Beskrivning: Backus sitter på en stupad åsna, omgiven av dansande och spelande satyrer och nymfer. I bakgrunden till höger kulle med lövträd, till vänster utblick över landskap. Molnig himmel.

Se beskrivning i den engelska versionen.

Catalogue raisonné: Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 47:  

FORMER INV. NOS.: 47 (M. 1796–97); 186 (F. 1798); 389 (M. 1804);
KM 94; NM 6.

TECHNICAL NOTES: The support is a single piece of coarse,
sparsely woven, plain-weave linen fabric (12 x 12 threads/cm2). The
ground is red. The painting has been lined with glue and mounted
with staples on a Martelli strainer. The right tacking edge has been
cropped. Impastos in the paint layer have been flattened due to
the lining. There are some old retouches. The varnish is yellowed.
Documented restorations: 1990: Consolidation of flaking paint. Retouching.
Varnish.

PROVENANCE: Martelli 1804.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Sander 1872–76, III, p. 130, no. 389 (as Francesco
Albani).

In Fredenheim’s catalogue, this painting and its
companion piece NMDrh 711 (cat. no. 48) are
attributed to Albani.¹ NMDrh 711 was later attributed
to Crespi by Pontus Grate.² That attribution
seems appropriate for the present painting as
well.

Both Mira Pajes Merriman and Dwight C.
Miller link Crespi’s development of his pastoral
style, and its distinctive Bolognese quality, to the
influence of Albani, who in turn was dependent
on the development of the Carracci in this field.³
As Merriman describes, Albani was instrumental
in the development of an Ovidian bucolic style
of painting, with subject matter that could be
directly linked to the evolving interest in Arcadian
poetry in 17th-century Italy, an interest that
had led to the founding of Arcadian academies
in both Rome and Bologna. Although Albani’s
pastorals, with “figural groups set in peaceful
glades and meadowlands”,⁴ were hugely influential,
Crespi’s own interpretation of this Arcadian
subject could take quite a different shape. Miller
emphasizes how Crespi’s pastorals took on more
temperament and rusticity, employing a brusque,
sombre naturalism as well as a humorous idiom
and Emilian local colour, a style which Merriman
describes as “Poesia Buffa”.⁵

Miller also rightly gives a wider background to
the development of the Bolognese pastoral, going
beyond Albani to the Carracci’s own influences
in this genre. Among these, he mentions the
Ferrarese Dosso Dossi (1486‒1542), Correggio
(1494–1534), Niccolò dell’Abate and Giulio Romano
(1492–1546), artists who also, directly as well
as indirectly, influenced Crespi. Miller concludes
that the interpretation of the pastoral tradition
after the Carracci took two directions: one taken
by Ludovico and followed by Guercino, where
the central figural groups are offset by a darker
crepuscular setting, and the other, chiefly taken by
Albani, where an eternal afternoon light pervades
the scenes and the background is built from finely
detailed trees, bushes and glades. Miller believes
that Crespi followed the path of Ludovico and
Guercino rather than that of Albani.⁶

However, while some of the characteristics
exhibited in the present painting could be attributable
to the influence of Guercino, its chief inspiration
is Albani’s style. The light which permeates
the whole composition recalls the near twilight
and sense of perpetual transient late afternoon of
Albani’s pastorals. It is very similar to that of its
companion piece, yet has a slightly darker quality,
which to some extent is also reminiscent of the
light found in similar pastorals by Guercino. The
beautiful opening of the landscape to the far left
makes the composition brighter, though, than
Crespi’s landscapes in general. This beautifully
mirrors the corresponding opening of the landscape
in NMDrh 711.

The facial types are in Crespi’s style: for
example, the upturned face of the girl in the left
foreground, the profiles of the man plucking
bunches of grapes from the vine and the woman
approaching Silenus from the left, and the faces
of the nymphs surrounding him to the right.
Details such as the garlands of vine leaves and the
donkey are also very similar to Crespi’s previously
known depictions of such flora and fauna.⁷ As in
NMDrh 711, we also find the figure of the woman
with a striding pose entering the scene from the
right, which recurs in some of Crespi’s other pastorals.
⁸ Through these figures, a vivid sense of revelry
is conveyed in the painting. The great girth of
Silenus, who is depicted in perfect drunkenness,
weighs on the poor donkey, and he almost topples
over, to the concern, and great amusement, of the
attending satyrs. These details are fine examples
of the temperament and humour typical of the
“poesia buffa” that was also a major feature of
Crespi’s genre paintings.

With the reservation that the light of the
composition could perhaps be considered brighter
than is usually found in Crespi’s pastorals, the
general assessment of this painting points to an
attribution to that artist or his close circle.
dp

1 NM Archives, Kongl. Museum, F:1, Catalogue du Cabinet
de Martelli (à Rome).
2 NM Archives, Dokumentationsarkivet: NMDrh 710.
3 Miller 1985, pp. 339–342.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 For comparison see: Spike 1986, pp. 123–127, 142–143,
146–147, 154–155, 160–161, 162–163, cat. nos. 7–9, 17, 19, 22,
25, 26, figs. 7.1, 22.1, 26.1; Emiliani and Rave 1990, pp.
315–317, 388–391, 434–435, 442–443, 450–451, 460–461,
cat. nos. 34–35, 69–70, 92, 96, 101, 106.
8 Spike 1986, pp. 154–155, cat. no. 22. [End]

Silenus triumftåg