Guido Reni in L’Arianna di
Guido Reni (exhibition catalogue), Milan, 2002, pp. 15
S. Guarino in Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, Catalogo Generale, (edition J. Bentini, G.P. Cammarota,
A. Massa, D. Scagliertti Kelescian, A. Stanzani), Venice, 2009, p. 76, no. 36
D. Benati, in Quadri da Collezione. Dipinti Emiliani dal XIV al XIX secolo, Bologna, 2013, pp. 42 - 48

‘ The truth is
I do not think
that Guido has done
a better painting
and, considering his age,
he will not be painting
many more.
But, as I say,
its faults are serious ones
in so much as
they offend decorum.’

Two nude young bacchantes dance on a sandy
surface, with a horizon of blue ocean and cloudy
sky behind them. One plays the flute while the
other is accompanying him on the tambourine. In
the background Silenus arrives astride a donkey,
supported by two putti.
Based on the surviving evidence – both painted
and engraved – it is safe to identify this painting as
the far right portion of Guido Reni’s large painting,
The Marriage of Bacchus and Ariadne, a highly
celebrated work which was unfortunately subject to
partial destruction. 1
1 See Giovanni Battista Bolognini’s engraving of Bacchus and Arianne on the Island of Naxos (after 1640) in the Museo
dell’Accademia Carrara in Bergamo [fig. 1]

fig. 1 Giovanni Battista Bolognini, Bacchus and Arianne on the Island of Naxos (after 1640), Museo dell’Accademia Carrara, Bergamo
In 1637 – at the peak of the splendour of the
rule of Charles I – his wife, the French Catholic
Henrietta Maria de Bourbon, expressed a wish for a
painting with a mythological theme for the ceiling
of her bedchamber in the Queen’s House in
Greenwich. Henrietta Maria was already an avid
collector of Italian masters, perhaps due to
influence by her mother, Maria de’ Medici, who
was a patron of the arts and commissioned a
spectacular Medici Cycle for the Luxembourg
Palace upon her daughter’s marriage to Charles.

The Marriage of Bacchus and Ariadne would be
the last large-scale work executed by the painter,
Guido Reni – who worked on it between 1639 and
1640 – and possibly one of the largest he ever
painted. He was, at the time, one of the most
admired Italian painters in England.
Wencesclas Hollar, Map of London, 1688, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague

‘ Charles I
amassed
a collection unrivalled
in the history
of English taste.’
Anthony van Dyck, Charles I in Three Positions, also known as the Triple portrait of Charles I, 1635 or 1636, Royal Collection, Windsor Castle

Charles I ruled England at a precarious time in the history of the country.
Repeating tendencies of ruling classes that came before, the royal court
at this period reacted to growing dissent by becoming more excessive and
extravagant, a manifestation of which was King Charles beginning to amass
what would in time become arguably the most important art collection
of any monarch in Britain.
Although his father and brother had also shown a keen interest in art,
Charles’s period was characterised by an opening up to more European
attitudes. Indeed, one could venture the suggestion that between 1643
and 1654, the changes in the artistic map of Europe fundamentally altered
its national canons of art history, influencing even our holiday destinations.
Having encountered the awe-inspiring royal collection of Spain, Charles
begun purchasing Italian Old Masters such as Tintoretto and Titian, and at
the time of the abrupt end of his life, Charles I had amassed around 2000
works. In his own way, Charles I exemplified both a product and zenith of
European royal art collecting, as well as a catalyst for interest in continental
fine art by English collectors, a trend still very much alive to this day.

The commission took on notable importance
due to its position at the very centre of diplomatic
relations between Rome and London at the time; 2
it formed part of the Vatican’s attempt to bring a
‘heretical’ England back into the bosom of the
Catholic Church. It marked a very special moment
in the papacy of Urban VIII Barberini, brought to
fruition by Cardinal Francesco Barberini, who was
indeed the ‘cardinal nephew’, and the Cardinal
Protector of England and Scotland. The ascent to
the throne of Charles I had significantly furthered
Anthony van Dyck, Charles I of England with his wife, Henrietta Maria, 1632, Arcidiecézní muzeum, Kroměříž, Czech Republic
2 S. Madocks, Trop de beautez découvertes: New light on Guido Reni's late Bacchus and Ariadne in The Burlington Magazine,
vol. 126, no. 978, Sept. 1984, p. 546

the prospect of restoring closer friendly relations
with the kingdom of England, separated for some
time from the Church of Rome, in view of the
King’s marriage in 1626 to the sixteen-year-old
sister of Louis XIII, the Catholic Henrietta Maria.
Ottavio Leoni, Cardinal Francesco Barberini, 1624, Royal Collection
The desire expressed by the Queen for a large
painting to adorn the ceiling of the King’s bedroom
offered the opportunity for Cardinal Francesco
Barberini, who had already sent agents to the
English court, to weave a web of relationships,
exemplified by this highly symbolic work of art.

