Title
"Athena Rescuing a Youth From Idleness"
Date
Late 18th century
Description
"ATHENA RESCUING A YOUTH FROM IDLENESS" (French, late 18th century) by Hugues Taravai (French, 1729-1785), an octagonal shaped oil on canvas allegorical ceiling painting installed on the Gold Room / Ballroom ceiling of Marble House. The painting represents Pallas Athena wearing her helmet and breastplate, accompanied by her attribute, the owl, and carrying aloft a youth (in the Florentine original representing an adolescent prince Ferdinand II of Medici) who is bidding farewell to a reclining female figure representing Venus, as Cupid grasps his ankle.
Venus is seated with two female attendants on a draped couch with a drapery at its rear secured to a tree. To the right, a blue toga clad female figure looks out at the viewer to engage one in the scene. Behind her, two satyr vessel bearers and a female cup bearer approach the couch.
The canvas is after a 16th century Italian original by Pietro da Cortona in the Palazzo Pitti, Florence, copied in turn by Hugues Taraval in the late 18th century.
This piece was originally the ceiling painting in the salon of the marquise de Pompignan in the Hotel de Clermont, 69, rue de Varenne, Paris and ordered by the Comte d'Orsay for his mother the marquise circa 1778 after an engraving of the Italian original by da Cortona.
Venus is seated with two female attendants on a draped couch with a drapery at its rear secured to a tree. To the right, a blue toga clad female figure looks out at the viewer to engage one in the scene. Behind her, two satyr vessel bearers and a female cup bearer approach the couch.
The canvas is after a 16th century Italian original by Pietro da Cortona in the Palazzo Pitti, Florence, copied in turn by Hugues Taraval in the late 18th century.
This piece was originally the ceiling painting in the salon of the marquise de Pompignan in the Hotel de Clermont, 69, rue de Varenne, Paris and ordered by the Comte d'Orsay for his mother the marquise circa 1778 after an engraving of the Italian original by da Cortona.
Cultural Origin
French
Medium
Oil on canvas
Extent
Legnth: 222"
Collection
Source
Purchased by The Preservation Society of Newport County, 1963.
Identifier
PSNC.10545
For more information about this item, please contact its owning institution.