Pietro Della Vecchia (venice 1603 - 1678) - Bathsheba At Her Toilet

Pietro Della Vecchia (Venice 1603 - 1678)



2) Bathsheba at the bath


Oil on panel diameter about 22cm - frame about 32cm
Written expertise prof. Emilio Negro

The second depicts the young and seductive Bathsheba, half-naked in the right foreground, while her maid receives a note from a page sent by King David. David had noticed her while walking on the terrace of his palace at dusk: the figure seen between the two towers in the background represents the king in love with the beautiful wife of Uriah, an officer serving in his army. The next story is that David, using his power, arranged for Uriah to be sent to fight in the front line, so that he was quickly killed, allowing the king of Israel to take the young widow as his wife.

In 1984, Bernard Aikema demonstrated that the painter's real surname was Della Vecchia, while Pietro Muttoni, by which he was known from the nineteenth century onwards, was the result of a misinterpretation by Luigi Lanzi of a work by F. Bartoli (Le pitture, sculture ed architetture della città di Rovigo, 1793), in which a painting by the artist in the Casa Muttoni in Rovigo is mentioned. The peculiarity of the original surname has led some to interpret it throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as a nickname derived from Della Vecchia's activity as a restorer, as well as from his predisposition to reproduce and copy the paintings of artists of previous generations such as Giorgione. He probably studied under Alessandro Varotari, known as Padovanino, from whom he derived his interest in Venetian painting of the previous century, particularly that of Titian and Giorgione. Known for his skill in reproducing the style of the 16th-century Venetian masters (Marco Boschini, his contemporary, called him a "simia di Zorzon", an imitator of Giorgione), he is also known for his grotesque genre paintings, as well as for his work as a portraitist. He also restored the Pala di Castelfranco. As the official painter of the Republic of Venice, he was commissioned to make cartoons for the mosaics in St Mark's Basilica, an activity that kept him busy from 1640 to 1673. Around 1670, he painted Moses and Aaron with the Pharaoh, now in La Spezia at the Museo civico Amedeo Lia, which reveals the influence of Caravaggio. Still in Venice, he painted Saint Anthony of Padua, his basilica and two conventual minors: Fathers Maurizio Cavalletti and Maurizio Graziani, religious of the Frari, who donated it in 1674, for the basilica of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. Near the Rialto, in the church of San Lio, on the left side of the high altar, you can admire a magnificent crucifixion. He married Clorinda Renieri, also a painter, daughter of the Flemish painter and art dealer Nicolas Régnier, with whom della Vecchia did business in the latter branch.