Diana and Cupid

Diana and Cupid

Diana and Cupid

Artist:Pompeo Batoni (Italian, Lucca 1708–1787 Rome)
Date:1761
Medium:Oil on canvas
Dimensions:49 x 68 in. (124.5 x 172.7 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Purchase, The Charles Engelhard Foundation, Robert Lehman Foundation Inc., Mrs. Haebler Frantz, April R. Axton, L. H. P. Klotz, and David Mortimer Gifts; and Gifts of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, George Blumenthal, and J. Pierpont Morgan, Bequests of Millie Bruhl Fredrick and Mary Clark Thompson, and Rogers Fund, by exchange, 1982

The picture was painted for Sir Humphrey Morice (1723–1785), son of a wealthy merchant and director of the Bank of England. Morice was a great animal lover and commissioned from Batoni a portrait of himself reclining in the Roman countryside after the hunt as a pendant to this canvas, which shows the goddess of the hunt withholding the bow from Cupid. Although full of extraordinary warmth and feeling, the figure of Diana is based on a celebrated ancient statue of the sleeping Ariadne in the Vatican. The painting may have been conceived as the artist's response to his rival, Anton Raphael Mengs, who was champion of the Neoclassical style.

Provenance

Sir Humphry Morice, The Grove, Chiswick (1762–86; purchased from the artist for 300 zecchini; sold entire collection for £4000 to Ashburnham); John, 2nd Earl of Ashburnham, Ashburnham Place, Westminster (1786–d. 1812; inv., 1793, p. 5); his son, George, 3rd Earl of Ashburnham, Ashburnham Place (1812–24; sale, Christie's, London, June 18, 1824, no. 121, as "Venus threatening to break Cupid's bow, in a landscape," for 50 gns. to Dixie); Estate of Miss M. G. Witten (until 1933; sale, Christie's, London, March 31, 1933, no. 110, as "Diana with Cupid's Bow," for 195 gns. to Williams and Sutch); private collection, London (1933–82; sale, Christie's, London, July 9, 1982, no. 70, for £140,400 to Colnaghi); [Colnaghi, New York, 1982; sold to MMA]

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