Bolognese School, 17th Century, Polyphemus In Love

Bolognese school, 17th century
Polyphemus in love
Oil on canvas, cm 33 x 45
With Frame, cm 62 x 51
Inscription on the back Hanibal Caracio

The painting depicts Polyphemus, half-drawn on a red drape, holding in one hand Pan’s flute and observing Galatea on a carriage pulled by a dolphin, accompanied by other sea gods.
The iconography is that of the Polyphemus in love, of which Annibale Carracci has proposed an example to fresco at the Farnese Gallery. The Gallery was frescoed by Annibale and Agostino Carracci, (to be finished by students, including Domenichino), between 1598 and 1600.
The dominant meaning of the whole cycle is manifested by the theme of Sacred Love and Profane Love, subject housed in the vault. Linked to the theme is therefore the story of Polyphemus who in Galleria Farnese returns in the two paintings placed in the short sides of the gallery, which present Polyphemus and Galatea (or Polyphemus in love) and Polyphemus Throws a stone against Aci. Both scenes are inspired by the Metamorphoses of Ovid, which traces a different profile of the Cyclops than that handed down from the Odyssey. In fact, Ovidiio tells him that he is in love with the nereide Galatea so much that he dedicates to her a passionate song in which he offers all his love and all his wealth, also showing her his suffering for the rejection opposed by the nymph and his anger for the rival Aci (which Galatea loves). Carracci, follows the ekphrasis of a painting of the same subject that is in the Images of Philostratus the old, work dating from the third century B.C. which contains a series of descriptions of paintings (it is unknown whether real or imaginary), among which, precisely, that with Polyphemus and Galatea (Book II, n. XVIII).
The same can be said for the painting under examination, made by an artist close to Carracci as some stylistic and compositional debts demonstrate. In particular, there are similarities in the construction of the group with Galatea and the two handmaids and in the monumentality of the figure of the Cyclops, which in both works exploits and supports the orientation. Certainly the frescoes of Galleria Borghese by the Carracci were an inspiration for many of the artists who during the seventeenth century appeared in Rome. Among those who were inspired by the reading of the Ovidio myth can be mentioned Giovanni Francesco Romanelli, born in Viterbo, at the age of 14 years he went to Rome to study to become an artist and was a pupil of Domenichino and Pietro da Cortona. 

The object is in good condition

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