Allegorical Composition: Music and Justice with the Spinola Arms

Once owned by the distinguished French collector Pierre-Jean Mariette (1694-1774), this highly finished drawing appears in the 1775-76 sale catalogue of his collection. It has been identified as preparatory for the frontispiece of "Il Corradino," a libretto for a tragedy set in medieval Naples, written by Antonio Caraccio (1630-1702), and published in Rome in 1694 (see Rome 1994, and Bibliography). The fasces held by a cherub at the upper right and the scales are attributes of Justice, who prominently bears a shield with the arms of the Spinola, among Genoa's oldest patrician families. "Il Corradino" was dedicated to Giovanni Battista Spinola, then governor of Rome. The seated female figure holding an array of wind instruments may personify Euterpe, the Muse of lyric poetry and music, an appropriate reference in a libretto. The Bay of Naples and Mount Vesuvius are depicted in the distant background (Bean 1979, no. 226). The Metropolitan Museum sheet is closer in design to the published frontispiece, engraved by Robert van Audenaerde, than is a related drawing in the Kunstmuseum, Düsseldorf (inv. no. FP 1929)

(Carmen C. Bambach, 1995, revised 2014)