Pietro Domenico Ollivero - Manio Annio Curio Dentato, Italy circa 1740

Pietro Domenico Ollivero

Manio Annio Curio Dentato receives the ambassadors of the Samnites, around 1740

Oil on canvas, frame measures: cm W 52 x H 64.5 (2 cm depth)

The work in question depicts the scene of and was made by the famous italian painter Pietro Domenico Ollivero.
The oval canvas shows on the back the card of the Galleria Caretto in Turin (Italy) with the authentic 1965 Giorgio Caretto. The work was also published in "I Piaceri e le grazie" by Arabella Cifani and Franco Monetti in 1993.
The subject refers to the history of Rome and an episode narrated by the historian Valerio Massimo.
Manius Curius Dentatus (330 BC - 270 BC), one of the great Romans of the 3rd century B.C. was a consul in ancient Rome, known for ending the Samnite Wars.


Elected consul in 290 BC. along with Publio Cornelio Rufino, in the same year he fought and won the Third War against the Samnites and their allies, thus ending a conflict that had lasted for 49 years.
He definitively subdued the Sabines and the Greek army of Pyrrhus in the battle of Benevento. He represented the ideal prototype of ancient Roman for the generations that followed in that he avoided public honours; Cato the censor, who collected his sayings, placed him among the great figures of universal history. For centuries after his death (in 270 B.C. while overseeing the construction of the second aqueduct in Rome) his military exploits were recounted and his moral rectitude was praised as an example for all the Romans.
Ollivero, in the cultured choice of the episode, illustrates the moment when Manio Curio Dentato is found in his home, characterized by Roman walls, sitting by the fire, on a rustic bench while eating his meal in a "ligneo catillo" (wooden basin).

On the left came ambassadors who offered him money and other valuables. The rejection of the Roman hero came with the exclamation reported by Valerius Maximus: "narrated Sannitibus M. Curium malle locupletibus imperare quam ipsum fieri locupletem" (tell the Samnites that Manius Curius would rather reign over the rich than enrich himself).
Love of the little and poverty are characteristic elements of Ollivero’s life and of the choice of his subjects. The fact that he knew the work of Valerio Massimo confirms his articulated culture. The artist also represents the episode again with great vividness in a small picture, already on board and now on canvas, pendant with a Sofonisba che beve il veleno.

There are not many works known with historical subject of Pietro Domenico Ollivero; however, the present, dated to the forties of the eighteenth century, together with a few but significant other examples, demonstrate the ability of the author to touch even uncommon historical themes maintaining a great artistic quality, insinuating a new pictorial line in its vast panorama of subjects.


Pietro Domenico Ollivero (Turin, August 1, 1679 - Turin, January 13, 1755) is unanimously recognized as a master of Italian bambocciante painting of the first half of the eighteenth century. He is in fact responsible for a faithful image of the Turin society of the time thanks to his remarkable ability to outline with grace and humanity the crowds and places of the eighteenth-century subalpine capital, giving us a precious testimony of the Piedmontese civilization of his time.

Born in Turin in 1679, his surname recurs in documents in several spellings. However, in the plots, drawings and holographic testament, the painter always signed Pietro Domenico Ollivero. In the 1705 census of Turin he was recorded as a cripple and in many drawings and paintings he portrayed his deformity with irony.


According to sources he was a pupil of the painter and architect Melchiorre Baldassarre Bianco and was strongly influenced by the Dutch and Flemish painters active in Turin in the second half of the seventeenth century: Melchior Hamers, Peter Mauritz Bolckman, Abraham Godyn, Jean-Baptiste Abret, Jean Miel. He was protected by King Vittorio Amedeo II of Savoy; however, to the more conventional themes proposed by the illustrious patron, Ollivero preferred to portray streets and squares of his city, studying above all the social characteristics of the lower classes. He was much appreciated by the Savoy nobility and by the court that provided him with continuous commissions until his last years of life.
Among the most important commissions is Pietro Mellarède, Minister of the Interior of Vittorio Amedeo II, who owned 15 of his paintings, climbed between 1698 and the eighteenth century, still preserved in the castle of Betton Bettonnet in Savoy. In 1711 he had a workshop already started and works for the Venaria Reale (1714) and the royal palace of Turin (1716) are documented.

In 1717 he appeared for the first time among the brothers of the Confraternita dei Ss. Maurizio e Lazzaro of Turin, of whom he was collaborator, councillor emeritus and benefactor until his death. In 1726 he was elected prior of the Accademia di san Luca of Turin. In these years of full maturity, he was favored by the support of the first court painter Claudio Francesco Beaumont and the powerful minister Carlo Vincenzo Ferrero di Roasio Marchese d'Ormea who commissioned dozens of paintings for the residences of Cavoretto, Turin and Montaldo Torinese. He worked for the Agliè and Guarese castles of Agliè (1737), for the royal palace of Turin, for the hunting palace of Stupinigi. Of 1743 are the Notturno con il falò di S. Giovanni Battista a Torino and a Processione alla Madonna del Pilone (both preserved in the Civic Museum of Ancient Art in Turin). In 1745 and 1746 he dedicated himself to the design of sets for the Regio theatre in Turin; he also provided drawings of genre scenes and battles to the cabinetmaker Luigi Prinotto and other cabinetmakers of the early 18th century in Turin. They recall, in particular, the works for the hunting palace di Stupinigi, for which he executed, from 1748 to May 1753, at least thirty paintings, in part intended to overlap. On 15 November 1754 he signed the will. He died in Turin on 13 January 1755 and was buried, at his disposal, in the basilica Mauriziana.

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