Pompeo Batoni returns to Lucca: the Prometheus and Atalanta on display in the artist's hometown

From June 18 to October 2, 2022, two important canvases that recently entered the Collection of the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca, which purchased them to return them to the area, will be on display for free to the public in the Church of San Franceschetto in Lucca in a special setting.

These are two works by the Lucca-born Pompeo Girolamo Batoni (Lucca, 1708 - Rome, 1787), among the most significant painters of the 18th century, now to be admired in the evocative Lucca setting on the occasion of the exhibition event Prometheus and Atalanta. Pompeo Batoni returns to Lucca.

The two paintings depict two classical themes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses: Minerva infuses the soul into the human figure fashioned in clay by Prometheus, and Atalanta mourns the dying Meleager. Subjects executed between 1740 and 1743 for Marquis Lodovico Sardini of Lucca, they constitute an important testimony to the artist’s passion for mythological themes and quality evidence of his early maturity, when he was torn between studies conducted in Rome and commissions in his native city, to which he remained always attached. From the beginning the two paintings were conceived as pendants. In Minerva infuses the soul into the human figure fashioned in clay by Prometheus, Pompeo Batoni addresses the theme of the genesis of life through a subject never before treated in painting, as he himself recalls, and interprets it from the classical iconography of a group of Roman-era sarcophagi depicting the myth of Prometheus. In the work, the titan Prometheus sits in front of the clay statue he is modeling: an example of ideal youthful beauty probably inspired by a very famous ancient statue of the time, the Antinous of Belvedere. Minerva, on the other hand, standing beside him, is depicted with a butterfly, a symbol of the soul that is infused into the figure.

Even Atalanta weeps for the dying Meleager, which instead depicts the drama of death, contains a reference to classical iconography that is very recognizable: the famous Sarcophagus of Meleager, which in the eighteenth century belonged to the Borghese collection and is now in the Louvre. Compared to the ancient model, the artist translates the drama into a more serene atmosphere, eliminating the detail of the Moire thirsting for revenge and the grief-ravaged figures around Meleager’s deathbed, which give the representation on the sarcophagus an intensity and pathos that the artist intends to mitigate in the painting, proposing a version more in keeping with his own stylistic signature.

A dense correspondence between Marquis Lodovico Sardini and the artist testifies to their long period of execution. Later inherited by Elisa Sardini, the works were owned by descent by the Minutoli-Tegrimi counts, until they reached the antiques market in 2002, thus risking ending up forever far from Lucca. A risk that did not occur thanks to the purchase by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog published by Pacini Fazzi Editore, edited by Liliana Barroero.

The exhibition is open to the public with free admission on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

In the image, a detail of Minerva breathes soul into the human figure fashioned in clay by Prometheus.

Pompeo Batoni returns to Lucca: the Prometheus and Atalanta on display in the artist's hometown

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