Jupiter and Juno

Attributed to Carracci Antonio

(Venice 1589 - Rome 1618)

Depicting an episode from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, this panel was first mentioned in connection with the Borghese Collection in an inventory from 1762. It shows Juno, wife of Jupiter, portrayed in a moment of intimacy in her bedroom. A beautiful marine landscape with rugged mountains is visible through the window. The scene is embellished by a peacock and an eagle, the respective iconographic attributes of Juno and Jupiter, and by two small cherubs which probably represent Eros – appearing here as a celestial deity above several clouds – and his brother Anteros – shown as he destroys a bow.

The work was traditionally ascribed to the Bolognese painter Annibale Carracci. However, later critics proposed the name of Antonio, Annibale’s nephew and Agostino’s illegitimate son, while more recently others have suggested Giovanni Antonio Solari, a follower of the Carracci.

Object details

Commentary

This painting is first mentioned as forming part of the Borghese Collection in 1762, when it was described in the inventory of that year as ‘a work representing Jupiter seated on a bed with a woman. Cupid and a peacock, 1⅓ spans on each side, painted on panel, with a gilded frame, no. 207’ (Della Pergola 1955). While the inventory of 1765 mistakenly described it as a work on slate, the 1833 Inventario Fidecommissario ascribed the work to the Carracci school. This attribution was accepted by Giovanni Piancastelli (1891) but rejected by Adolfo Venturi (1893), who deemed the painting an imitation of a work by Raphael and proposed Giuseppe Cesari, called Cavalier d'Arpino, as the artist.

In 1928 Roberto Longhi described the panel as a replica ‘with intelligent variations’ of a fresco with a similar subject in Palazzo Farnese, executed by Annibale. His opinion was accepted by Paola della Pergola, who in 1955 published this Jupiter and Juno as a work by Carracci, dating it to 1602. For her part, Maria Celeste Cola (1997) expressed agreement with the attribution to Annibale.

Luigi Salerno (1956) was the first critic to ascribe the work to Antonio Carracci, Annibale’s nephew and Agostino’s son. His view was accepted by Sir Denis Mahon (1957), Maurizio Calvesi (1958) and more recently by Kristina Herrmann Fiore (2006) but rejected by Donald Posner (1971), who considered the work in question a copy of the Jupiter and Juno in the Farnese collection; Gianfranco Malafarina (1976) likewise disagreed with the attribution to Antonio.

Beginning from an inventory entry, Carel van Tuyll (1981) identified the Borghese panel with the one listed in the 1609 document of the artworks left by Annibale Carracci upon his death, whose description read ‘a painting of Jupiter with Juno and a cherub, by Giovanni Antonio’. This scholar specified that the artist in question was Giovanni Antonio Solari, a faithful student of Annibale who remained with his master to the end of his life, together with Antonio and Sisto Badalocchio. According to van Tuyll, the panel was indeed by Solari, a painter about whom little is still known. In addition to ascribing the work in question to him, this scholar dubiously maintained that a series of other paintings should be attributed to Solari, works that were more recently discussed by Nicosetta Roio (2007) in her monograph on Antonio Carracci.

As critics have stated, the panel reproduces the fresco by Annibale Carracci in Palazzo Farnese with several variations: both works portray Jupiter and Juno at the foot of the bed in a moment of great intimacy. Yet unlike the Farnese scene, here the landscape was added behind the two protagonists. In addition, Solari included the two cherubs, probably Cupid and Anteros, who represent the two sides of love – passion and ruthlessness – a likely allusion to Juno’s faithfulness and devotion to Jupiter, which contrasts with her husband’s infidelity.

Antonio Iommelli