(Rome 1616–­1705)
Angelica and Medoro; and
Rinaldo and Armida,
oil on copper, each 18 x 25 cm, framed, a pair (2)

Provenance:
Private European collection

Literature:
Y. Primarosa (ed.), Una rivoluzionaria silenziosa. Plautilla: pittrice e architettrice, exhibition catalogue, Rome 2021, pp. 64–67, nos. 14–15

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

The two scenes are taken respectively from the epic poems by Ludovico Ariosto and Torquato Tasso. Angelica is shown encouraging the Saracen soldier Medoro, as he etches his name and that of his lover on the trunk of a tree (XIX: 12–42), while the Christian hero Rinaldo contemplates the image of beautiful Armida reflected in a mirror before being recalled to his duties on a crusade (XVI: 18–23).

The features of the four protagonists and of the putti above the lovers, as described by Ariosto, are comparable to those painted by Plautilla Bricci on the two sides of the standard of Poggio Mirteto in 1675. Also comparable, is the particular pale colour-palette, reminiscent of Pietro da Cortona, deployed for the drapery, which is in turn closely comparable to the colouring of the signed, so-called Lateran ‘Lunettone’ today in storage in the Vatican Museums (see Y. Primarosa, op. cit., 2021, cat. VI.1, fig. 24).

These painterly characteristics, according to Primarosa, support the attribution to Plautilla for the present two works, which have been previously attributed to Filippo Lauri (1623–1694). Primarosa dates both works to circa 1665, when Plautilla Bricci, fifty years old, had attained success as a painter. At the time, she received two important commissions for the Lateran complex: the above-mentioned lunette, now in the Vatican, and the lost canvases of Saint Francis and Saint Dominic for the grisaille cycle of the Oratorio del Santissimo Sacramento.

Plautilla Bricci was celebrated both as a painter and as an architect (see F. Baldinucci, Delle notizie de’ Professori del disegno da Cimbaue in qua, Firenze 1768, vol. XIX, p. 165). As was typical of female painters of the age, Plautilla received her earliest training under her father, Giovanni Bricci, a friend of Giuseppe Cesari, il Cavalier d’Arpino, who was the godfather of his first daughter Virginia. In 1655, Plautilla is documented as a registered painter at the Accademia di San Luca where she is again cited in 1671, signalling her regular attendance at the Academy which, from 1607, was the first institution of its kind to admit women.