Paolo de Matteis

With Studio d'Arte Palma, Rome;

From whom acquired by a private collector, Rio di Janeiro, 1948 (as Carlo Maratta);

By whose heirs sold, Rio de Janeiro, Horacio Ernani, circa 1978 (as Carlo Maratta);

Where acquired by the present collectors.

The Neapolitan Baroque painter Paolo de Matteis executed this grand mythological scene during the last decade of the seventeenth century, a moment when he was working between Rome and Naples. After training in his hometown in the workshop of Luca Giordano, De Matteis relocated in 1683 to Rome, where Carlo Maratta's influence had a profound effect on the young artist.

Depicting a scene from Ovid's Metamorphoses, De Matteis illustrates the moment Daphne begins to transform into a tree: the fingers of her outstretched right hand are sprouting into laurel branches. Cupid had previously struck the sun-god at left with a golden arrow, thereby kindling his love for the nymph, who had, in turn, been struck by a leaden arrow, causing the repulsion of love. While fleeing from Apollo, Daphne prayed to her father, the river god Peneus, shown recumbent at center, to save her from the arduous flight, which prompted her arboreal metamorphosis.

The present work comes from the same distinguished collection as Domenichino's Rebuke of Adam and Eve, today in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (inv. no. 2000.3.1).

We are grateful to Ian Kennedy for first identifying Paolo de Matteis as the work's author and to Professor Riccardo Lattuada for endorsing the attribution to De Matteis.