Sunday, July 22, 2018

Italian Artists Interpreting Ariadne

Jacopo Caraglio
Ariadne
1526
engraving
British Museum

Anonymous printmaker
Triumph of Bacchus, with sleeping Ariadne
ca. 1530-70
engraving
British Museum

"After a drawing previously attributed to Perino del Vaga, and now thought to be by Piero Bonnacorsi, in the Musée du Louvre, Paris.  The drawing was one of six designs intended to be engraved on crystal for the Casetta Farnese, currently in the collection of the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples.  Another of the designs [directly below] was engraved by Enea Vico in 1543."

– curator's notes from the British Museum

Enea Vico
The Indian Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne
(based on an ancient relief sculpture)
ca. 1543
engraving
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Simone Cantarini after Guido Reni
Bacchus and Ariadne
ca. 1640-48
drawing
Royal Collection, Great Britain

"A drawing of Bacchus standing to the left, his hand to his chest.  Ariadne seated to the right in an attitude of surprise.  The figures are essentially copied from Guido Reni's larger composition of the same subject, painted 1637-40 for Queen Henrietta Maria, destroyed in 1650 [by Puritan usurpers], but known through copies and engravings."

– curator's notes from the Royal Collection

Gian Battista Bolognini after Guido Reni
Bacchus with his companions discovering Ariadne on the Island of Naxos
ca. 1650-80
etching
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

"Three joined sheets with impressions from three plates.  After a painting by Guido Reni made for the Queen of England (according to Barsch)."   In other words, this etching is a copy of the complete Reni painting destroyed in 1650 (though a copy possibly made from an earlier copy rather than from the original), of which the Cantarini drawing above is a modified detail.

– curator's notes from the Metropolitan Museum

Pietro Testa
Bacchus discovers the sleeping Ariadne
before 1650
drawing
(originally owned by Queen Christina of Sweden)
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Pietro Santi Bartoli
Triumphal Procession with Bacchus and Ariadne
(from the series, Wonders of Ancient Rome)
ca. 1685
engraving
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Sebastiano Ricci
Bacchus and Ariadne
ca. 1700-1710
drawing
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Sebastiano Ricci
Bacchus and Ariadne
ca. 1700-1725
oil on canvas
Chiswick House, London

Marcantonio Franceschini
Ariadne viewing the approach of Bacchus' ship
(study for an overdoor painting)
1707
wash drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Jacopo Guarano
Bacchus and Ariadne
ca. 1750
etching
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Gaspare Diziani
Bacchus and Ariadne
before 1767
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

Andrea Casali
Bacchus and Ariadne
ca. 1750
oil on canvas
Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, Lancashire

Bernardino Gentili il Giovane after Annibale Carracci
Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne
ca. 1750-60
tin-glazed earthenware
Victoria & Albert Museum

"Panel, painted in blue, yellow, orange, olive green and manganese purple, depicting the Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne, adapted from an engraving after the painting by Annibale Carracci in Palazzo Farnese, Rome.  The god and his consort are riding in a chariot drawn by two panthers escorted by a youth and little boys with a goat.  To the left, a satyr reclining with his arms round the neck of another goat." 

– curator's notes from the Victoria & Albert Museum