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The Triumph of Flora Myths of Rome 01 repaged 23/9/04 1:53 PM Page 1 1 THE TRIUMPH OF FLORA 1.1 TIEPOLO IN CALIFORNIA Let’s begin in San Francisco, at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park. Through the great colonnaded court, past the Corinthian columns of the porch, we enter the gallery and go straight ahead to the huge Rodin group in the central apse that dominates the visitor’s view. Now look left. Along a sight line passing through two minor rooms, a patch of colour glows on the far wall. We walk through the Sichel Glass and the Louis Quinze furniture to investigate. The scene is some grand neo-classical park, where an avenue flanked at the Colour plate 1 entrance by heraldic sphinxes leads to a distant fountain. To the right is a marble balustrade adorned by three statues, conspicuous against the cypresses behind: a muscular young faun or satyr, carrying a lamb on his shoulder; a mature goddess with a heavy figure, who looks across at him; and an upright water-nymph in a belted tunic, carrying two urns from which no water flows. They form the static background to a riotous scene of flesh and drapery, colour and movement. Two Amorini wrestle with a dove in mid-air; four others, airborne at a lower level, are pulling a golden chariot or wheeled throne, decorated on the back with a grinning mask of Pan. On it sits a young woman wearing nothing but her sandals; she has flowers in her hair, and a ribboned garland of flowers across her thighs. The golden drapery that might have covered her billows out behind, perhaps blown by the wind or tossed aside by one of the two maids at the back (the other one beats a tambourine). Her route is marked on each side by an urn and a long staff bound with red ribbon. On the right dances a bare-breasted girl (darker-skinned than the beauty enthroned 1 Myths of Rome 01 repaged 23/9/04 1:53 PM Page 2 THE MYTHS OF ROME behind her), in a flying red petticoat and a golden garter. On the left, two men are kneeling and offering flowers; one has a plumed helmet and a round shield. In the foreground, dark greenery contrasts with the brilliant light in which all this action is bathed. Whatever is going on? This excellent gallery provides full information, and the panel on the wall reads as follows: Giovanni Battista Tiepolo Italian, Venetian, 1696–1770 The Empire of Flora, ca. 1743 Oil on canvas Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation to the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum 61.44.19 Forming a pair with Maecenas Presenting the Arts to Augustus (Hermitage, Leningrad), The Empire of Flora was commissioned from the artist in 1743 by Francesco Algarotti, Venetian author and art connoisseur. The two paintings were ordered by Count Heinrich von Brühl, artistic adviser to Augustus III, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland. Within the frivolous 18th century interpretation of the mythological subjects of these two paintings are specific references that flatter the Count. For example, the garden fountain in the background of our painting records the Neptune group by sculptor Lorenzo Mattielli that graced the gardens of Brühl’s Marcolini Palace in Dresden. More obvious allusions to Brühl’s patronage of the arts appear in the Leningrad painting, which depicts Maecenas counseling the ancient Augustus on the arts, in much the same way as Count Brühl advised Augustus III. Current scholarship suggests the specific subject may be drawn from Torquato Tasso’s epic poem Jerusalem Delivered and represents Armida’s garden. That’s a very helpful account of its origin, but it tells us more about the companion-piece in the Hermitage than about the painting we are looking at. We want to know what the frivolous mythological subject is. ‘Current scholarship’ is a little disingenuous in suggesting Armida’s garden from Tasso. When Algarotti wrote to Brühl in July 1743, he promised him that Tiepolo’s picture ‘will represent the empire of Flora, who changes the wildest places into scenes of delight’; and he should have known. In fact, the chariot suggests that the artist had in mind the triumph of Flora—and that is what our painting is called in the standard catalogue of Tiepolo’s work. The central figure must be Flora herself. The gorgeous girl in the chariot flaunts her body and looks out at us as if we were hardly worthy of her notice. Colour plate 2(a) Her pose is like that of Venus in Tiepolo’s ‘Venus and Vulcan’ in Philadelphia, where the adulterous goddess seems to taunt her husband with her naked beauty. There is also a hint of it (shoulders back, right arm akimbo) in ‘The Colour plate 2(b) Meeting of Antony and Cleopatra’ in Edinburgh. In the San Francisco picture, the kneeling men to the left are perhaps like Vulcan and Antony, helpless in the presence of such high-voltage erotic power. 