Landscape with Bacchanal,
oil on canvas, 100 x 124 cm, framed

Provenance:
European Private Collection
We are grateful to Andrea G. De Marchi for suggesting a tentative attribution to Pier Francesco Mola (Coldrerio 1612–1666 Rome) or Giovanni Battista Mola (Coldrerio 1585–1665 Rome) for the present painting.

Stylistically the present work can be dated to slightly before the middle of the 17th century and appears to be by an artist working in Rome. The present composition shows a group of satyrs and bacchantes drinking wine and playing the piffero and tambourines in front of a landscape containing elements of classical architecture. The prototype was probably the celebrated bacchanal painted by Titian for the d’Este court of Ferrara which was soon afterwards moved to Rome.

De Marchi has suggested that the present work is related to early works of Pier Francesco Mola which he discussed in a recent publication (see A. G. De Marchi, Mola, Il disegno e la pittura, 2013) and he argues that the present painting can be compared to the Personification of Poetry (Narbonne, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, inv. LB403, see E. Schleier, in Pier Francesco Mola […], exhibition catalogue, Rome-Lugano, Milan 1989, p. 324) previously given to Guercino and then to Keilhau, before being attributed, possibly mistakenly, to Giacinto Brandi. A second and more significant comparable painting is a Holy Family with Angels in the Pallavicini collection, Rome, signed indistinctly “MOLA P.is / 16..”, and recorded in a family inventory l of 1679 as a work by “Mola pupil of Albani”. This information led Longhi and Zeri (cat. n. 314) to believe it to be a work by the French Jean Baptiste Mollo. The historical details were reviewed by Rosenberg (see P. Rosenberg, Dal Mola al Mollo “tombeau” per Giovanni Battist, in: Pier Francesco Mola […] ibid., 1989, p. 134-145).