This plan was preceded by the arrival in
London of a bust of Charles I carved in Rome by
Gian Lorenzo Bernini, which unfortunately was
destroyed in a fire in 1698. As Charles I had
already purchased Guido Reni’s Labours of Hercules
[fig. 2] – now in the Louvre – from Vincenzo II
fig. 2 Guido Reni, Hercules Vanquishing the Hydra of Lerma, 1617-20, Musée du Louvre, Paris
Gonzaga as early as in 1627, it was not surprising
that Reni, a painter always trusted by the papal
family and already well-known at the English
court, received the commission from the Queen for
this grand painting for the ceiling of the King’s
bedroom. The request was formalized in a letter
dated November 21, 1637, although the choice of

the subject would only be specified later, in a letter
on January 9, 1638. 3
The early biographer Carlo Cesare Malvasia
suggested that Guido might have enlisted the
assistance of Francesco Albani as earlier treatments
of the subjects included large landscapes – such as
that by Titian in a series made for Alfonso I d’Este
– as Albani excelled at that specific genre. 4 Instead,
Reni chose to set the scene against a backdrop of a
vast sea, which in fact more accurately corresponds
with the story where the scene plays out on a
beach. Reni had used similar solutions on other
occasions. For example, in the Victorious Samson in
the Pinacoteca di Bologna and in the two versions
of Atalanta and Hippomenes, now in the Prado and
Capodimonte museums, the artist depicts figures
set majestically against a background void of detail.
3 S. Madocks, Trop de beautez découvertes: New light on Guido Reni's late Bacchus and Ariadne, p. 545
4 C.C. Malvasia, Felsina pittrice. Vite de’ pittori bolognesi, Bologna, 1678 (1841 edition), II, p. 37-38

‘ So that she might shine
among the eternal stars
he took the crown
from her forehead,
and set it in the sky.
It soared through
the rarified air,
and as it soared its jewels
changed to bright fires.’
Titian, Bacchus and Ariadne, 1520-1523, The National Gallery, London

According to Greek Mythology – and related by Homer and later Ovid in his
Metamorphoses – Ariadne was the daughter of King Minos of Crete. In an
attempt to help the Athenian Theseus to slay a Minotaur in the depths of a
labyrinth, she provides him a thread to tie to the opening, so he will more
easily find his way out after the Minotaur is slain. Ariadne’s strategy is
a success, and Theseus decides to take her with him back to Athens.
However, during a stop at the Greek island of Naxos, Ariadne awakes from
a brief slumber to find Theseus has left her. Desolately walking the shores of
the island looking for her love, she encounters Bacchus – the god of wine –
with his gang of unruly companions. Smitten by Ariadne, he promptly
proposes. The accounts of the wedding present offered to her vary,
but according to Ovid, Bacchus gifts her a crown of stars which, when he
throws it up to the heavens, becomes the constellation Northern Crown.

These works focus all attention on the figures
themselves and relate the story with a rigor that
reveals deep meaning in a manner free from the
shackles of background detail. There exists an
engraving produced just after the painting was
completed, by Reni’s pupil, Giovanni Battista
Bolognini, and the painting is known in surviving
painted copies; one in the Accademia di San Luca
in Rome – previously in the Sacchetti Collection –
is considered a faithful copy of the Bacchus and
Ariadne sent to the Queen consort of England.
The other, in the Palazzo di Montecitorio in
Rome [fig. 3] also perfectly corresponds Carlo
Cesare Malvasia’s description.
fig. 3 After Guido Reni, The Marriage of Bacchus and Ariadne, 17 th century, Palazzo di Montecitorio, Rome

Malvasia goes on to recount the impatience
expressed by the painter – now working at the
height of the final period of his career – at having
to ‘take on such an overwhelming project.’ 5 In
addition to Bacchus and Ariadne, the protagonists
of the story as told by Ovid, the work had to
include the procession of satyrs, bacchantes and
allegorical figures, such as Victory and Modesty,
intended to lend the project a moralizing tone. The
work was highly praised for its interpretation,
which so aptly incorporated the many components
of the poem.
However, the strikingly realistic rendering of
some of the figures was upsetting to some; Cardinal
Barberini, for instance, expressed concern in a letter
dated September 8, 1640, regarding the explicitly
lascivious nature of the composition.
5 C.C. Malvasia, ibid.