2 Myths of Rome 01 repaged 23/9/04 1:53 PM Page 3 THE TRIUMPH OF FLORA But we know about Venus; we know about Cleopatra. The triumph of Flora is not so familiar a story. Algarotti’s letter is helpful as far as it goes: the goddess of flowers will preside over the great man’s luxurious park. But that doesn’t account for her haughty look, the homage of the men or the sheer sensuality of the scene. Nor does it explain why the bold beauty’s triumphal chariot is being towed out from somewhere outside the park, off to the right, as if it has been garaged in an outhouse. Flora certainly makes her entrance in style—but where has she been? 1.2 OVID, BELLINI AND TITIAN Tiepolo’s source for ‘The Triumph of Flora’ was a Roman poem much more widely read in the eighteenth century (and indeed the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth) than it is in our time. A wonderful poem, despite its modern neglect, it had long been a source of inspiration for Tiepolo’s great predeces- sors, the ‘old masters’ of the Venetian school. The author was Publius Ovidius Naso—‘Venus clerk Ovyde’ in Chaucer’s The House of Fame, ‘the most capri- cious poet, honest Ovid’, for Touchstone in As You Like It. The poem is called Fasti, ‘The Calendar’ or ‘The Festivals’, an artfully kaleidoscopic collection of tales based on the ritual calendar of the Roman religious year. Alas, it never found a Dryden or a Pope, but a London schoolmaster called William Massey— a contemporary of Tiepolo—did his best to render it into English verse in 1757. Here is a piece of Massey’s Ovid, an episode in the first book (9 January, the Agonalia), which takes off from Ovid’s various explanations of animal sacrifice: The sluggish ass to Priapus is killed, Of whom a story’s told, jocose and odd, But vastly suitable to such a god. When Greece once celebrated Bacchus’ feast In honour of his triumphs in the east, Thither resorted from the Arcadian plains The jovial rural gods, and many swains: Pan, sylvan Satyrs, goddesses of woods, And nymphs inhabiting the crystal floods; Here old Silenus on his ass appears, Ovid Fasti And he who birds from fruitful orchards scares. 1.391–400 The last reference is to Priapus; Massey has bowdlerised Ovid’s line, which actually means ‘and the red (god) who scares the timid birds with his penis’, or perhaps ‘and the (god) with the red penis who scares the timid birds’. Ithyphallic statues of Priapus, with the projecting member painted red, were often set up in gardens as scarecrows. 3 Myths of Rome 01 repaged 23/9/04 1:53 PM Page 4 THE MYTHS OF ROME . Who gathered all to a delightful place And feasted jocund, sitting on the grass; Bacchus afforded wine in plenteous store, And on their heads they flowery garlands wore. Some of the Naiads’ tresses artless were, And some were decked with diligence and care; One, with a sprightly air, tucks up her clothes, Another does a beauteous breast expose; By this a naked taper arm is shown, And that, in a long vestment, sweeps the lawn. Pan and the Satyrs burned with amorous fire. Nor would Silenus check his fond desire; Old as he was, the lecher would renew Those pleasures which in youthful days he knew. But of the nymphs in all that lovely train, Fair Lotis gave the garden-god most pain; With her inflamed, for her he sighs alone By nods and signs, and makes his passion known; Ovid Fasti But pride and haughtiness attend the fair. 1.401–420 Thus, she despised him with a scornful air. She could have been a subject for Tiepolo—but it was a Venetian of an earlier age, Giovanni Bellini, who painted ‘The Feast of the Gods’. Colour plate 3 It was done for the ‘alabaster chamber’ in Alfonso D’Este’s ducal palace in Ferrara, along with other Bacchic themes (Titian’s ‘The Andrians’ and ‘Bacchus and Ariadne’). In Bellini’s scene, Bacchus is the ivy-crowned child on the left, filling a jug from the barrel; behind him, a respectable, grizzled Silenus pets his donkey; two satyrs are fooling about, unused to eating off crockery; Pan quietly plays his pipes in the background; and the waitress-nymphs, their clothes revealingly disordered as the text requires, are behaving with much more decorum than the senior gods satirically portrayed in the front row—Mercurius with his caduceus; Jupiter with his eagle; Neptunus with his trident, making free with the unidentified goddess to his right (and perhaps also with the nymph in blue, to judge by her glance); Ceres with her crown of corn-ears; Apollo with his laurel-wreath and ‘lyre’.
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