Life Drawing

Fortune by Guido Reni was the first painting transferred to the Academy of Saint Luke. Fortune, played by a woman, holds a golden crown in the right hand, in the other holds a scepter and a palm tree. A cupid in flight tries to hold her for long, loose hair while the perfect Fortuna body, flying over the world.

Around 1637 Guido Reni realized two different versions of Fortune, which became very popular and were replicated many times in the workshop of the artist, occasionally with his own direct intervention. Recent restoration work has revealed the presence of a purse hidden behind the crown, confirming that this is indeed the Fortune painted by Giarola and finished by Guido Reni.

The fresco,Venus and Love, kept in storage at the Capitol, had never really been part of the Capitoline collection. Giovanni Francesco Barbieri called Guercino executed this fresco for Villa Giovannina, not distant from Cento, owned by count Filippo Maria Aldovrandi, and decorated by a few artists with scenes drawn from celebrated poems.

The fresco was ripped from the wall in 1786, or thereabouts, and moved to the family’s residence in Bologna, and then was donated to Pope Gregory XVI.

Among the eleven works of the Capitoline collection there is this Perseus and Andromeda by Cavalier d'Arpino, the replica of an autograph on slate, today at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Giuseppe Cesari called Cavalier d’Arpino came back repeatedly to this famous mythological fable in various painting: Perseus fights against the sea monster to free Andromeda. She then became his spouse.

In this version the sudden arrival of Perseus riding Pegasus is a variation on the theme introduced by Ovid’s Metamorphosis and in the paiting an extensive intervention of his collaborators is quite likely. Cavalier d’Arpino was an important member of the Accademia di San Luca so much that he was appointed Prince in the 1600 e and re-elected in 1616 and 1629.

Susanna and the Elders by Palma the Younger is the one of the pictures belong to the original nucleus of the Pinacoteca Capitolina and came from the Sacchetti collection, whose best paintings were purchased for the Capitol in 1748.

In the famous episode narrated in the Old Testament, the young woman, Susanna, caught by surprise during a bath by two men, rejected their advances and, unfairly accused, was eventually rescued by an intervention of Daniel. Palma deploys the episode on various planes, focusing on the curvaceous central nude of Susanna backed by a maid, while the two elders hide behind a tree.

David and Bathsheba came to form part of the Academy’s collection in 1845, together with the companion piece of Sansone e Dalila. They were probably part of a pictorial cycle dedicated to a seductive female figures from the Bible. In this moment Palma adopted the models and mannerisms of Tintoretto e Tiziano.

The story focuses on Bathsheba which is represented in a room with echoes from contemporary trends and for the first time, in Venetian painting, completely naked.

Love and Psyche by Benedetto Luti, acquired in 1771 through the funds of the Museo Pio Clementino, is the only picture belong to the original nucleus of the Pinacoteca Capitolina who don’t came from the Sacchetti collection.

The painting represent the theme narrated in Lucio Apuleio's Metamorphosis in which Psyche discovers that her mysterious nighttime lover is none other than the god of Love himself. The feeble light represents the central moment of the fable but also of the difficulty in rendering the light-shade play. He was appointed academician of merit in 1694.

In addition to teaching, the Academy took care of holding "Competitions" to promote o foster the three arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture Numerous essays of both famous and lesser known artists of these competitions have enrichied the academic collection. The heroic nude of Francesco Hayez, Triumphing athlete, is an example. The work entered in the academic collection in 1813 as the winning piece at the “Anonymous patron” competition.

Indeed, an unnamed philanthropist—to be identified with Antonio Canova, prince of the Academy of Saint Luke—starting 1812 had granted a generous allowance for the institution of two annual scholarships, respectively for a painter and a sculptor. The large heroic nude betrays the influence the Belvedere Apollo and his direct models are arguably some of Canova's most celebrated marbles, from Perseus to Palamedes, to Napoleon Bonaparte as Appeasing Mars.