(Naples 1616–1656)
Allegory of Painting,
oil on canvas, 105.5 x 75 cm, framed

Provenance:
Sale Finarte, Milan, 20th November 1990 (as Cavallino);
Private Collection Rome

Literature:
A.T. Lurie, in: Bernardo Cavallino of Naples, 1616–1656, exhibition catalogue, Cleveland 1984, p. 182, no. 66a (as where abouts unknown, a copy after Cavallino [?]);
A.T. Lurie, in: Bernardo Cavallino, exhibition catalogue, Naples 1985, p. 146, fig. A37a (as “Ignota collocazione, copia da Cavallino [?]”);
N. Spinosa, Grazia e tenerezza ‘in posa’. Bernardo Cavallino e il suo tempo 1616–1656, Rome 2013, p. 311, fig. 45.1 (as Cavallino)

The present painting, depicting an Allegory of Painting, has recently been published by Nicola Spinosa in the monograph on the artist as a fully autograph work by Bernardo Cavallino (see literature). Another version of the present compostion is conserved in a private collection which was sold in Christie´s, London 13th December 2000 (lot 85) (see ibidem, p. 311, no. 45).

The painting is characterised by the use of colour, a warm red and olive green. The young woman is depicted in the manner of a portrait. The generous folds of her sleeve brush her left hand, which holds a brush and a palette revealing the colours she is using for her painting, while another brush is in her right hand. In terms of style and composition, the present painting displays similarities to Cavallino’s Saint Cecily (Museo di Capodimonte, Naples): in both compositions, the figure is depicted against drapery, with the right hand raised in an almost identical manner. This would suggest that both paintings were executed around the same time. Moreover, Painting’s contemplative gaze is related to several of Cavallino’s half-length figures from the mid or late 1640s, such as Saint Christina (Suida Manning Collection, New York).

Through the representation of Painting as a female figure on Michelangelo’s tomb in Santa Croce by Battista di Domenico Lorenzi in 1564, female allegories of painting had become extremely popular. Cesare Ripa’s depiction of Painting as a beautiful woman in “drappo cangiante” (a garment made of shimmering fabric) in his Iconologia further contributed to the subject’s dissemination.

At around the same period, the increasing recognition of painting as one of the seven liberal arts was reflected in a growing number of artists’ self-portraits. Cavallino, for example, appears as a figure in at least eight of his compositions. It is therefore not surprising that Artemisia Gentileschi, the most outstanding woman painter active at the time, whom Cavallino greatly admired, portrayed herself as an Allegory of Painting (Collection of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Hampton Court). It is highly probable that Cavallino drew his inspiration for the present Allegory of Painting from Gentileschi’s self-portrait, as well as from Andrea Vaccaro’s Portrait of the Artist Anna Massimo di Rosa (Galante Collection, Naples). Cavallino has here added an element of his own invention by crowning the figure with a laurel wreath, an attribute Ripa had reserved for his Allegory of Poetry. It is a subtle allusion to the mutual dependence and rivalry between painting and poetry which was a subject that was not only repeatedly in Cavallino’s own work, and was widely discussed by contemporaries at the time.