(Pieve di Soligo 1654–1726)
Toilette of Belinda,
oil on canvas, 102 x 77 cm, framed

Provenance:
Chilton Art Gallery, circa 1966 (according to a photograph in the Witt library, Courtauld Institute of Art, London – as Jacopo Amigoni or Pellegrini?);
Private European collection;
where acquired by the present owner

We are grateful to Enrico Lucchese for suggesting the attribution and for his help in cataloguing the present painting.

Lucchese has suggested that this previous unpublished painting should be given to Antonio Bellucci´s British period as the pictoral qualitiy, combined with the characteristic features of the figure and the classical composition interpreted through a late baroque filter modelled on the examples of Cignani and the Bolognese school are typical of his work from this period (see E. Lucchese, Addenda alla prima attività viennese di Antonio Bellucci, in: ‘Arte Veneta,Veneta’ 73, 2017, pp. 184–186).

Bellucci worked on the decoration of the chapel at Canons House, Edgware in Middlesex, for James Brydges, first Duke of Chandos, consecrated in August 1720 (E. Lucchese, Per l’attività decorativa di Antonio Bellucci in Inghilterra, in: Arte Veneta, 68, 2012, pp. 164–181). Owing to its secular subject, the present painting is especially close to the The Arts and the Sciences by the artist, painted for the ceiling of the so called ‘Museum’ of Canons House and today at Grimsthorpe Castle (op. cit. Magani, 1995, pp. 182–183, cat. 88); likewise, the study for the latter work conserved in the Tate Gallery, London (Lucchese 2012, pp. 166–167) is comparable in scale as an easel painting. Moreover, the concept of presenting a half length figure, played out in a contrast of light against shadow, is similar to the composition deployed for the Holy Family in a private collection at Parma, also dated to Bellucci’s British period (op. cit. Magani, 1995, p. 184, cat. 90).

Clarification of the work’s chronological placement has allowed for the identification of its subject, which has in turn pointed to its possible patron. The subject can generically be compared to typical representations of the Toilette of Venus or the Chignon of Bernice however, as referred to the former, cupid and other elements of setting specific to the myth are absent; while with reference to the latter, the important attribute of shears, with which the Egyptian queen Bernice was to cut the lock of her hair that was to become a constellation, is missing. The present painting is set in an early eighteenth century interior, as can be deduced from the style of ornament on the little chest on the table, placed beside the young woman engaged in platting her hair. She has seemingly just risen: her white gown is playfully dishevelled as she indulges – in the absolute absence of any reference to the fallen nature of vanity – in gazing at herself in the mirror held up for her by a young page.

These details however refer to the lines at the close of the first canto of Alexander Pope’s mock-heroic poem The Rape of the Lock (translated into Italian as Il ricciolo rapito) first published in 1712 and two years later in its definitive edition with this episode illustrated in the frontispiece. Here the protagonist, Belinda, is described as having just awoken as she conducts her morning preparations: ‘First, rob’d in White, the Nymph intent adores / With Head uncover’d the Cosmetic Pow’rs / A heav’nly Image in the Glass appears’ (A. Pope, The Rape of the Lock. An heroi-comical Poem, London 1714, p. 8).

The subtle eroticism of Bellucci’s Toilette of Belinda is carefully revealed through the sensual description, in the best Venetian tradition, of details of her breast, skin and hair, as well as of the eye-lashes of this young blond woman – all qualities justified by the poetic language of Pope, which evidently attained such immediate acclaim as to even be subjected to the trivial parody of Giles Jacob’s The Rape of the Smock of 1717.

James Brydges was among Pope’s admirers at this time and in 1715 he helped finance the poet’s translation of the Iliad (S. Jenkins, Portrait of a Patron. The Patronage and Collecting of James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos, Aldershot 2007, p. 154). Six years later, for John Sheffield, Bellucci decorated the walls of the great stair of Buckingham House, London, with scenes of Aeneas and Dido according to the ‘literary classicism that renewed the acclaim of Vigil and the Aeneid in the translation of John Dryden and the poetry of Alexander Pope’ (op. cit. Magani, 1995, p. 188, cat. P9 - 11). The poet evidently esteemed the Italian artist’s paintings, as evidenced by his citing them in a letter of 3 February 1731 (A. Pope, The Works of Alexander Pope Esq., I, 1824, p. 382; op. cit. Magani, 1995, p. 68, n. 135) wherein he defended himself against the accusation of having shot down the decorations at Canons made for its owner in the second edition of his work False Taste (op. cit. Jenkins, 2007).

In light of this information, it is possible consider that the Toilette of Belinda was commissioned by someone who equally admired the paintings of Bellucci and the poetry of Pope – like the Duke of Chandos whose collections were dispersed at auction over the course of ten days in June 1747 (op. cit. Jenkins, 2007, p. 191) or another illustrious patron from the circle of Alexander Pope, like the above mentioned John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, or another illustrious presence at Canons House, Georg Friedrich Händel who composed the Chandos Anthems, and was a collector of contemporary Venetian painting (A. Meyric-Hughes, M. Royalton-Kisch, Handel’s Art Collection, in: Apollo, 146, 1997, 427, pp. 17–23).