.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
The source of Amigoni's erotic cabinet painting is the Metamorphoses (Book 2) in which Ovid tells the tale of one of Jupiter's most celebrated seductions. Callisto was the favorite nymph of Diana, virgin goddess of the hunt. Overcome with desire when he discovered her in Arcadia, Jupiter disguised himself as Diana in order to win the nymph's trust before seducing her - the moment depicted by Amigoni. Several months later, when the pregnant Callisto was forced to disrobe before bathing with the other nymphs, the violation of her chastity was revealed and Diana expelled her from the forest, whereupon Jupiter's wife Juno, consumed with jealousy, transformed her into a bear. Just as she was about to be attacked by hunting dogs, Callisto was rescued by Jupiter when the god transformed her and their infant son into the constellations Ursus Major and Minor.
Amigoni painted the subject of Jupiter in the guise of Diana seducing Callisto several times, perhaps over a period of years. A version similar to the present painting, but with significant variations in the arrangement of putti and dogs, was acquired by the Hermitage, Leningrad in 1872. The Hermitage painting is larger (24 3/8 x 29 15/16 in.) and less refined in handling with the central group posed in front of a curtain which drapes over the branches of a tree. A still larger version (35 x 33 in.), which is entirely different in composition, was with Colnaghi in 1946 (sold, Sotheby's, London, November 28, 1962, lot 168); this painting is broader in its execution and appears to date from the late 1730s or 40s.
Although it is impossible to date the present work with certainty, there is good reason to believe that it was executed in England around the time as the Jupiter and Io decorations for Moor Park, Hertfordshire in 1732. One of the Moor Park panels, Spring, derives directly from the central grouping in Zephyrus and Flora, an etching made by Amigoni as the pendant to his etching Diana and Callisto, which he based on the present painting. (Inscriptions on the etchings clearly indicate that they were made by Amigoni after his own paintings, and no version of the Diana and Callisto composition directly corresponds to the print except the present work.) As the Moor Park Spring is known to date to circa 1732, it can be assumed that the pair of etchings is from about the same time and that this Diana and Callisto was painted only shortly before Amigoni etched it. Furthermore, the style of our painting, with its delicate feminine types 'in the French style', is characteristic of Amigoni in the later 1720s and early 1730s when his works display the painterly grace of François Lemoyne.
Amigoni's composition would have been widely known through the dissemination of his print, and may have had some influence on the development of Franois Boucher's mythological cabinet paintings of the 1740s and 50s, such as Leda and the Swan (1742; private collection, Los Angeles) and his own Jupiter in the Guise of Diana Seducing Callisto (1756; Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City). Boucher's interpretation of the latter subject includes a pair of flying putti holding aloft Love's torch and the inconspicuously placed eagle of Jupiter, as in the earlier Amigoni.
The popularity of Amigoni's Diana and Callisto is attested to by the recreation of the image in Gutwein's engraving after Pietro Longhi's genre scene Milord's Visitor (see Teresio Pignatti, Longhi, 1969, p. 82, fig. 27), as well as by the various anonymous copies which have surfaced (see, for example, Geri sale, Galleria Pesaro, Milan, 11 November 1931, lot 50).
Amigoni painted the subject of Jupiter in the guise of Diana seducing Callisto several times, perhaps over a period of years. A version similar to the present painting, but with significant variations in the arrangement of putti and dogs, was acquired by the Hermitage, Leningrad in 1872. The Hermitage painting is larger (24 3/8 x 29 15/16 in.) and less refined in handling with the central group posed in front of a curtain which drapes over the branches of a tree. A still larger version (35 x 33 in.), which is entirely different in composition, was with Colnaghi in 1946 (sold, Sotheby's, London, November 28, 1962, lot 168); this painting is broader in its execution and appears to date from the late 1730s or 40s.
Although it is impossible to date the present work with certainty, there is good reason to believe that it was executed in England around the time as the Jupiter and Io decorations for Moor Park, Hertfordshire in 1732. One of the Moor Park panels, Spring, derives directly from the central grouping in Zephyrus and Flora, an etching made by Amigoni as the pendant to his etching Diana and Callisto, which he based on the present painting. (Inscriptions on the etchings clearly indicate that they were made by Amigoni after his own paintings, and no version of the Diana and Callisto composition directly corresponds to the print except the present work.) As the Moor Park Spring is known to date to circa 1732, it can be assumed that the pair of etchings is from about the same time and that this Diana and Callisto was painted only shortly before Amigoni etched it. Furthermore, the style of our painting, with its delicate feminine types 'in the French style', is characteristic of Amigoni in the later 1720s and early 1730s when his works display the painterly grace of François Lemoyne.
Amigoni's composition would have been widely known through the dissemination of his print, and may have had some influence on the development of Franois Boucher's mythological cabinet paintings of the 1740s and 50s, such as Leda and the Swan (1742; private collection, Los Angeles) and his own Jupiter in the Guise of Diana Seducing Callisto (1756; Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City). Boucher's interpretation of the latter subject includes a pair of flying putti holding aloft Love's torch and the inconspicuously placed eagle of Jupiter, as in the earlier Amigoni.
The popularity of Amigoni's Diana and Callisto is attested to by the recreation of the image in Gutwein's engraving after Pietro Longhi's genre scene Milord's Visitor (see Teresio Pignatti, Longhi, 1969, p. 82, fig. 27), as well as by the various anonymous copies which have surfaced (see, for example, Geri sale, Galleria Pesaro, Milan, 11 November 1931, lot 50).