(Venice 1655–1730 Villabona)
Perseus and Andromeda,
oil on canvas, 98 x 133 cm, framed

We are grateful to Bernard Aikema for confirming the attribution after examination of the original.

Lazzarini’s finest works are characterised by a cool, neo-classical elegance. Another typical feature of his art are the bright, light-suffused colours, which stand in contrast to the darker works produced by many of his Venetian fellow artists during the second half of the 17th century. The present work was once considered to be by the hand of the Bolognese painter Marcantonio Franceschini (which is not surprising, since both artists worked in a similar style and were entrusted with similar commissions, such as for the House of Liechtenstein) or as the work of a French artist.

Here Lazzarini has dramatically staged the story of Andromeda and Perseus, yet always in keeping with the ‘idea del bello’, while slightly deviating from Ovid, his literary source. Having defeated the Gorgon Medusa, Perseus headed home. When he reached Ethiopia and entered the territory of King Cepheus, he caught sight of the bound Andromeda. Perseus fell in love with her beauty and inquired about her origins and the reason for her fate. She described her situation to him: her mother Cassiopeia had boasted that Andromeda was more beautiful then the Nereids, the daughters of the sea god Nereus. In revenge, her father’s land was flooded and haunted by a sea monster. An oracle promised that they would be freed from all these plagues if they sacrificed Andromeda to the sea monster. While she told her story, the menacing monster emerged from the sea. When Andromeda uttered a cry of fear, her sorrowful parents appeared, and Perseus decided to rescue Andromeda. Lazzarini captured this very moment, yet did not depict Andromeda chained to a rock as was usual. In the left foreground appear the desperate parents Cepheus and Cassiopeia with their entourage, while sea nymphs bemoan Andromeda’s fate in the background. Perseus heroically defeats the sea monster with the aid of the head of Medusa.

Lazzarini emphasised Andromeda’s statuary beauty by depicting her with light-coloured flesh tones, in line with the classicist ideal. He thereby referred to a long iconographic tradition: Ovid compares the figure of Andromeda with that of a statue. Perseus admired her beauty – had not the wind stirred her hair, he would have believed she was a marble sculpture, an ‘opus marmoreum’; Ovid refers to Andromeda as an ‘imago formae eximiae’, comparing her beauty to that of a sculpted ideal.

Lazzarini was a native Venetian, who lived and worked there until far advanced in age. He received his first training as an artist from Francesco Rosa. Subsequently he was apprenticed to Gerolamo Forabosco and also came under the influence of Pietro della Vecchia. He painted numerous frescoes in the palaces of Venice and in villas throughout Venetia. He also received commissions from abroad, such as from the Princes of Liechtenstein and the Counts of Schönborn. Among Lazzarini’s pupils were Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Antonio Bellucci, Gaspare Diziani, and Giuseppe Camerata. Gregorio Lazzarini specialised in mythological portraiture and history painting; he was one of the most renowned artists in Venice when Tiepolo was still young, and numbers among the leading Venetian painters of the 17th century.