Armida Invoking the Demons

Tasso’s epic seems to have had a particular resonance in France: as early as 1631 Simon Vouet painted a series of twelve panels illustrating the story for the grand galerie of the château at Chessy for the powerful courtier Henri de Fourcy. Perhaps most importantly, the French Crown acquired Domenichino’s depiction of the star-crossed lovers in 1685 (fig. 1). The story engaged the energies of generations of French artists among them Antoine Coypel, Charles de la Fosse and Louis de Boullogne who were exact contemporaries when Paolo De Matteis was working in Paris. Afterwards, François Lemoyne and François Boucher both painted scenes from the drama.

And drama is perhaps the appropriate word. The narrative also furnished the basis for the ballet La Délivrance de Renaud in which Louis XIII starred, while his successor Louis XIV, performed in the Ballets Les Amours Déguisés also based on Tasso’s poem, set to music by Jean-Baptiste Lully in 1664. In 1686, Lully dedicated to the king what was to become one of his most successful operas, Armide (fig. 2), with sets by Jean Bérain. Armide was revived many times, including in 1703. Could there be a connection between the opera and our painting by Paolo de Matteis?

This sumptuous work painted on a grand scale must surely have been an important commission and the foreshortening of the figure suggests it was site specific. Perhaps it was intended to be one of a series of life-size figures from Tasso. Its impeccable condition is a result of the high quality of the materials used. The dazzling blue of Armida’s drapery is painted with pure azurite while the whole composition is confidently painted onto a series of horizontal oak planks joined to make a large vertical panel. This unusual format and the costly materials were presumably at the behest of the picture’s original patron.

Unsigned, Armida is nonetheless unmistakably the work of Paolo de Matteis (1662–1728), the prolific Neapolitan artist. Nicola Spinosa was the first to confirm the attribution of this work and dated it to the artist’s Parisian period.[2] Comparison can be made to an equally sensual depiction of Danaë signed and dated 1704, in a private collection. Much younger than Luca Giordano (1634–1705) and only five years younger than Francesco Solimena (1657–1747), Paolo de Matteis reflects in his production the challenge facing an ambitious and gifted artist whose entire career, indeed his entire life, developed in a timespan dominated by the shadow of his predecessor and the immensely successful career of his exact contemporary Solimena. The high esteem in which De Matteis held himself may have fanned his desire to accept an invitation to work in Paris.[3]

Indubitably De Matteis’s aspiration was to obtain the patronage of the French King. However, when De Matteis arrived in Paris in 1702, it was not as a guest of the King, as described by Mariette. Rather, he was answering an invitation from the duc d’Estrées, a significant figure at the Spanish court of Philip V, rather unsuccessful in his political or military endeavors but better remembered today as an important collector. Shortly after their meeting in Naples, where d’Estrées was on a diplomatic mission, De Matteis departed for Paris, where he evidently worked with extreme diligence. Soon after his arrival in the French capital, he embarked on the decoration of a gallery in the opulent new hôtel on the Place Vendôme built by Pierre Bullet for Monsieur Antoine Crozat (fig. 3), drawing the attention of many connoisseurs, but not necessarily their admiration.[4] Unfortunately, all these decorations have disappeared, and are poorly documented. At the same time, De Matteis was commissioned to decorate the new house of the wealthy financier Jean Thévenin on rue Neuve des Petits-Champs, also designed by Bullet. These prestigious commissions underscore the fact that despite the absence of royal patronage, De Matteis still obtained the support of some of the highest aristocrats and best collectors of the time.

The name of the collector who commissioned the painting remains unknown to this day. The earliest mention of an ‘Armida’ by Paolo de Matteis appears in the inventory made after the death of Stefano Conti, a well-known Lucchese collector (1664–1739). Conti’s activity as a collector, his establishment of a large picture gallery, and the chronology of his commissions (largely through the painter Alessandro Marchesini (1664–1738)) are well-documented.[5] That Conti acquired such a painting as this Armida is not impossible, even though it is perhaps unlikely that Conti/Marchesini would have gone to the extent of reaching out to the Neapolitan painter in France and bringing the painting back to Italy after its completion. Furthermore, the painting was back to France at an unknown date where it would ultimately reside in the collection of the Baillehache family by the second half of the 19th century. The design of its original frame could not have originated anywhere but in France, further suggesting a French history of the painting.

As noted by Arnauld Brejon, much remains to be known about Paolo de Matteis’s interaction with French artists. Brejon suggests that painters working for the Grand Dauphin (Louis XIV’s eldest son, 1661–1711) at his Meudon residence may have been aware of the Neapolitan’s work. It is certain that De Matteis’s virtuoso technique—reminiscent of Giordano’s proverbial fa presto—was a reason for French artists and connoisseurs to notice the Neapolitan newcomer in their city. That virtuosity was scorned by writers such as Germain Brice, whose criticism based more on national propaganda for home-grown painters than on rigorous objections may even disguise envy, if not admiration, for the artist.[6] More positive judgements have been recorded: another commission De Matteis received in Paris was for a fresco for the library of the convent of the Augustinian Discalced Fathers. According to a note written in 1703: ‘All good painters in town envy him’.[7]

The discovery of this Armida compels us to reopen the case of Paolo de Matteis’s Parisian sojourn. What is certain is that De Matteis participated in and benefited from his French experience. On the one hand, he surprisingly moderated the Roman, Maratti-inspired, high Baroque formulas of earlier compositions. His Annunciation (fig. 4), for instance, evokes the pure classicism of Le Sueur. On the other hand, and particularly in his rare paintings of single figures, Paolo de Matteis embraces a new spirit introduced by the painters entrusted to the decoration of the Trianon (1688–1714) and of the Grand Dauphin’s residence at Meudon (1702–1703): Charles de La Fosse, Louis de Boullogne, René-Antoine Houasse and Antoine Coypel among others. His Danaë (fig. 5), like this Armida, fully prefigures the accomplishments of a François Lemoyne and beyond to the great representatives of the generation of artists born around 1700 and active around 1730: Boucher and Natoire.