(Venice? 1644 – after 1696)
Venus and two putti,
oil on canvas, 113 x 138.5 cm, framed

We are grateful to Enrico Lucchese for endorsing the attribution of the present painting after examination in the original and for his help in cataloguing this lot.

The scene depicts Venus just after her bath, as suggested by the basin and other metal containers on the left. The goddess embraces her son Cupid, while another winged child on the right seems to complain about being excluded from this affectionate gesture. This second character can be identified as Anteros, Cupid’s younger brother, symbolising perhaps the duality between reciprocated and unreciprocated love.

This unpublished painting can be stylistically compared to Jupiter and Asteria in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest the only known signed work by Marco Liberi (see U. Ruggeri, Pietro e Marco Liberi. Painters in 17th century Venice, Rimini 1996, p. 284).

Pietro Liberi was born in Padua and trained as an artist in the workshop of Alessandro Varotari, il Padovanino. In 1628, he left for Constantinople and in 1632 was captured and enslaved by a pirate ship. After managing to escape and enduring a long journey in the Mediterranean, he returned to Italy in 1638, where he resumed his work as a painter, first in Rome and then in Venice. His son Marco was born around 1644 and collaborated with him as an artist from 1665, when the two frescoed The Glory of Saint Anthony in the sacristy of the Basilica of Padua. Both the painting presented here and Jupiter and Asteria in Budapest date to this same period.

In this Venus and Two Putti, Marco Liberi refers to his father’s painting Venus and the Graces (Venice, Palazzo Albrizzi; see Ruggeri op. cit., p. 195), but transforms Pietro’s Baroque grandeur into more graceful forms. This distinctive feature of Marco Liberi’s style was already noted and appreciated by the 18th century critic Anton Maria Zanetti, who regarded him as a precursor to the classicist pictorial language of Antonio Balestra (see E. Lucchese, Nel segno della grazia. Antonio Balestra maestro di Anton Maria Zanetti di Girolamo e nella ‘Scuola del Nudo’ di Giambattista Tiepolo, in: Valori Tattili, 9, 2017, p. 156).