The Genius of Sculpture

1650 · Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence

mythological

The young man in the foreground, thought to be Mehus himself, shows the onlooker three famous antique sculptures behind him: a bronze version of a statue of Athena, Trajan's Column, and the bottom part of a famous statue of Hercules at rest, known as the Farnese Hercules. The small spirit crowned with a laurel wreath in bottom right corner is focused on drawing them, and thus the whole scene serves to explain that only through the ceaseless and direct study of an aspiring artist is it possible to uncover the secrets of form and matter. This subject was very popular in the 18th century, linking back to the stoic themes of the finite nature of human destiny to which the immortality of the Genius is counterposed.

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About the Artist

Livio Mehus

1630 – 1691

Flemish painter and draughtsman, active mainly in Florence. After an obscure training in Milan with a battle-painter, he traveled at the age of 15 years to Rome, where he was a pupil of the painter Pietro da Cortona, and often worked with Ciro Ferri. In Florence, he had extensive patronage from the Medici family. From Florence, he left to join theater players for the Duke of Savoy in Turin, but after three years he returned to painting in Florence, where he joined Stefano della Bella. He assisted in the decoration of the cupola of the church of La Pace at Florence. Mehus painted allegorical and mythological scenes, landscapes and religious works. He was an eclectic artist, drawing on a wide variety of sources to create a highly individual and innovative style. His art united Venetian colour with elements of the proto-romanticism of Salvator Rosa, Pier Francesco Mola and Pietro Testa, and he was also inspired by Genoese, Bolognese and Flemish sources.

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