BELLUCCI, Antonio - b. 1654 Pieve di Soligo, d. 1726 Pieve di Soligo - WGA

BELLUCCI, Antonio

(b. 1654 Pieve di Soligo, d. 1726 Pieve di Soligo)

Italian painter, active also in Austria, Germany and England. He studied drawing with a nobleman Domenico Difnico in Sebenico (Sibenik) in Dalmatia (now part of Croatia, at that time a Venetian colony) and went to Venice around 1675. His first works were influenced by Pietro Liberi, Andrea Celesti and Antonio Zanchi, as is apparent from the large canvas showing St Lorenzo Giustiniani, first Patriarch of Venice, praying for the city’s deliverance from the plague of 1447 (c. 1691; Venice, S Pietro di Castello, choir). In the following years, in response to Veronese, his palette became lighter.

The first of his contacts with Austria was made in 1692, when he executed four altarpieces depicting scenes from the lives of various saints for the church of Klosterneuburg (in situ). From 1695 to 1700 he lived in Vienna; he was back in Venice in 1700 and returned to Vienna in 1702. During his years in Vienna he decorated the grandiose ceilings of the Palais Liechtenstein with the Triumph of Hercules and allegorical scenes that look back to Bolognese decorative painters, such as Carlo Cignani. He is recorded in Venice again in 1704, and in 1705 he travelled to Düsseldorf to work for John William, Elector of the Palatinate, a member of the Wittelsbach family; he worked there almost continuously until his patron’s death in 1716. Among the paintings executed for John William’s country seat, Schloss Bensberg, are the Marriage of John William with Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici and Elector Palatine John William Handing the Baton of Command to his Son (both Munich, Alte Pinakothek). From 1716 to 1722 Bellucci was in England, where he fulfilled several commissions for James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos, including the decoration of two ceilings (destroyed) at Cannons, the Duke’s country house in Middlesex.

Bellucci is one of the best representatives of the transition from the rhetorical Venetian late Baroque to the lighter style of the 18th century. His work was particularly important for his pupil Antonio Balestra and for the early development of Sebastiano Ricci.

Antiochus and Stratonice

Antonio Bellucci’s work, greatly esteemed during his lifetime, builds on the discoveries of the great Venetian painters of the 16th century (Titian, Veronese), this being particularly evident in his use of glowing colour.

The story represented in this painting is taken from Plutarch. Antiochus (324-261 BC), son of Seleucus I, King of Syria, had fallen ill of a mysterious disease. Erasistratos, his father’s personal physician, discovered the cause only when he felt his patient’s heartbeat become violent and irregular on the queen’s entering the room; Antiochos had fallen hopelessly in love with his young stepmother Stratonice. Seleukos I then magnanimously gave up his wife, offering her to his son as his bride.

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Antiochus and Stratonice (detail)

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Danaë

The theme of the princess confined in a tower and visited by Jupiter in the form of a shower of gold was extremely popular in Italian painting from the 16th century. Bellucci, who often painted mythological series as well as series of nudes for his distinguished clients, treated the subject several times. Another version of the scene painted vertically was made during the artist’s sojourn at D�sseldorf and has survived in the Augsburg Gallery. The picture at the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts may be regarded as an earlier work, its pure, unfaltering design and warm colouring show an affinity to the paintings of Bellucci produced in the early 1700s in Vienna.

Danaë is frequently represented in Renaissance and Baroque painting. You can view other depictions of Danaë in the Web Gallery of Art.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 5 minutes):

Richard Strauss: Danaë’s Love, Danaë’s monologue

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Hercules in the Palace of Omphale

Forced by Juno to be sold as a slave, Hercules was purchased by Queen Omphale, with whom he indulged in frivolous role and love games. Here we see the unusually docile hero giving his club to the queen in exchange foe a spindle and cone.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 8 minutes):

Camille Saint-Saens: Le rouet d’Omphale (Omphale’s Spinning Wheel), symphonic poem op. 31

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Portrait of a Procurator

Formerly this large painting was attributed to Sebastiano Bombelli. It shows an unknown Venetian procurator, sumptuously dressed in precious, fur-trimmed crimson velvet, who seems to have just got up from the armchair behind him and is making a polite gesture towards a newly arrived guest. Further back, beyond the plinth of the column, a marble statue can be seen showing a woman presenting a ring. This is probably an allegorical representation of Marital Fidelity, whose presence could be explained by the reference to the unknown procurator’s recent wedding.

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Rebecca at the Well

The style of this painting reflects Bellucci’s formative period in Venice from the late 1670s onwards, and in particular the influence of painters such as Antonio Zanchi.

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Rebecca at the Well (detail)

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Samson and Delilah

The subject of Samson and Delilah, drawn from the Old Testament (Judges 16: 19-20), was frequently treated in seventeenth-century painting. It allowed artists to illustrate the supremacy of passion, and its unfortunate consequences once reason lays dormant.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 10 minutes):

Camille Saint-Saens: Samson et Delila, Delila’s aria

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