(Bologna 1675–1749)
The Death of Abel,
oil on canvas, 48.5 x 65 cm, framed

Provenance:
Collection of Prince René of Bourbon-Parma (1894–1962), Denmark;
Ermanno Lucini collection, Florence, no. 117;
art market, Stockholm;
where acquired by the present owner

We are grateful to Erich Schleier, Francesco Petrucci and Alessandro Agresti for independently confirming the attribution of the present painting to Aureliano Milani on the basis of high resolution digital photographs.

Aureliano Milani worked between the cities of Bologna where he was born, and Rome, where he obtained recognition. He was a student of his uncle Giulio Cesare Milani, later studied with Lorenzo Pasinelli and he was also apprenticed in the studio of Cesare Gennari. In Bologna, he enjoyed the patronage of count Alessandro Fava, an important patron of the age whose palace was frescoed by the Carracci. Milani was also a participant of the Accademia degli Ottenebrati which was founded circa 1686 by count Francesco Ghisilieri, for the exercise of drawing. Milani arrived at Rome in 1719 where initially he worked mainly for patrons from Emilia. During the 1720s he began to receive prestigious commissions which culminated with the commission for the fresco decorations of the vault of the Galleria degli Specchi in Palazzo Doria-Pamphilj in 1733. The cycle was clearly inspired by the work of Annibale Carracci, especially the frescoes in the Galleria Farnese. Milani’s paintings present muscular nudes of a kind that could be interpreted as a trademark of his production. He continued to work throughout the 1740s until his death on a succession of fresco cycles and altarpieces in which he reworked similar compositions modelled on drawings and studies prepared at various stages of his career.

The influence of Annibale Carracci is evident in the present work. In the foreground Adam and Eve’s second son Abel is represented lifeless, while in the background following his damnation by God, Cain is fleeing. The artist offers the viewer a description of the youth according to a naturalistic poetic style that is estranged from the fiction and exaggeration of baroque taste. For Milani the return to simplicity and nature meant positioning the principal figure in an illusory space as if part of a theatre set. An emblem of innocence and purity, Abel lies on the ground, however he appears suspended, unconfined by his spatial setting. The sacrificial lamb, the youngest of the flock, still burns on the altar dedicated to God: a diagonal axis passes through the sacrificial lamb from the upper left through the body of the youth to the lower right, connecting them in a single tangent. Abel like the lamb is pure and free of sin, and it seems the artist wished to emphasise this point by linking the two visually along a single line. Moreover, the sacrifice of Abel was frequently understood in relation to that of Christ, symbolised by the Lamb, thereby bringing Abel’s sacrifice in honour of God full circle.

Aureliano Milani represented the death of Abel, or the slaying of Abel, on several occasions: this was a subject that enabled him to demonstrate his abilities at representing the figure of the nude. A canvas in a private collection, of similar dimensions to the present one, but orientated vertically is of interest because it represents the episode a few moments prior to that shown in the painting here under discussion. Cain is shown standing holding his brother down with his left foot while he brandishes a club in his hands ready to kill Abel. Abel lies prostrate at his brother’s feet in a pose similar to that shown in the present painting. It is as if the artist had portrayed the model first in the act of rebelling against his aggressor and then vanquished, supine as if dead. Milani therefore would appear to have employed studies taken from life for the execution of two paintings made in proximity to one another. Such a turn of events is supported by the stylistic and compositional similarities between these works which reveal the same figure-ground relationships, pointing also to their similar dating, which likely belongs to around the time the artist was at work on the frescoes for Palazzo Doria-Pamphilj.