The Victory of Constantine
Provenance
(Possibly) Cardinal Gian Maria Riminaldi (1718-1789), Ferrara
Marquis of Saracco-Riminaldi, Ferrara by 1878 (Inventario Saracco-Riminaldi, 19 February 1878, no. 1189: “Quadro grande a chiaroscuro rappresentante una battaglia. Lire 15”).
with Galleria Canesso, Lugano, by 2018
Private collection, France
Literature
Herwarth Röttgen, Il Cavalier d’Arpino, exh. cat., Rome, 1973, p. 48, reproduced fig. 26.
Herwarth Röttgen, Il Cavalier Giuseppe Cesari D’Arpino. Un grande pittore nello splendore
della fama e nell’incostanza della fortuna, Rome, 2002, p. 483, no. 267.
Marco Simone Bolzoni, Il Cavalier Giuseppe Cesari d’Arpino. Maestro del design.
Catalogo ragionato dell’opera grafica, Rome, 2013, p. 394, no. 291.
This monumental painting in grisaille is one of the last masterpieces by the Cavalier d’Arpino, a great exponent of Roman Mannerism. It depicts the victory of Constantine over Emperor Maxentius at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge (312AD). Painted within a trompe-l’œil black frame, the composition centers on the triumphant hero on his rearing white steed with a lance in his hand. He looks intently at his crowned enemy in the distance, who has been unhorsed and is being chased into the Tiber. The battle marks the beginning of Constantine’s sole governance of Rome as well as the triumph of Christianity over paganism. The frieze-like quality of our canvas brings to mind the carvings commemorating this event on the Arch of Constantine, and other dynamic antique reliefs such as the third-century Ludovisi sarcophagus.
Chiefly remembered for his large fresco cycles and altarpieces for the Papacy, d’Arpino moved to Rome aged thirteen. The gifted young artist assisted in the fresco decoration of the third Vatican Logge, that of Pope Gregory XIII, where his first work can be found. In 1592, d’Arpino became the principal painter to Pope Clement VIII. His success funded a growing personal art collection of more than one hundred paintings–including the Boy with a Basket of Fruit and Sick Bacchus by his most talented student, Caravaggio–which were confiscated by Cardinal Scipione Borghese in 1607. While the oeuvre of d’Arpino extends to small-scale religious and mythological scenes painted for private collectors and the open market, a large work like ours must have been a commission for an important patron.
Herwarth Röttgen dates our painting to 1635/40 in his most recent catalogue raisonné of the artist. Typical of d’Arpino’s late paintings are the long, wispy brushstrokes with a continued interest in the classical ideal and mannerist grace. It is possible that our painting served as a model for a tapestry. Röttgen compares our picture to The Rape of the Sabine Women (fig. 1), his last fresco in the great hall of the Salone dei Conservatori in the Capitoline from the same period. Illustrating episodes of ancient Rome, the cycle pays homage to Raphael’s fresco decoration of the Sala di Constantino in the Vatican, painted a century earlier, which was the first to frame the scenes as trompe l’oeil hanging tapestries. For the Capitoline cycle, d’Arpino also adapted this illusionistic technique and painted below them frescoes of monochrome medallions –– a nod to his clear interest in the classical debate of paragone, the age-old competition between painting and sculpture.
Compared to Raphael’s fresco of The Battle of Constantine in the Vatican, our canvas presents a scene of simplified draftsmanship and dynamic movement that departs from the ambitious, tumultous composition in his earlier Capitoline fresco, Battle of Tullio Ostilio (fig. 2). Here the emphasis is on the drama of the two armies, as well as giving individuality to each figure. Marco Bolzoni identifies the nude figure at the right third of the composition, seen from behind with his left arm raised, as possibly modelled after a drawing of a figure in Lille (Palais des Beaux-Arts, inv. Pl. 170; fig. 3).
The painting was in the collection of the Ferrarese Marchese Saracco-Riminaldi by at least the late 19th century, appearing in their family inventory of 1878. The family descends from Cardinal Gian Maria Riminaldi (1718-1789) (Palazzo Bonacossi, Ferrara; fig. 4), an enlightened connoisseur, passionate collector, and prominent reformer of the Ferrara Art Academy [1]. Influenced by the intellectual circles in Rome, where he maintained a residence, Gian Maria was an honorary member of the Accademia di San Luca, a co-founder of the Accademia del Nudo, and a great friend of the artist Antonio Raphael Mengs (1727-1779). It is possible that through Mengs, Gian Maria had close contact with Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768), whose History of Ancient Art (1764) transformed the study of antiquities. Indeed, Gian Maria shared Winckelmann’s aesthetic sensibility in asserting the superiority of white sculpture and that true beauty was derived from form. Between 1763 and his death in 1789, he sent a steady flow of works to Ferrara, including a rich collection of exceptional bronzes by artists like Giambologna, copies of outstanding antique and Renaissance masterpieces, as well as imperial marble busts, which have been housed in Palazzo Schifanoia since 1898.