Allegory of Spring
Artist: Francesco de Mura (Italian, 1696-1782)
Date: 1759
Dimensions:
Overall: 40 1/2 x 51 in. (102.9 x 129.5 cm)
Frame: 46 × 56 3/4 × 2 5/8 in. (116.8 × 144.1 × 6.7 cm)
Medium: Oil on canvas
Classification: Paintings
Credit Line: Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey
Object number: 1979.79
Label Text:The inspiration for this painting comes from the first stanzas of an ode by the ancient Roman poet Horace. The ode describes the renewal of Spring in terms of Greek and Roman myth:
Winter to Spring: the west wind melts the frozen rancour,
The windlass drags to sea the thirsty hull;
Byre is no longer welcome to beast or fire to ploughman,
The field removes the frost-cap from its skull.
Venus of Cythera leads the dances under the hanging
Moon and the linked line of Nymphs and Graces
Beat the ground with measured feet while the busy Fire god
Stokes his red-hot mills in volcanic places.
[translation by Louis MacNeice]
Francesco de Mura shows Venus, goddess of love, seated amongst the dancing Nymphs and Graces. In the background Vulcan, “the busy Fire god” (from whom “volcano” takes its name), works with his assistants at his blacksmith’s forge on the slopes of the erupting Mt. Vesuvius.
De Mura was court painter to Charles III of Naples, for whom this painting may have been commissioned. Charles III financed early digging at the sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
Winter to Spring: the west wind melts the frozen rancour,
The windlass drags to sea the thirsty hull;
Byre is no longer welcome to beast or fire to ploughman,
The field removes the frost-cap from its skull.
Venus of Cythera leads the dances under the hanging
Moon and the linked line of Nymphs and Graces
Beat the ground with measured feet while the busy Fire god
Stokes his red-hot mills in volcanic places.
[translation by Louis MacNeice]
Francesco de Mura shows Venus, goddess of love, seated amongst the dancing Nymphs and Graces. In the background Vulcan, “the busy Fire god” (from whom “volcano” takes its name), works with his assistants at his blacksmith’s forge on the slopes of the erupting Mt. Vesuvius.
De Mura was court painter to Charles III of Naples, for whom this painting may have been commissioned. Charles III financed early digging at the sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
Not on view
In Collection(s)