(Venice or Vicenza 1602/3–1678 Venice)
A young couple,
oil on canvas, 59 x 45.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private European collection

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

This double portrait represents a pair of young lovers in half figure. The man is shown in three-quarter view, with his shoulder turned towards the spectator. He holds a lock of the woman’s blond hair in his left hand as she turns to him with a complicit smile. The close-cropped composition and the painting’s indefinite background contribute to drawing our attention to the lovers’ exchange of looks at the centre of the representation.

The sensuality that predominates in this work is one of the distinctive traits of Pietro della Vecchia’s production. The artist was a versatile protagonist of the Venetian scene during the Seicento. At least another seven variants are known of this painting, which, like that in the Museo Civico di Bassano del Grappa, are all ascribable to studio production. They reveal a quality far from that of the painting under discussion, which can therefore be identified as the master’s original version from which the other replicas derive.

As a probable pupil of Padovanino, Della Vecchia gained such a passion for the Venetian masters of the sixteenth century that he became renowned for his many works, often executed with studio assistance, which imitated the styles of artists such as Titian, Giorgione, Palma il Vecchio or Bassano with great virtuosity. During the 1630s Della Vecchia also began assimilating the manner of artists that were his contemporaries, notably Bernardo Strozzi, who was in Venice during this period. His influence is notable in the present Double Portrait in the free and vibrant brushstrokes. The work’s charged eroticism moreover recalls the libertine attitudes of the Accademia degli Incogniti, a literary society that dominated the cultural life of Venice during the era.