Friday, May 16, 2025

Narrative Tendencies (1781-1806)

Pierre-Joseph Verhaghen
The Continence of Scipio
1781
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes

François-André Vincent
Arria and Paetus
1784
oil on canvas
Saint Louis Art Museum

Alessandro Alberganti
Scene of Plague called down from Heaven by David
1786
oil on canvas
Galleria Nazionale di  Parma

Jean-Jacques Lagrenée
Odysseus arriving at Circe's Palace
1787
oil on canvas
Musée de Picardie, Amiens

Jacques-Augustin Pajou
The dying Geta in his Mother's arms assassinated by order of his brother Caracalla
1788
oil on canvas
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart

Giuseppe Mazzola
The Wedding of Peleus and Thetis
1789
oil on panel
Galleria Sabauda, Turin

Louis Gauffier
La Générosité des Dames Romaines
1790
oil on canvas
Musée Sainte-Croix, Poitiers

Angelica Kauffmann
Praxiteles offering Phryne his statue of Cupid
1794
oil on canvas
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence

Pierre-Nicolas Legrand
A Good Deed is Never Forgotten
(aristocrat returning to prison to thank jailer who treated him well during the Terror)
1794-95
oil on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

Joseph-Marie Vien
Pulling Down the Statue of a Tyrant
(imaginary scene from Antiquity)
1795
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Franz Anton Maulbertsch
Coriolanus at the Gates of Rome
ca. 1795
oil on canvas (sketch)
National Museum, Warsaw

Jean-Baptiste Mallet
Visit to the Wet Nurse
ca. 1795-96
gouache on paper
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Johann Heinrich Ramberg
Ball Game in Rome
1797
drawing, with added watercolor
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Felice Giani
Death of Phocion
ca. 1798
drawing
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Achilles receiving the Envoys of Agamemnon
1801
oil on canvas
Musée de l'École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris

Pierre-Nolasque Bergeret
Presentation in 1506 of the Laocoön to Pope Julius II
1806
drawing
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux

"The first time I was in Rome when I was very young the Pope was told about the discovery of some very beautiful statues in a vineyard near Santa Maria Maggiore.  The pope ordered one of his officers to run and tell Giuliano da Sangallo to go and see them.  He set off immediately.  Since Michelangelo Buonarroti was always to be found at our house, my father having summoned him and having assigned him the commission of the Pope's tomb, my father wanted him to come along too.  I joined them and off we went.  I had climbed down to where the statues were, when immediately my father said, "That is the Laocoön, which Pliny mentions."  Then they dug the hole wider so that they could pull the statue out.  As soon as it was visible everyone started to draw, all the while discoursing on ancient things."

– from a letter by Francesco da Sangallo, quoted by Leonard Barkan in Unearthing the Past: Archaeology and Aestheticism in the making of Renaissance Culture (Yale University Press, 1999)