3209
Baroque master
17th/18th C.
Bacchus and Cupid.
Oil on panel. Unsigned.
H 40,5, W 31,5 cm (support). Framed.
Two playfully fighting putti meet here in familiar affection, their baroque corpulence only barely covered with a drapery. The taller of the two wears grapes in his hair and is thus identified as the youthful Bacchus, god of wine, while his opponent, a winged boy with curly hair, holds a quiver of arrows and thus reveals himself as the god of love Cupid, the eternally ephemeral offspring of the goddess of love Venus. The wrestling pair of gods is shrouded in soft light and stands out in almost Caravaggesque chiaroscuro against a diffuse, somber background. In this timelessly transfigured setting, devoid of mythological plot context, the subject is merely the sheer existence of the deities and the archetypal exemplarity of their inherent playfulness. The painting testifies to an intensive examination of figures of the ancient heaven of the gods in the 18th century, not without a mischievous wink.
Provenance: Gertrud von Lukasiewiecz, Bad Säckingen; by succession transferred to private property Hexental.

Condition report