Monday, March 7, 2016

Pietro Testa II

Pietro Testa
Self-portrait
ca. 1645
etching
Philadelphia Museum of Art

The drawings and etchings of Pietro Testa (1611-1650) survive in plentiful numbers, though his paintings are rare. The sketches and preparatory works reveal an otherworldly idealism and an affinity for intricate webs of meaning.

Pietro Testa
Allegorical Figures of Reason and Wisdom
ca. 1630
drawing
Museum Kunstpalast Dusseldorf

Pietro Testa
Death of Sinorix
17th century
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Pietro Testa
Death of Sinorix
17th century
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Pietro Testa
Two Women di sotto in su
17th century
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Pietro Testa
Achilles dragging the body of Hector behind his chariot around the walls of Troy
ca. 1648-50
etching
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Pietro Testa
Triumph of the Artist-Virtuoso on Parnassus
1644-46
Bayerische Staatsgemaldesammlungen

Testa's painting (above) and etching (below) of the artist's conquest of Parnassus demonstrate his taste for extreme elaboration. Italian collectors of the mid-17th century were in fact happy to occupy themselves with deciphering Testa's intricate schemes of meaning. Later generations have had less patience and have often been inclined to find nothing in these pictures but a tangle of figures.

Pietro Testa
Triumph of the Artist-Virtuoso on Parnassus
1640s
etching
National Gallery of Art (U.S.)

Pietro Testa
Youth in the Service of Virtue & the Sciences
ca. 1644
etching
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Pietro Testa
Allegory of Painting
ca. 1637-38
etching
National Gallery of Art (U.S.)

Pietro Testa
Aeneas and the Cumean Sybil showing the Golden Bough to Charon on the Banks of the River Styx
1648-50
private collection

The scene above  one of the last the artist painted  represents a literary episode that has been explicated by curators at the Philadelphia Museum of Art   "... the dramatic incident from Virgil's Aeneid in which Aeneas tries to cross the Styx in search of his father, Anchises, in the underworld. The attempt entails bribing the fearsome boatman Charon to take him across the river, which Aeneas, helped by the Cumean Sybil, succeeds in doing by offering Charon the Golden Bough, the bough of destiny long hidden. Virgil, who dwelt deliciously on the unspeakable horrors of hell, described the boatman thusly: "a grim ferryman guards the waters of this river, Charon, hideous in his squalor, on his chin there lies a mass of untrimmed gray hair; his eyes are fixed and fiery." Testa's challenge was to depict Charon's terrifying face while at the same time showing the boatman's wonder at the spectacle of the Golden Bough." 


Pietro Testa
Self-portrait
17th century
etching
Rijksmuseum