Offered by Brozzetti Antichità
18Th Century, Pair of Italian Allegorical Paintings By Vittorio Amedeo Rapos
Pair of paintings depicting the Allegory of Spring with putti and the Allegory of Autumn with putti, Vittorio Amedeo Rapos (Turin 1729-1800), 1786
The pair of valuable paintings was made in 1786 (as reported by an inscription on the back of one of the two paintings) by Vittorio Amedeo Rapos (or Raposo), one of the best active painters in Piedmont in the second half of the eighteenth century.
In the canvas presented here on the left is an allegory of spring with children playing, running with a dog and chasing hares; The work of the right represents the allegory of autumn with four putti who linger around a cart pulled by a sheep. The canvases are characterized by a precious light and a delicate and calibrated color range.
The two works can be connected with the paintings of Rapos of the years 1780-1790 made for the Royal Palace of Turin and comparable with other paintings of allegorical theme of the author kept at the Bana Intesa San Paolo in Turin, Palazzina di Caccia di Stupinigi and the Palazzina Marone Cinzano (now the headquarters of the Industrial Union of Turin). Clearly derived from French prototypes of the Louis XV era, the genre treated since ancient times and also spread among the Italian Renaissance painters in the form of bacchanalia, again willingly by painters of the seventeenth-century classicism, During the eighteenth century France experienced a growing success. The subjects proposed an innocent and at the same time mischievous vision of the relations between the sexes, and evoked the idea of an archaic and pastoral world full of grace and seduction.
The paintings were perhaps parts of a boiserie or a decorative set not yet identified (perhaps allegories of the four seasons or personifications of the twelve months of the year). Given the high quality and refined taste that pervades them, it is believed that they were created within the Turin Court or its closest entourage.
Vittorio Amedeo Rapos, painter linked to the Court of Turin, in 1747 is reported by documents as present in the celebrated school of Claudio Francesco Beaumont. Since 1752 his activity as author of cartoons for the tapestries of the Regia Manifattura Torinese has been documented; from the same year he also began a business of portraitist. In 1759 Rapos was a confrere of the Accademia di San Luca in Turin and from this time he began to paint religious altarpieces for many churches in Piedmont. Under the guidance of Beaumont, Rapos practiced all kinds of painting, including landscape, collaborating in 1757 with Vittorio Amedeo Cignaroli for the Palazzina di Stupinigi. Also for Stupinigi, he painted in 1765 all the decoration of the bedroom of the Duke of Chiablese with hunting trophies, cherubs and flowers. In the seventies the artist is now in full expansion and works for the Court, painting paintings for the castle of Moncalieri and churches. In 1778 he was appointed professor of the re-established Academy of Fine Arts in Turin and was registered with the members until his death. In the eighties his activity expanded still geographically, with works created for the Asti, the Cuneo, the Eporediese, and for the Susa Valley. In 1785 he received commissions from the Savoy and the Dukes of Aosta, as well as for many prestigious churches in Turin.
Rapos’s style is unmistakable in the rather complex panorama of the Beaumont school. The painter uses in fact very special color ranges with clear and cold shades of crystal clear transparency. With sharpness of design elaborates works crowded with characters of an elegance sometimes icy and static that already borders on neoclassicism. Strongly influenced by the art of his master, Rapos in his maturity gradually detached himself from the contemporary French painting with evident and strong influences from Boucher and Jean Marie Vien.
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