MASP

The slightly smaller originals belong to the Frick’s Collection in New York (inv. 12.1.128 and 129). The works in question – The Poet Leaving Vice for Virtue. Hercules at the Crossroads –, ordered from Veronese by Emperor Rudolf II in 1576, together with two others Mercury, Herse and Aglaurus and Mars and Venus United by Love, respectively in the museums of Cambridge and New York – were always ranked among Veronese master-pieces. Pallucchini (1984, p. 128), for example, has remarked that “the montage of the first composition [Inv. 492] is one of the most controlled and perceptive ever imagined by Paolo”. This is the reason why the works were copied at least four times between the 17th and 18th centuries by prestigious artists like Boucher and Carle van Loo (Museum of Cambrai). Watson (1989) delightfully narrated the peripatetic history of the works – from the imperial’s collections in Prague until their acquisition in 1912 by Henry Clay Frick, on a recommendation from Roger Fry. Among several owners were Queen Christina of Sweden, who took the pictures from Stockholm to Rome in 1654; the Odescalchi, one of the most important patrician Roman families in the 17th century (1693); and Prince Regent Philippe, Duke of Orleans, who acquired them in 1721 for his gallery in the Palais Royal, then the most distinguished in Europe. Around 1750-1755, the two works – The Poet Leaving Vice for Virtue. Hercules at the Crossroads and Wisdom and Strengh Allegory: Hercules’’ Choice or Hercules and Onfale – (and also the Moses Rescued from the Waters by Veronese) were copied by François Boucher (1703-1770) at the request of a member of the Portuguese royal family, Duke Aveiro . In 1929, the works were purchased from the House of Bragança by Baron Gui Thomitz, who sold them to Mitchell Samuels of French & Co., New York. Coincidentally, Watson (1989, p. 210), who did not know of the Masp’s copies, related that “according to a note in the Frick archives, around 1929 the copy (Inv. 492) made by Boucher passed to the collection of Baron Gui Thomitz in Paris”. This information is precious because it confirms that the Masp’s copies are precisely those of Boucher. Watson, moreover, published an old photograph of the Inv. 492 (p. 205) with no indication of location. On the other hand, in a letter to Assis Chateaubriand (June 5, 1951), Mitchell Samuels provided definitive testimony of Boucher’s authorship: “It seems that the Veronese originals were in the collection of the Regent of France in the 18th century, when Duke d’Aneiro of Portugal fell in love with them and obtained the Regent’s special permission to have them copied. The copies were then sent to Portugal, where they remained until the 1890s. At the beginning of the century, they were shown to Mr. Bernhard Berenson, who examined them very carefully and, obviously, concluded they were not by Veronese. After cleaning, he discovered Boucher’s signature, and thus put the finishing touch on the facts described above”. In effect, the letter “B” may be distinguished on the lower right of the painting Inv. 493. The allegoric theme of the works, at once erotic and moralizing, is connected to the myth of Hercules’ moral dilemma, represented in the work The Poet Leaving Vice for Virtue: Hercules at the Crossroads (Inv. 492). Apparently Hercules’ figure is a Veronese self-portrait. As a modern development of Prudentius’ Psychomachia that recurred since the 5th century, the allegory in question was fully analyzed by Seznec, Wind, and Panofsky. In the Allegory of Wisdom and Strength: The Choice of Hercules or Hercules and Onfale (Inv. 493), the female figure contemplates the firmament and dominates the world and its treasures, under her foot. She represents Divine Wisdom with its classic attribute of the sun over her head, while the hero Hercules is unsteadily leaning beside her, gazing at the material riches and his works.

— Unknown authorship, 1998

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