(Belluno 1659–1734 Venice)
The Triumph of Venus,
oil on canvas, 48 x 38.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, France;
art market, France

We are grateful to Annalisa Scarpa for confirming the attribution of the present painting.

This composition relates to the painting Triumph of the Marine Venus by Sebastiano Ricci conserved in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (oil on canvas, 160 x 210.8 cm, inv. no. 72.PA.29). Unlike the Getty painting, the present work is in a vertical format. Although the figures are arranged in the same way as in the Getty painting, there are slight variations, especially the widening of the sky upwards. The pyramidal distribution of the figures in space appears more extended in the Getty picture and closer in the present work. It has been suggested that the present painting is a preparatory sketch or a modello for the Getty painting.

The composition of present painting is strikingly original in its conception and demonstrates Sebastiano Ricci’s inventiveness as an artist. As one of the leading protagonists in the development of the Rococo style of painting, he received commissions from collectors and connoisseurs throughout Europe, and demand for his work was strengthened by his travels through Italy and abroad. Annalisa Scarpa places this painting within the artist’s mature period.

Similar geometric compositions as in the present work can be seen in Ricci’s Neptune and Amphitrite and its pendant Bacchus and Ariadne, both conserved in the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid (inv. no. 340, 1982.33 and inv. no. 341, 1982.34), but executed at least a decade earlier and still echoing a strong Roman influence (see A. Scarpa, ibid., 2006, p. 236, nos. 265, 266, figs. 162–163). The present painting already shows the typical pictorial language of Ricci’s maturity, his tendency for stage like settings and a post-baroque taste of combining physicality with the softness of the flesh tones. Also his choice of colours and the use of chiaroscuro locate the present painting to a date of execution similar to that of the large canvases for Burlington House (now the Royal Academy, London, cf. A. Scarpa, ibid., 2006, pp. 208–209, nos. 190, 191, figs. 412–413).

The rapid brushwork, the sensual and seductive character of the protagonists, the elegant shapes and the importance given to the sky welcoming the play of sunlight, are typical elements of Rococo painting. Naiads, tritons and putti swirl around the goddess in the eddies of the waves. The painter uses a wide range of tones to describe the playful and graceful figures, extending from the tanned complexion of muscular men to the very pale skin of women. The pearl-white body of Venus is accentuated by pink highlights on her cheeks, chest, stomach and knees. In the azure-blue sky, misty clouds and fading sunlight are rendered by quick, gliding touches of pink paint. The goddess, surrounded by her retinue, is seated on a throne covered with elegant red drapery and pulled by tritons. She turns to one of her companions and orders him to lead the convoy to the shore she points at in the background. To the left, a young boy uses a shell as a trumpet to warn those in attendance of the change of direction. Seen from the back, a triton in the foreground on the right pulls one of the strings attached to the shell-chariot. A cupid flying over the scene seizes a handful of corals in a tray presented by a naiad partially concealed by the goddess. In the upper area, another naiad in a saffron-yellow drape holds a pearl necklace in her right hand which falls on the hair and shoulder of Venus.

Sebastiano Ricci was born in Belluno and at the age of 12 he moved to Venice, where he was apprenticed to the Milanese artist Federico Cervelli. He then moved to Bologna and became a pupil of Giovanni Gioseffo Dal Sole. It was in this city that he obtained his first official commissions and the support of the Duke of Parma, Ranuccio II Farnese, who commissioned The Continence of Scipio, The Abduction of Helen (Parma, National Gallery) and Scenes from the Life of Pope Paul III (Piacenza, Museo Civico). Sent to Rome to study the works of Carracci, Ricci began to develop his own style. Luca Giordano and the great decorators Pietro da Cortona and Baciccio played a central role in his development. In 1695, he travelled to Northern Italy and discovered Florence, Bologna, Modena and Milan, where he met Alessandro Magnasco. He completed several decorative ensembles in Venice, Rome and Padua around 1700. After a sojourn in Vienna in 1702, he painted frescoes for the Marucelli and Pitti palaces in Florence around 1706–1707, which betray his debt to Veronese and reveal the Rococo style of his full maturity. The Madonna and Child with Saints in the church of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice bears witness to this new, clear, ample, dynamic and fluid style. Between 1712 and 1716 he travelled to London with his nephew Marco, and painted, among other things, the large mythological compositions for Burlington House. On his way back, Ricci stopped in Paris in 1718 and was received at the Academy of Painting and Sculpture with the Triumph of Wisdom over Ignorance, which established his international reputation. He ended his career in Venice, where he executed a considerable number of decorative canvases with mythological or allegorical subjects, as well as church paintings.