The Discovery of Antiquity: The “Cupid Seller.”
The style label known as “neo-classicism” continues to evade precise definition. At its simplest it refers to the re-imagining of antiquity in the eighteenth century- the age of reason- inspired by the archaeological endeavours of scholars, antiquarians and dilettanti.[1] As way of focusing on neo-classism, it is helpful to consider a work of art that embodies the spirit of antiquity and which was much copied and interpreted by artists of this era. This work is the fresco known as the “Cupid Seller”, found in the Villa di Arianna at Stabia, and now in the Archaeological Museum, Naples.[2] This scene showing a vendor of cupids offering her goods to a refined Roman woman and her servant was engraved by Carlo Nolli and published in volume three of Delle antichità di Ercolani (1726) which would become the main source for the transmission of the image. The most famous interpretation of the Cupid Seller was the painting by Joseph-Marie Vien (1716-1809) (above) who became a pioneer of neo-classicism. Trained under Natoire, Vien won awards in Rome and became the teacher of Jacques Louis David. After his return to Paris, Vien met France’s most famous antiquarian Anne-Claude- Phillipe de Caylus (1692-1765) who encouraged Vien’s antiquarian leanings. As Vien would not have seen the original fresco his Cupid Seller was probably based on a print in Caylus’s copy of the Antichità; Vien replaced the bright colours of the original fresco with soft, pastel- like colours set against an architecturally austere background which evokes Poussin just as much ancient Roman wall painting.
[1] On the problems of the term “Neo-classicism”, Matthew Craske, Art in Europe 1700-1830, (OUP, 1997), 7f.
[2] Various, The Last Days of Pompeii, (Getty, Los Angeles,2012), nos 1-4.
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