(Este 1631–1722 Venice)
Socrates,
oil on canvas, 126.5 x 101 cm, framed

Provenance:
Ermanno Lucini collection, Florence;
art market, Stockholm;
where acquired by the present owner

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

The Greek philosopher Socrates is one of the figures from the ancient world that has enjoyed the greatest fortune in the European cultural tradition. Indeed, he belongs to the group of pagan thinkers that the Church recovered and revaluated to give foundation and force to its own doctrine. Thus, the figure of Socrates rapidly entered the figurative arts. He appears in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican Palace, represented in Raphael’s School of Athens (1509-1511), where he is portrayed in profile near Plato: here Socrates wears a green robe and is turned towards a group of youths. His identification is assured owing to his features that are derived from the marble busts of the philosopher from antiquity.

It was not until the seventeenth century that artists started to portray Socrates frequently. He was perceived as the conciliator of paganism and Christianity, and owing to the growing interest in the ancient world and the diffusion of philosophical culture, his virtues were multiplied and the various episodes of his life deployed to serve as examples to the viewer for their own behaviour. Moreover, he provided artists with the opportunity to represent an elderly body scarred by the furrows of time, thereby giving expression to nascent poetic naturalism. Among the artists who represented Socrates were Jusepe de Ribera, Luca Giordano, Pietro Della Vecchia, Gioacchino Assereto and Pietro Bellotti, all of whom worked in differing geographical locations. Among the most frequently represented episodes from Socrates’ life are ‘Socrates and Alcibiades’ (which gave the opportunity to represent a youth alongside an elderly man), ‘Socrates and his wife Santippe’ (whose cantankerous character occasioned anecdotal and fantastic representations), ‘Socrates inviting a disciple to view himself in the mirror’ (employed as an invitation to moral improvement because looking in the mirror is the surest way of triumphing over vice and overcoming passion) and the ‘Death of Socrates’. This final episode, which is also the subject of the present painting, was especially admired because of the various emotions and themes that it could engage and it was also rendered in subsequent centuries, most notably by Jacques-Louis David.

Antonio Zanchi was originally from Este but was active for almost his entire career in Venice. He adhered to the ‘tenebrist’ style of painting, which had been introduced to Venice by Luca Giordano and Giovanni Battista Langetti, and was characterised by the depiction of naturalism.

In the present composition Socrates is depicted in half-length as he prepares to drink the poison that will result in his death. His static and dignified pose reveals his acceptance of his fate, as well as his pride. Two reasons can be given for the gentler style of the present composition: on the one hand Socrates died peacefully aware (indeed, although sentenced by decree of the people of Athens, his suicide was voluntary); and this work belongs to the late period of Zanchi’s artistic production when he returned to the influence of Padovanino and Paolo Veronese.