Bacchus and Ariadne

1730 · Private collection

mythological

Amigoni had spent his early career in Venice, but he left the city to make a name for himself as an international artist, quickly finding an avid audience in the various courts of Europe which had developed a taste for the charm of the Venetian Rococo. In 1730, Amigoni arrived in London fresh from a series of pictorial triumphs in Venice, Rome and at the court of the Elector of Bavaria, and soon had eager patrons amongst the English nobility and even royalty. The pair of canvases of mythological subjects, Venus and Adonis, and Bacchus and Ariadne, represent one of the most important works by Amigoni from his seminal English sojourn.

About the Artist

Jacopo Amigoni

1682 – 1752

Jacopo Amigoni (Amiconi) was a Venetian history and portrait painter who worked all over Europe in a more or less international style, the Venetian Rococo, with elements compounded from Sebastiano Ricci and French Rococo, and, later, Tiepolo. He worked for some years for the Elector of Bavaria and then came to London in 1730, where he painted several decorative cycles (e.g. Rickmansworth, near London, Moor Park Golf Club) and portraits; though these, according to Vertue, were 'not his inclination - nor Talent'. In 1739 he returned to Venice with a small fortune, and it was he who persuaded Canaletto to visit London (1746). In 1747 he went to Madrid as Court painter: Vertue records that news of his death there reached London just as his finest works - in St James's Square - were destroyed. The altarpiece of Emmanuel Collection, Cambridge, is his; other works are in Darmstadt, London, Madrid, Venice and York.

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