Vanity, the melancholy after Domenico Feti (Rome, circa 1589 - Venice 1623)

Important Important vanity, the melancholy after Domenico Feti (Rome, circa 1589 - Venice, 1623). Oil on canvas of vertical rectangular form in a Baroque-style frame, Melancholy or Meditation is a partial reworking of Domenico Feti's work dated 1618. In this painting, the central figure, Mary of Magdala, wears a long robe and a cape. She holds her head with her hand and looks toward a skull held by her other hand. She is both pensive and melancholy. The skull is placed on a book, itself placed on a table. The subject is characteristic of the hermetic, astrological and alchemical climate that prevailed at the court of Ferdinand Gonzaga in the early 17th century. This painting was reproduced many times, the original is in the gallery of the Academy of Venice. A variant now in the Louvre was acquired in Flanders by Gabriel Blanchard for the collection of Louis XIV. It was presented in the cabinet of the King's paintings in the Palace of Versailles in 1695.
Domenico Feti (1589-1624), author of "The Melancholy" around 1622, is an Italian Baroque painter. His painting style evolved over time. Indeed, at the beginning he worked in the court of Mantua, it is there that he will be influenced by different styles and painters. Then, following an incident with a Mantuan nobleman, he will move to Venice where his style of painting will get closer to the Venetian art. Finally, he will be inspired until his death by the painting of Rubens to continue to improve his style.
The vanitas or Memento mori represents human life by means of symbolic motifs intended to highlight its inconsistency and fragility. The meditation on death, redemption, the vanities of the world, the notion of time and ephemerality, the quest for a virtuous inner life through the mastery of outer life. It develops as an independent pictorial genre at the beginning of the 17th century and is closely linked to the feeling of precariousness that spreads in Europe following the Thirty Years War and the plague epidemics.
Work of the Venetian school of the beginning of the XIXth century around 1800.
Dimensions to the frame: height 113.5cm width 95.8cm.


Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) Oil on canvas of vertical rectangular form in a Baroque-style frame, Melancholy or Meditation is a partial reworking of Domenico Feti's work dated 1618. In this painting, the central figure, Mary of Magdala, wears a long robe and a cape. She holds her head with her hand and looks toward a skull held by her other hand. She is both pensive and melancholy. The skull is placed on a book, itself placed on a table. The subject is characteristic of the hermetic, astrological and alchemical climate that prevailed at the court of Ferdinand Gonzaga in the early 17th century. This painting was reproduced many times, the original is in the gallery of the Academy of Venice. A variant now in the Louvre was acquired in Flanders by Gabriel Blanchard for the collection of Louis XIV. It was presented in the cabinet of the King's paintings in the Palace of Versailles in 1695.
Domenico Feti (1589-1624), author of "The Melancholy" around 1622, is an Italian Baroque painter. His painting style evolved over time. Indeed, at the beginning he worked in the court of Mantua, it is there that he will be influenced by different styles and painters. Then, following an incident with a Mantuan nobleman, he will move to Venice where his style of painting will get closer to the Venetian art. Finally, he will be inspired until his death by the painting of Rubens to continue to improve his style.
The vanitas or Memento mori represents human life by means of symbolic motifs intended to highlight its inconsistency and fragility. The meditation on death, redemption, the vanities of the world, the notion of time and ephemerality, the quest for a virtuous inner life through the mastery of outer life. It develops as an independent pictorial genre at the beginning of the 17th century and is closely linked to the feeling of precariousness that spreads in Europe following the Thirty Years War and the plague epidemics.
Work of the Venetian school of the beginning of the XIXth century around 1800.
Dimensions to the frame: height 113.5cm width 95.8cm.