(Bologna 1775–1860 Turin)
Hercules fights Thanatos to free Alcestis from Hades,
oil on canvas, 161 x 227 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Bologna;
where acquired by the present owner

We are grateful to Fernando Mazzocca for confirming the attribution and for his help in cataloguing this lot.

The present painting is a significant addition to the oeuvre of Pelagio Palagi, contributing to the knowledge of the artist´s production, as well as to Italian Neoclassical figurative painting. Palagi was an artist of the cultured refinement as is demonstrated by his library, bequeathed to the Archiginnasio di Bologna where it remains to the present day. Over the course of his career, carried out between Rome, Milan and Turin, he engaged in many areas of history painting, representing subjects ranging from mythology to ancient and modern history thereby asserting himself as a leading protagonist during the final phase of Neoclassicism and the earliest of the Romantic movement (see C. Poppi (ed.), Pelagio Palagi pittore. Dipinti dalle raccolte del Comune di Bologna, exhibition catalogue, Milan 1996).

Although the present painting is not cited in any of the known sources, stylistically this work clearly points to Palagi’s hand, moreover, it has a clear point of reference in the form of another smaller version, which is unmistakably the bozzetto or study for the present work, in which there are some minor compositional variants in the depiction of the background tableaux of small figures. The principal difference between the study and the final work however, concerns the depiction of the figure battling the hero, represented in the sketch as the Goddess of Death (perhaps one of the Moirai) depicted as to appear almost translucent, as if to emphasise the immateriality of the personification, while in the present painting the male figure of Thanatos, or Death personified, is rendered with solid realism: his body is characterised by livid grey flesh in startling contrast to that of the athletic figure of Hercules. In this, the final work, the pose of the figures is also more fully resolved, thanks to their greater dynamism and more precisely defined gestures.

The story of Alcestis, the wife of the Argonaut, Admetus, King of Pherae, gained considerable acclaim owing to its telling by Euripides in his earliest known tragedy Alcestis; her story was also told by several other classical writers including Apollodorus, Diodorus Siculus, and Hyginus in his Fabula as well as by Pausanias. The tale was again taken up in the modern era, by Vittorio Alfieri in his celebrated drama Alceste written in 1798 and in Christoph Gluck’s opera Alceste which premiered at the Hofburg, Vienna, in 1767. Dating to the same era are the less well known operas of Giovanni Battista Lampugnani presented in London in 1774 and that of Antonio Marcos Portugal staged in Venice in 1799. In painting, the most frequently represented episode of the heroine’s story is the Death of Alcestis, such as the painting by Jean François Peyron of 1785 which is conserved in the Louvre.

This myth evidently exercised considerable interest, not least on account of its final resolution, whereby Alcestis is restored to life thanks to the intervention of Hercules. Apollo, having been condemned by Zeus to serve a mortal man for a full year, had spent his time in the service of Admetus as the guardian of his flocks. Since the king had treated him with respect, the god helped him attain the favour of Alcestis. However, on the day of their wedding Admetus forgot to make sacrifice to Artemis, on account of which the goddess, to warn him of his imminent death, had him find snakes in his bed. Just as his final hour arrived, Apollo managed to gain a promise from the Fates that his protégé could continue to live, if someone was willing to sacrifice themselves and accept death in his place. No one, not even Admetus’ elderly parents, offered themselves, therefore Alcestis decided to accept death in place of her husband, thereby setting an example of conjugal devotion. It was at this moment that Hercules, who was then a guest of Admetus, intervened. He engaged Thanatos in a tremendous struggle and managed to save Alcestis from the death and he brought her back from Hades to Admetus.

Instead of representing Alcestis’ death, the most obvious episode in the story, as Peyron had, Palagi elected to depict the fight between Hercules and Thanatos, here rendered not as an abstract spirt, but as a terrifying divinity with an infernal gaze and an emaciated, corpselike, body whose nudity is covered only by the pelt of a ferocious animal. Both the figure of Hercules, isolated in an extraordinary pose of latent energy, and that of Thanatos, caught in a movement encapsulating immense tension, can be referred to another theme, drawn from Greek tragedy, and frequently rendered by the artist: that of Orestes pursued by the Furies after having killed his father Agamemnon. Their poses reoccur in a series of magnificent drawings, the most finished of which was engraved by Francesco Rosaspina (the print appeared for sale with Gonelli, Florence, 11 October 2017; for the set of drawings see C. Poppi [ed.], L’Ombra di Core. Disegni del fondo Palagi della Biblioteca dell’Archiginnasio, exhibition catalogue, Casalecchio di Reno 1988, pp. 76-77, 122-125). As for the figure of Hercules, another compositional comparison can be with the athletes in action, rendered in the now lost fresco La Lotta, executed in the Sala della Lanterna of Palazzo Reale Milan, executed between 1821 and 1822 and now known only through preparatory drawings and documentary photographs. The present painting dates to a similar moment owing to the complexity of the composition and the elevated quality of execution, signalling Palagi’s fall maturity. The battle between Hercules and Thanatos is a motif emblematic of the constant struggle between life and death: placed at the centre of a complex composition they are elegantly framed by the surrounding all’antica architecture silhouetted against the sky, and the background figures, including to the left Alcestis on the verge of death, who serve a role akin to that of the chorus in the staging of a Greek tragedy.