Scene from Ancient History or Mythology: Theseus Punishing Procrustes (?)

The attribution of this dramatic composition to Giuseppe Piattoli the Younger was proposed by the art historian Ugo Ruggeri in 1976, when relatively little was known about this Florentine artist and when his precise life dates (1743 - 1823) were yet to be uncovered. Named Giuseppe after his grandfather, Piattoli the Younger had descended from a family of artists who were mainly active in Florence. He taught drawing at the Accademia del Disegno in Florence from 1785 to 1807, and produced compositions of ancient history, as well as erudite mythological and biblical subjects.

The literary source for this cruel scene of summary military justice is elusive. A mounted military hero looks on as an old man is about to lose his right foot to the axe wielded by the figure kneeling in the center. At extreme right, a crowned turban lies on the ground. The composition and the figural types evoke the style of Salvator Rosa, to whom the drawing was attributed by an early collector, who wrote this artist's name and life dates along the bottom of the secondary mount. The subject of the present drawing has been compared to Salvator Rosa's etching of ca. 1661-62, The Death of Marcus Atilius Regulus (Bartsch.XX.271.9; Wallace 1979, no. 110, repr.). An impression of the print is in The Met's collection (inv. 2012.136.920).

An alternative interpretation of this torturous subject is the Greek myth of Procrustes, the brutal bandit from Attica, who lured wayfarers traveling from Athens to Eleusis with false hospitality that proved lethal. Procrustes stretched the legs of his unlucky short victims or cut off the legs of his tall victims to fit them to the size of an iron bed on Mount Korydallos. On his way from Troezen to Athens, Theseus defeated and killed Procrustes, punishing him as he had done to his hapless victims. The scene depicted here may be Theseus ordering the amputation of old Procrustes's legs. (CCB)