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Supporting museums Art we've helped buy The Choice of Hercules
The Choice of Hercules The Choice of Hercules

The Choice of Hercules

Paolo de' Matteis

Art Funded
1980
Dimensions
198 x 256 cm
Art Fund grant
£16,000 (Total: £65,000)
Vendor
Christie's
The painting was commissioned by Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, to complete the project for a history painting outlined in the Earl's 'A Notion of the Historical Draught of Hercules'.

Shaftesbury's persistent ill health forced him to retire to Naples where he wrote the work.

Provenance

Earls of Shaftesbury by descent until sold at Christie's.

Oil on canvas

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Art we’ve helped buy at Ashmolean Museum

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Nominally inspired by Lucretius' De rerum natura, Piero di Cosimo's The Forest Fire takes its scientific subject and embellishes it with fantastical creatures from the artist's imagination: Bulls, bears, lions and deer-like creatures with human faces all flee wearily from a fire.

Rubens' portrait of Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel dates from about 1629. The Earl was a great collector, and Rubens had painted the earl's wife a few years earlier on a visit to Antwerp. This drawing in pen and ink with a chalk base is unusually informal, reflecting perhaps the comfortable relationship between artist and patron.

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Image credit

1 . The Choice of Hercules

© Ashmolean Museum

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