TURCHI, Alessandro

Several other versions of this painting are known from the artist.

Bellona, a Roman war goddess, is variably known as the wife and sister of Mars, the Roman God of war, and in depicting her with Mars’ children Romulus and Remus, Turchi has presented a classic Roman image of the highest order. Bellona is recognized by her typical attributes: a plumed helmet, metal breastplate, and spear. Rome’s founders, Romulus and Remus, are immediately recognizable as they suckle the divine she-wolf that protects the infants after being cast away by their grandfather’s brother, Amulius.

Turchi utilizes an overall a Caravaggesque lighting scheme, with a strong use of chiaroscuro in which the single source of light washes over the composition from top left, creating deep shadows in the folds of Bellona’s flowing drapery. This dramatic lighting contrasts with a colourful palette and classicising figures, both inspired by Annibale Carracci and Domenichino.

This scene from the Passion of Christ is an early painting by the artists. It was painted on slate. Turchi’s smooth modeling and careful brushwork lent themselves well to hard supports such as slate and copper.

The figure of David is shown against a dark background with no accoutrements other than the sling hanging from his left hand. David’s expression, though determined, is humble rather than victorious.

Christ’s body has been removed from the cross and laid on a tomb. A basket in the foreground contains the crown of thorns and purple robe with which he was mocked on the way to his crucifixion. Mary Magdalene tenderly examines his wounds by the light of an angel’s torch.

This moving image was painted on touchstone, a smooth black stone on which gold or silver could be rubbed to test their purity. The stone’s dark unpainted surface contrasts with the brightly lit figures, enhancing the drama of the scene.

This painting was formerly in the Royal Castle, Budapest.

According to Torquato Tasso’s account in Gerusalemme Liberata (canto XIX, 104-14), Tancred, after being wounded by Argante during the siege of Jerusalem, is helped by Vafrino. On removing Tancred’s armor and discovering his wounds, he tells Erminia. Erminia tends her lover’s bloody wounds with the braided tresses of her own hair. The depiction of the subject was influenced by two famous Christian themes: The Lament over the Dead Christ and St Sebastian Tended by Pious Women.

Although often included among the ranks of the followers of Caravaggio in Rome, a grouping which the nocturnal effects of the Lamentation make plausible, Turchi in fact exercised considerable independence in his choice of sources and influences. Painted in 1617, only a few years after he left his native Verona and settled in Rome, the work reveals a surprisingly strong classicising tendency, despite the use of artificial illumination and dramatic contrasts of light and shade. Part of the Caravaggesque quality here, however, is a product of two very specific elements, the use of slate as a support and the artificial illumination. Since the natural colour of the slate normally serves to produce extreme contrasts of light and shade, Turchi may have included an artificial light source to take advantage of those tendencies inherent in the support. If we put aside the strong use of an internal light source, which could have been inspired by any number of Roman or even northern Italian sources, there is no other apparent influence from such Caravaggesque painters as Gerrit van Honthorst, who specialised in nocturnal effects. Nevertheless, Turchi can hardly have failed to notice the attention the young Utrecht painter was attracting in Rome with his brilliant nocturnal effects at this very moment.

Furthermore, as a northern Italian, he was certainly familiar with the various nocturnal scenes popularised by the Bassano family. When it came to the rendering of the figures, however, it is to Annibale Carracci’s famous c. 1600 Pietà (Museo di Capodimonte, Naples) that Turchi turned. In 1617 this famous painting, made for Cardinal Odoardo Farnese, was still in the Palazzo Farnese in Rome. From this important and unusually lovely canvas by Annibale, Turchi borrowed the idealised pose and classical rendering of the body of his dead Christ. This strongly classicising quality probably accounts for the later attribution of the picture to Annibale himself in the 1700 inventory of the Borghese collection.

In 1617, Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the nephew of Pope Paul V, paid for two small paintings, The Raising of Lazarus and The Lamentation over the Dead Christ, both now in the Galleria Borghese. They represent Turchi’s speciality at that moment: painting on slate.