(Genoa 1667–1749)
Venus in Vulcan´s Forge with Cupid blindfolded,
oil on canvas, 117 x 170.2 cm, framed

Provenance:
sale, Christie’s, New York, 19 April 2007, lot 95;
Fondazione Famiglia Teruzzi, Villa Regina Margherita, Bordighera;
art market, Italy;
where acquired by the present owner

Literature:
A. Scarpa/M. Lupo (eds.), Villa Regina Margherita, Guida al Museo, Milan 2011, pp. 118, 119, fig. 48

The present compostion depicts the moment when the goddess Venus asks her husband Vulcan, the god of fire, to make a suit of armour for her son, Aeneas, who was to go to war in Latium. Venus, however, had made a cuckold of the lame blacksmith Vulcan having fallen in love with Mars. Aware of his wife’s adultery, Vulcan crafted a finely wrought trap to ensnare Venus and her lover to enact his revenge. In place of the young Mars, who is absent from the scene, Cupid triumphantly raises a single arrow aloft as he leans on the gleaming armour plate. With the theme of love and betrayal central to the story, a blindfolded Cupid coinciding with the darkness, makes an allusion to Venus’s unfaithfulness.

The present picture is the only known mythological work by Alessandro Magnasco. Although its painterly style is characteristic of the artist, the picture stands out from the rest of his oeuvre from both a technical and thematic standpoint. The broad and loose brushstrokes of the figures’ features and garments, juxtaposed by the muted and earthy colour palette, offers the composition a dynamism and liveliness. The monumental physical presence of the three figures dominates the pictorial plane, their illuminated bodies shining bright in the lingering darkness of Vulcan’s forge. This compositional arrangement coincides with that of two other known works by Magnasco The Presentation at the Temple in Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, and Saint Ambrose refusing Theodosius admittance into the Church, in the Chicago Art Institute, Chicago. The present picture can be dated to the first decade of the eighteenth century, most likely during the artist’s Florentine period.