BENVENUTO TISI, IL GAROFALO
The Apotheosis of Hercules: Hercules stepping from his Pyre onto the Four-Horse Chariot, being greeted by Zeus, Minerva and Mercury, with Fame and Philoctetes to the left and Neptune and a Water Nymph in the Foreground
(Ferrara 1481 – 1559)
Oil on canvas - 33 5/8 x 45 1/2 inches (85.5 x 115.7 cm)
PROVENANCE -
In Vienna before 1823, when acquired from ‘Fedenza’ for a Northern European Princely Collection, in which the painting remains to the present day.
This masterpiece by Garofalo is apparently completely unrecorded, having remained hidden in a private collection since 1823.
The Subject
Ovid, Metamorphoses, IX, 104-273, relates how Hercules ended his days as a mortal and was received by the gods into Olympus. The centaur Nessus, dying of an arrow wound he had received from Hercules for attempting to abduct Hercules’ wife Deianira, determined to avenge himself, giving Deianira a shirt soaked in his blood, telling her that it would inspire love in the wearer. A long time afterwards Deianira came to suspect her husband of infidelity and sent the shirt to him. When Hercules put it on, his body was ravaged by burning poison which had entered Nessus’ blood from his own arrow. In intense pain he built a pyre on the summit of Mount Oeta in Trachis, on top of which he placed the skin of the Nemean lion, and persuaded Philoctetes, in return for the gift of his bow and quiver, to light it for him. When Hercules laid upon it, with his club as a pillow, the fire only consumed that part of him which was mortal and he emerged from it even greater than before, at which point his father Zeus ‘swept him up through the hollow clouds in his four-horse chariot, and set him among the glittering stars’. Welcomed by all the gods of Olympus, Hercules was adopted by Athene as her own son and she gave him in marriage her daughter Hebe, who bore him two sons.
Other Depictions of the Subject
Depictions of Hercules’ reception into Olympus are not uncommon. An Athenian black figure neck amphora of circa520-500 B.C. shows Hercules in the four-horse chariot accompanied by Juno, Minerva, Apollo and Mercury (Sale of the Castle Ashby Vases, Christie’s, London, 2 July 1980, lot 94). Pigler lists twenty-three Italian depictions, mostly ceilings (A. Pigler, Barockthemen, ed. Budapest, 1974, II, pp. 131-2), including those by Ludovico Carracci in Palazzo Sampieri-Talon, Bologna (A. Brogi, Ludovico Carracci, Bologna, 2001, I, pp. 167-8, no. 54; II, fig. 135), Pietro da Cortona in Palazzo Pitti, Florence (Pigler, op. cit., pl. 209; G. Briganti, Pietro da Cortona, ed. Florence, 1982, p. 235, no. 95, pl. 220), Sebastiano Ricci in Palazzo Marucelli-Fenzi, Florence (J. Daniels, Sebastiano Ricci, Hove, 1976, pp. 110-12, no. 110, fig. 119), Giambattista Tiepolo in Palazzo Canossa, Verona (destroyed; M. Gemin and F. Pedrocco, Giambattista Tiepolo, Venice, 1993, p. 482, no. 510, illustrated), and Ubaldo Gandolfi in Palazzo Malvezzi Cà Granda, Bologna (D. Biagi Maino, Ubaldo Gandolfi, Turin, 1990, p. 279, no. 162, pl. 15, fig. 240).
Dating and Provenance
Garofalo was one of the outstanding figures in Emilian classicism during the first half of the sixteenth century, with which his career coincides with some precision, from his apprenticeship to Boccaccio Boccaccino in 1497 to his affliction with total blindness in 1550. A native of Ferrara, he worked mainly in his native city and the area around the Po delta. Most of his most impressive, and relatively rare, mythological paintings were executed for the ruling Este family, from the Minerva and Neptune of 1512 (A. M. Fioravanti Baraldi, Il Garofalo, ed. 1998, pp. 112-13, no. 40, illustrated, and colour pl. X; exhibited Castello Estense, Ferrara, and Residenzscloss, Dresden, Il Trionfo di Bacco: Capolavori della Scuola Ferrarese a Dresda, 1480-1620, 2003, pp. 113-16, no. 16, illustrated in colour), painted for Alfonso I d’Este, to those painted for his son Ercole II: Venus and Mars outside the Gates of Troy (Fioravanti Baraldi, op. cit., pp. 192-4, no. 125, illustrated; exhibited Ferrara and Dresden, 2003, pp. 137-8, no. 27, illustrated in colour) Diana and Endymion (Fioravanti Baraldi, op. cit., pp. 250-1, no. 183, illustrated; exhibited Ferrara and Dresden, 2003, pp. 134-5, no. 25, illustrated in colour), Mars and Venus, and The Triumph of Bacchus in India of 1540 (Fioravanti Baraldi, op. cit., pp. 252-5, no. 185, illustrated, and colour pl. XXIX, detail; exhibited Ferrara and Dresden, 2003, pp. 142-6, no. 29, illustrated in colour); acquired from Francesco III d’Este by Frederick Augustus II, Elector of Saxony, these are all now in the Gemäldegalerie at Dresden. Thematically and qualitatively it is with such paintings that ours belongs, a dating to the late 1530s seeming most likely on stylistic grounds.
It seems highly probable that this, apparently Garofalo’s only depiction of Hercules, was executed for Ercole II d’Este, 4th Duke of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio (1508-1559), who succeeded his father in 1534. Ercole was an avid collector and patron of the arts, his interests including antique sculpture, coins and gems as well as contemporary sculpture and painting, and he founded a tapestry workshop in Ferrara. Ercole’s commissions show an understandable predilection for depictions of his Olympian namesake. Jacopo Sansovino began for him in 1550 an over life-size statue of Hercules, originally intended for the Porta Ercolea at Modena, but eventually erected by Ercole at Brescello, where it still stands in the main square. The Labours of Hercules were represented in wall paintings by Girolamo da Carpi and in a set of tapestries woven by the Ferrara tapestry workshop from cartoons by Battista Dossi (fragments are in the Louvre). Shortly after Ercole came to power, Dosso Dossi painted for him a Hercules and the Pygmies (Alte Galerie des Steiermärkischen Landesmuseums Joanneum, Graz), in which, as Gregor Weber has recently emphasised (in the catalogue of the Ferrara and Dresden 2003 exhibition, p. 37, fig. 1), the features of the classical hero resemble those of the Duke in portraits such as the bust by Prospero Sogari Spani Clementi (ibid., p. 32, fig. 6) and the medal by Pompeo Leone (ibid., p. 34, fig. 10). Such a resemblance is equally apparent in our painting. How it might have left the Este collections remains to be ascertained.