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Lot Essay
A rhapsodic tale of obsessive love, marital fidelity and the heroic strength of women, the Death of Sinorix is the culmination of a story recounted by Plutarch (On The Bravery of Women, XX, Camma). Born a princess of the Celtic Tolistobolii tribe in Galatia (today’s central Turkey), Camma was renowned for her beauty, wit and kindness. She fell in love with and married one of the most powerful men in Galatia – a tetrarch called Sinatus, and was made High Priestess of the Mother Goddess (Cybele-Artemis) at Pessinus, thereby assuming the highest position that could be attained by a woman at the time. Unwittingly, however, Camma attracted the lascivious attention of her husband’s cousin Sinorix. Seeing Sinatus as the only obstacle to his desire, Sinorix treacherously murdered him and immediately began to woo his grieving widow, exerting his influence on her family to facilitate a marriage between them. The heartbroken Camma resisted for as long as she could, but finally relented under intense pressure from her family, and agreed to the union with Sinorix. A lavish wedding ceremony was arranged at the Mother Temple of Artemis. As the celebrations progressed before the high altar, Camma filled a poisoned chalice with milk and honey to share with Sinorix. Drinking deeply and smiling, the princess then passed the chalice to Sinorix who eagerly finished it. As she collapsed in agony she joyously proclaimed: ‘I call you to witness Goddess most revered, that for the sake of this day, I have lived on after the murder of Sinatus and during all that time I have derived no comfort from life save only the hope of justice’; and turning to Sinorix she added: ‘As for you wickedest of all men, let your relatives make ready a tomb instead of a bridal chamber’. Sinorix was carried off in a chariot, but died in unbearable pain that night. Camma survived until dawn and then, on hearing of Sinorix’s death, passed away contentedly.
Pietro Testa depicts the chaotic moment of Sinorix’s limp body being carried away from the temple as the crowd erupts violently around him. The subject was virtually without pictorial precedent at the time and characteristic of Testa’s highly unusual selection of themes, which has been linked with his personal interest in Platonic philosophy and his own melancholic temperament. His death by drowning in the river Tiber at the age of thirty nine is understood to have been an act of suicide. The artist was born in Lucca in 1612 and recorded in Rome by the mid-1620s. His first success was as a draughtsman, particularly of antiquities. While in Rome he worked for Joachim Sandrart, the painter and biographer, providing drawings for the Galleria Giustiniani, an etched compendium of Vincenzo Giustiniani’s collection of classical sculpture. By 1630, he was employed by Cassiano dal Pozzo to provide drawings of antiquities for the Museo Cartaceo (dal Pozzo’s celebrated ‘Paper Museum’), and it is through this connection that Testa met Claude Lorrain, Gaspard Dughet, François Duquesnoy and, most notably, Poussin, the driving force in bringing classical principles to the art of the day. Testa, while well respected as a printmaker and draughtsman, strove to make a name for himself as a history painter. He joined the studio of Domenichino, and then, when the latter moved to Naples in 1631, that of Pietro da Cortona. Testa’s paintings of the 1630s were conceived in a poetic, lyrical style, clearly reflecting the influence of Poussin, and moving in the 1640s toward an even greater monumentalism, which is expressed in this painting.
This remarkable picture was first re-habilitated into Testa’s oeuvre by Hugh Brigstocke in 1989, after Cropper had expressed misgivings about it (see literature). The design connects with the central and left hand portions of an etching (New York, Metropolitan Museum), showing the scene in reverse, and for which there survives an unusually elaborate sequence of preparatory drawings, including the full compositional sheet in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York (fig. 1). Karin Hartmann believed that the drawings were from the early phase of Testa’s career, but Brigstocke dates them later, placing the painting within the artist’s maturity, circa 1642, shortly after his more restrained treatment of the Sacrifice of Iphigenia (Rome, Galleria Spada). He regarded the present work as unfinished, noting numerous pentimenti especially in the background figures. However, he was emphatic about its credentials: ‘The quality of execution is remarkably high; indeed the group of figures carrying Sinorix is as fine as anything Testa painted’ (op. cit.). He further observed that the grimacing male figure with a plumed helmet in the right foreground directly anticipates the figure of Charon in the picture of Aeneas on the bank of the river Styx (Christie’s, London, 8 December 2015, lot 31, sold £746,500).
Pietro Testa depicts the chaotic moment of Sinorix’s limp body being carried away from the temple as the crowd erupts violently around him. The subject was virtually without pictorial precedent at the time and characteristic of Testa’s highly unusual selection of themes, which has been linked with his personal interest in Platonic philosophy and his own melancholic temperament. His death by drowning in the river Tiber at the age of thirty nine is understood to have been an act of suicide. The artist was born in Lucca in 1612 and recorded in Rome by the mid-1620s. His first success was as a draughtsman, particularly of antiquities. While in Rome he worked for Joachim Sandrart, the painter and biographer, providing drawings for the Galleria Giustiniani, an etched compendium of Vincenzo Giustiniani’s collection of classical sculpture. By 1630, he was employed by Cassiano dal Pozzo to provide drawings of antiquities for the Museo Cartaceo (dal Pozzo’s celebrated ‘Paper Museum’), and it is through this connection that Testa met Claude Lorrain, Gaspard Dughet, François Duquesnoy and, most notably, Poussin, the driving force in bringing classical principles to the art of the day. Testa, while well respected as a printmaker and draughtsman, strove to make a name for himself as a history painter. He joined the studio of Domenichino, and then, when the latter moved to Naples in 1631, that of Pietro da Cortona. Testa’s paintings of the 1630s were conceived in a poetic, lyrical style, clearly reflecting the influence of Poussin, and moving in the 1640s toward an even greater monumentalism, which is expressed in this painting.
This remarkable picture was first re-habilitated into Testa’s oeuvre by Hugh Brigstocke in 1989, after Cropper had expressed misgivings about it (see literature). The design connects with the central and left hand portions of an etching (New York, Metropolitan Museum), showing the scene in reverse, and for which there survives an unusually elaborate sequence of preparatory drawings, including the full compositional sheet in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York (fig. 1). Karin Hartmann believed that the drawings were from the early phase of Testa’s career, but Brigstocke dates them later, placing the painting within the artist’s maturity, circa 1642, shortly after his more restrained treatment of the Sacrifice of Iphigenia (Rome, Galleria Spada). He regarded the present work as unfinished, noting numerous pentimenti especially in the background figures. However, he was emphatic about its credentials: ‘The quality of execution is remarkably high; indeed the group of figures carrying Sinorix is as fine as anything Testa painted’ (op. cit.). He further observed that the grimacing male figure with a plumed helmet in the right foreground directly anticipates the figure of Charon in the picture of Aeneas on the bank of the river Styx (Christie’s, London, 8 December 2015, lot 31, sold £746,500).