(Vienna 1647–1705 Turin)
Bacchus and Ariadne,
oil on canvas, 170 x 145 cm, framed

Provenance:
art market, Brussels;
where acquired by the father of the present owner, circa 1975

We are grateful to Annalisa Scarpa for suggesting the attribution of the present painting and for her help in cataloguing this lot.

This Bacchus and Ariadne is a work from the Roman period of the Veronese painter Antonio Balestra.

The mythological divinities, Bacchus and Ariadne, are shown in conversation and posed with graceful elegance; their expressions reflect the painter’s tendency to depict joyful subjects. The artist’s style displays a union between Venetian tradition and the vivacity of seventeenth century Roman painting. This picture fully expresses the properties of Balestra’s painterly style: here a lively narrative description and a sense of drama are combined with the skillfully deployed formal exuberance of Roman Seicento art, fused with the painterly colourism of Venetian tradition.

Antonio Balestra produced mythological scenes, often taking inspiration from the examples of Carlo Maratta and Marcantonio Franceschini. The cool, clear and intense colours apparent in the present painting are comparable to those in his Abduction of Europa in a private collection (see U. Ruggeri, Nuove opere documentate di Antonio Balestra, in: Pittura veneziana dal Quattrocento al Settecento: studi di storia dell’arte in onore di Egidio Martini, ed. by G. M. Pilo, Venice 1999, p. 188).

Antonio Balestra received his first training as a painter in Verona in the studio of Antonio Bellucci, subsequently moving to Venice in 1687. In 1690 he moved to Rome where he frequented the studio of Carlo Maratta whose influence would prove fundamental to the development of his personal painterly style. During the first two decades of the eighteenth century he again established himself in Venice where he attained international success painting mythological subjects. During the 1720s the artist returned to his native city of Verona and in 1725 he received notice of his election to the Accademia di San Luca in Rome (see L. Ghio, Antonio Balestra, in: I pittori Bergamaschi: il Settecento, ed by. R. Bossaglia, G. A. Dell’Acqua, Bergamo 1989, vol. 2, pp. 79-109).