Paintings Drawings Sculptures 2016 - Jean Luc Baroni

Pier Francesco Mola
Coldrerio, Ticino 1612 - 1666 Rome
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Cain and Abel
Oil on canvas.
139 x 90 cm (54 3 /4 x 35 1 /2 in.)
Provenance: Private Collection, France.
This unpublished painting is a characteristic work
of Pier Francesco Mola’s mature period which, with
its lively naturalism, reconciles the artist’s Lombard
origins with the Emilian and neo-Venetian influences
which he developed 1 . This reconciliation manifests
itself more in terms of composition than style. A typical
characteristic is the vivacity of the depiction, with
touches of impasto on the leaves, on the mountains
in the distance, on the ground, and to pick out details
of the figure. This technique is accompanied by the
1. Pier Francesco Mola after Titian, Martyrdom of St. Peter of
Verona, Galleria Pallavicini, Rome.
process of using subtle layers of liquid glazes, most
evident in the vaporous clouds, in the tree on the left
and in the treatment of the protagonist’s bodies.
The composition, which has an explicitly Venetian
character, recalls Titian’s Martyrdom of St. Peter of
Verona, the famous altarpiece which was housed
in the church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo in Venice but
unfortunately destroyed in 1867 in a fire. The present
picture recalls Titian’s dramatic conception of the
scene, with the executioner who lashes out against
his victim on the ground, the twilight atmosphere and
the relationship between the trees and the landscape,
painted in the same manner. Titian’s altarpiece must
have impressed Mola greatly, as he made a fine copy
of it in around 1644 which was in the collection of
Don Gaspar de Haro y Guzman, Marchese del Carpio,
and then purchased by Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna, and
absorbed into the Rospigliosi collection eventually
passing to Pallavicini and now displayed in the Galleria
Pallavicini, Rome 2 (fig.1).
The theme of the dramatic murder of Abel, a favourite
of the Venetian masters (Titian and Tintoretto) and
then taken up by Caravaggisti such as Bartolommeo
Manfredi, Giuseppe Vermiglio, Filippo Vitale, etc.,
seems to have been only rarely depicted by the major
exponents of Roman Baroque painting. The clear
dependence upon the Titian and the Caravaggesque
heritage inherent in the subject, justify a dating of
the picture to the middle of the 17 th century, around
1650-52. Mola returned to the same subject in
another composition, painted for a ceiling of the
Palazzo Colonna, and showing a different moment:
Cain flees having killed his brother who lies dead
on the ground (1663-1666). Again, this scene has a
powerful dynamic force, but is less highly finished in
its technique 3 . A further elaboration of the subject,
again showing Cain fleeing and Abel lying in the
foreground, is variously given to Mola himself, to
his studio, and more recently, to his pupil, Giovanni
Bonati and is in the collection of the Cassa Depositi
e Prestiti in Rome 4 .
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