The Parnassus Biagio Pupini '500

Painting, oil on panel, 55 x 75 cm without frame and 65 x 85 cm with frame depicting Mount Parnassus by the Bolognese painter Biagio Pupini (Bologna 1511 - 1575).

The activity of Biagio Pupini, also known as Biagio delle Lame, exponent of the mannerism of the Bolognese area, is documented from 1511 to 1575.

He probably trained in the workshop of Francesco Francia and later collaborated with Bartolomeo Ramenghi, known as Bagnacavallo, on the frescoes in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli, in Faenza, which was later destroyed. In 1519 he was commissioned for cartoons for the windows of the Chapel of Peace, in the basilica of San Petronio, in Bologna, for which he painted an altarpiece with the Virgin and Child with saints (1524), now in a private collection.

The Muses were minor deities who belonged to the god Apollo. They were nine sisters, young and beautiful, daughters of Zeus and Mnemosine, which in Greek means memory, born at the foot of Olympus.

Inhabitants of Olympus, they preferred Parnassus to this, where they loved to play, sing and dance for the god Apollo; Parnassus is a mountain in central Greece, overlooking the city of Delphi.

Particularly venerated, Parnassus was consecrated to the cult of Apollo and to the nine Muses of which he was one of the two residences; according to Greek mythology, on this mountain there was a source sacred to the Muses, the Castalia source.

Pupini was able to establish himself as one of the most interesting Bolognese personalities, in that moment of transition from the sixteenth-century culture to the Baroque one, "precisely because of the turning point he impressed with a certain genius, the decorative taste of his time", adhering in his subject paintings pagan to that new language, which was now spreading throughout much of Europe.

The paintings and works of art published here are my exclusive property and therefore are always available to be viewed, by appointment, in my exhibition sites located in Sanremo and Brescia.

This item , like all our objects, is sold accompanied by a photographic certificate FIMA of authenticity and lawful origin; this document identifies the object by adding more value to the article.
We take care and personally organize the packaging and shipping of our items with insurance all over the world.

Mr. Riccardo Moneghini
Art Historian