European Art and Old Masters

Note

The present work appears to date from the artist’s late career, circa 1650, a time when Martinelli returned to Florence after a brief stay in Rome, where he experience a newfound appreciation for the work of Caravaggio and Gentileschi which led him to create several allegories such as the present one, all largely executed in an oval format, and depicting qualities, or liberal arts. The feminine figure is caught bust-length. Wearing a lush crown of flowers, she turns to the viewer with a mild mischievous smile, showcasing her shiny jewels and pearls, in her hair as well as on her ears and wrists. She is holding an imposing silver and gold urn, on which we notice a pair of cornucopias traditionally associated with the figure of Abundance, while we notice more precious items, including feathers, in the background. Her rosy cheeks and delicately painted red lips contrast with her beautiful pale, creamy white skin, which absorbs all of the painting’s glistening light, in a very Caravaggesque manner. The broader sense of the allegory is to act a vanitas motif, a moral exhortation to not be lured by the woman’s beauty and goods, and choose virtue over vice – a significant pictorial subject for art in 17th-century Medici Florence.