Artista attivo a Roma, met

Oil on canvas cm. 123x92,5. Framed In Roman secular painting of the mid-seventeenth century, Bacchic subjects played a primary role, linked to divinity and agricultural festivities, set in wooded landscapes and characterized by the presence of nymphs, maenads, satyrs, and sileni. These themes could be adapted to a predominantly playful or decorative interpretation, but they could also lend themselves to moralizing content, in accordance with the explicit erotic and grotesque undertones naturally associated with the subject. In this painting of sumptuous pictorial quality, these latter meanings prevail, with the old and lustful satyr intent on playing the straight flute and the young nymph accompanying him, partially undressed and apparently consenting.
This precious unpublished work displays a fascinating combination of stylistic, compositional, and iconographic elements, referring to the mid-seventeenth-century Roman cultural context. Clear references can be identified to the painting of Mola (Faun Playing the Syrinx, Hatchlands Park, Cobbe Collection; Mercury and Argus, Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College; Bacchus and Ariadne, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig), Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (Allegory of Abundance, Palazzo Doria, Genoa), and Salvator Rosa (Mercury and Argus, private collection). Private collection, Rome.