Francesco de Mura

With Colnaghi, London, by 1976;
Poliarco, S.A.;
Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, 19 April 1989, lot 16, where acquired by the present owner.

London, Colnaghi, Italian Paintings 1550–1780, 26 May – 2 July 1976, no. 31.

N. Spinosa ed., Civiltà del '700 a Napoli, exh.. cat., Florence 1979, vol. I, p. 204, under cat. no. 96;
N. Spinosa, Pittura napoletana del Settecento, Naples 1986, p. 164, under cat. no. 266;
D. Nolta, 'Francesco de Mura', in A Taste for Angels, Neapolitan Painting in North America 1650–1750, exh. cat., New Haven 1987, pp. 286–87, under cat. no. 3;
A. Bacchi, Poliarco. A Collector's Choice, Paris 1987, pp. 45–46, cat. no. 15, reproduced;
A.R. Blumenthal et al., In the light of Naples. The art of Francesco de Mura, London 2016, p. 180, under cat. no. 37, reproduced in colour fig. 84 (as datable to circa 1765).

This subject is inspired by a line from the work of the Roman comic poet, Terence: 'sine cerere et libero friget venus' ('without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus would freeze'). Here Ceres, goddess of the Harvest, hands a sheaf of wheat to a winged putto as Bacchus, her son, offers her a bowl of wine, signifying the analogy implied in the text that without food and drink, love would be impossible. Francesco de Mura treated this subject in a directly comparable composition, of almost identical dimensions, today in The Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame, Indiana dating to circa 1763.¹ Professor Nicola Spinosa, to whom we are grateful, dates the present work to the first half of the 1740s, however, noting the strong influence of Solimena in the figures and the strong tonalities of the palette, which are rather more muted in the later version (written correspondence, March 2017).

1. See Blumenthal et al. 2016, pp. 180–81, cat. no. 37, reproduced in colour.