‘ I have received
the painting
but the painting
appears to me
to be lascivious.
I hesitate to send it
for fear of further
scandalizing these Heretics,
especially since the subject
of the work
was chosen
here in Rome.’

In 1647, the enormous painting with its lavish
fire-gilded copper cornice – along with the copy by
Giovanni Francesco Romanelli produced just after
the painting was completed – was finally delivered
to Henrietta Maria in Paris. Following the religious
wars that in 1649 would lead to the beheading of
Charles I, the Queen had taken refuge in France,
where Cardinal Barberini was also temporarily
exiled in 1646 after the death of Urban VIII.
The unfortunate Queen was soon forced to sell
the magnificent work to Michel Particelli d'Emery,
superintendent of finances of the Kingdom of
France. Upon his death, his widow tragically
outraged by the nudity of Reni’s painting, had it
cut to pieces by her servants. 6
6 André Felibien, Entretiens sur le vies et sur les ouvrages des plus excellens peintres anciens et modernes (edition Trevoux), vol.
III, Paris, 1725, p. 510.

Anthony van Dyck, Portrait of Henrietta Maria, (1635 or 1636), Royal Collection, 1638, Royal Collection, Windsor Castle

Restoration works have verified the presence of
the original canvas selvedges, revealing that when
the large painting was cut into pieces, it was
carefully done along the seams of the fabric panels
(probably five) of which the picture was originally
composed. According to a letter of November 21,
1637, Guido himself had designed the painting so
that the figures were placed on the parts of the
canvas where there were no seams. It is wholly
thanks to this technique that fragments derived
from the large painting could be sold as
autonomous paintings, with few adjustments.
The present painting is one such large fragment
of the original, like the Ariadne and Cupid [fig. 4],
identified in 2002 by Sir Denis Mahon and Andrea
Emiliani and accepted as autograph following its
purchase by the Fondazione del Monte, now in the
Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna. 7 Compared to
7 S. Guarino, Il quadro della regina: la storia delle Nozze di Bacco e Arianna di Guido Reni in L’Arianna di Guido Reni
(exhibition catalogue), Milan, 2002, pp. 15; S. Guarino in Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, Catalogo Generale, (edition J.
Bentini, G.P. Cammarota, A. Massa,D. Scagliertti Kelescian, A. Stanzani), Venice, 2009, p. 76, no. 36.

the painting in Bologna, which reveals an overly
zealous restoration, the present painting is in a very
good state of preservation, thereby allowing us to
appreciate the extraordinary pictorial qualities so
characteristic of the late work of Guido Reni.
fig. 4 Guido Reni, Ariadne and Cupid, 1639-1640, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna
As noted above, the figures of the two
bacchantes in the painting are forcefully placed
against a plain background. As in other cases – for
example in the Apollo and Marsyas of Rouen – Reni
emphasizes the figures by imbuing them with an
almost Bernini-like sculptural effect. (He also
exhibits a handling of extraordinary softness and

elegance.) As already seen in Annibale Carracci’s
work in the Farnese Gallery, Reni is able to convey
an ideal of elegance although he depicts the adult
bacchante as somewhat playful, while the younger
dancer lends a sweet sentimentality and elegiac
mood to the composition.
For the reasons examined, the present painting
is an acquisition of the utmost importance as an
outstanding example of the late activity of this
great founder of the Bolognese school of painting.

Guido Reni
Bologna, 4 November 1575 – Bologna, 18 August 1642
Guido Reni, Self-Portrait 1632 c., Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Guido Reni was one of the founders of the Bolognese school of painting.
A painter, draughtsman, and occasional etcher, he was a pupil of Calvaert
from about 1584 to 1593 before transferring to the academy run by the
Carracci, where he absorbed their tradition of clear, firm draughtsmanship.
By 1601 he had moved to Rome and remained there until 1614, making
frequent visits back home to Bologna. He briefly experimented with the
Caravaggesque style of painting – such as in the Crucifixion of St. Peter,
1603, currently in the Pinacoteca of the Vatican – but Raphael and the
antique remained the primary inspiration for his graceful classical style,
as seen in his most celebrated work, Aurora, 1614, (currently in Casino
dell'Aurora, Palazzo Rospiglioso-Pallavacini, Rome) a captivatingly
beautiful ceiling fresco painted for Cardinal Scipione Borghese.

text by
Elise Midelfart
edited by
Paolo Carcano
Roberto Santoro
© All rights reserved by Moretti Fine Art Ltd., 2017