FLEMISH ARTIST FROM THE 18th CENTURY
Rape of Proserpine
oil on canvas, cm 77×119
The fascinating myth of Proserpine, a young girl abducted by Pluto, king of Hades while she was gathering flowers on the shores of a lake and then transported to the Underworld by the god, has been the subject of numerous artistic interpretations over the centuries. This painter is a somewhat creative reinterpretation of the image conceived in the late Sixteenth century by Joseph Heintz the Elder (1564-1609), pupil of Hans von Aachen, who also spent some time in Italy to then became court painter in Prague under Rudolf II. The pretty composition by the German master (Picture Gallery, Dresden) is, in the work presented here, based on the printed reproduction realized by Lukas Kilian (1579-1637); this is proven by the fact that it is a mirror image, and that the palette used in this painting is completely autonomous and does not take the original colour composition into any account. It is hard to localize the author of this painter geographically, even if we are inclined to believe it is by a Flemish master, while the glassy colours and the noticeable classicizing tendency to turn the faces, that are shown from other angles by Heinz, into profiles seem to suggest a dating to the first half of the Eighteenth century, a period when the somewhat clichéd grace of Mannerism found a certain consonance with the elegant and artificial taste then in vogue.